Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

William Atkinson

Durham should be proud to be a second-rate Oxbridge

Durham University has long been considered the destination of choice for Oxbridge rejects. But this is an image some students in Durham are keen to shake off. Durham's Students' Union hopes to end the stereotype that it is the alma mater of choice for those who don't make the cut at Britain's ancient universities. It has published a 48-page 'Culture Commission', in which it says the label is unfair since ‘most students are not in fact unsuccessful candidates of Oxford or Cambridge.' Rather than be embarrassed by this label, Durham students should embrace it. This knee-jerk decision to try and rebrand Durham is hardly surprising at an institution where Rod Liddle's appearance led to protests and which once even banned its Conservative association.

James Forsyth

For Boris, the hard bit is just beginning

Boris Johnson has been plunged back into the mire of partygate. The publication of a photograph of Johnson raising a glass to his departing communications chief Lee Cain in November 2020 and the long-awaited report by Sue Gray into lockdown breaches in Whitehall means that once again there are Tory MPs publicly calling for him to resign. Some of those who had gone quiet on the basis that the war in Ukraine meant it was not the right time for a leadership election have renewed their calls for the Prime Minister to go. No. 10’s hope is that apologies and an emphasis on how the new Department of the Prime Minister is meant to professionalise Downing Street will be enough to persuade backbenchers to stay their hands.

The Spectator

Boris Johnson’s guilt

An ability to survive narrow scrapes has been one of Boris Johnson’s defining qualities. The pictures of Downing Street’s lockdown social events included in the Sue Gray report were so dull as to be almost exculpatory: staid gatherings of half a dozen people around a long table with sandwiches still in their boxes, apple juice poured into a whisky glass. Far worse happened in No. 10 but Gray did not publish those photos or look into (for example) the ‘Abba’ party in the No. 10 flat, saying she felt it inappropriate to do so while police were investigating. Luckily for Johnson. The more damaging material came from the emails intercepted, with No.

Brendan O’Neill

The EU and US are playing Ireland like a fiddle

There’s a meme that goes: ‘I, for one, welcome our new overlords.’ It’s a paraphrase of a comment made by Kent Brockman, the newsreader on The Simpsons, and it’s intended to signify submission to some crazy powerful force. I couldn’t help but think of that line when I saw the photo of Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald giddily welcoming representatives of the American Empire to Dublin this week. There she was, the leader of a party that was once devoted to liberating Ireland from external meddling, smiling widely as she greeted representatives of the most powerful military nation on Earth. Sinn Fein translates as ‘We Ourselves’. It was set up to get Britain out of Ireland. Now it’s welcoming America in.

Samantha Smith

Who cares? The real problem with social services

After a tumultuous childhood and breakdown in family relationships, I ended up in the hands of social services. I remember my social worker dropping me off at the door of my emergency accommodation with a bag of clothes and little else. On my first day, while filling out my induction paperwork in the office, a staff member asked me: 'What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?'. I was far too ‘nice’, he said, to be trapped in their prison-like environment. His comment perfectly summarises a common attitude within the social care system to the young people it was set up to help. This week, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care released its final report, outlining the need for an urgent overhaul of the care system in England.

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Inside Boris Johnson’s crunch meeting with Tory MPs

Just as Boris Johnson got up to address his party at a meeting of the 1922 committee, one more Tory MP called on social media for him to go: Julian Sturdy, the MP for York Outer, said in the wake of the Sue Gray report that it is in the public interest for the Prime Minister to resign. Johnson received a warmer reception on the committee corridor, even if the desk banging and cheers that can accompany such events were in short supply. The most hostile question came from Roger Gale, who has called for Johnson to go After the Prime Minister was criticised the last time he addressed MPs over partygate (when he received a fine) for cracking jokes and making light of the situation, he cut a far more sombre figure.

Lloyd Evans

Starmer fluffed his lines at partygate PMQs

PMQs was a warm-up today. The main event was Boris’s response to Sue Gray’s partygate report. Boris’s body language was sheepish as he sat through PMQs. He hunched in his place, head down, legs crossed, his meaty arms enclosing his ribs in what psychologists call a ‘self-comforting’ gesture. He was giving himself a bear-hug. Sir Keir predicted that the Tories would shortly perform a U-turn on windfall taxes. Probably true. But Boris wanted it both ways. He derided Labour’s passion for confiscating the assets of big business. ‘You can feel the lust for tax rising off the benches opposite,’ he said luridly. Ian Blackford delivered a long, tetchy speech which liberated enough warm air to fill a weather balloon.

Robert Peston

I’m not exaggerating partygate

A veteran Tory MP, who I've known for almost 30 years, just laid into me – and my colleagues in much of the media – for allegedly exaggerating the seriousness of how Covid laws were systematically broken in 10 Downing Street. He hadn't read Sue Gray's report into the rule-breaking parties and did not attend the PM's statement on her findings. He has already decided that all is for the best in Boris Johnson's best of all possible worlds. His decision to ignore Gray's report is not what most voters would expect from their elected representatives. What many would see as his negligence is all the greater because in my lifetime there has never been a report into misconduct at the heart of government as damaging as Gray's.

Isabel Hardman

Has Boris Johnson really been ‘humbled’ by the Gray report?

What is Boris Johnson actually accepting responsibility for when he says he is ‘humbled’ by Sue Gray’s report into partygate? Humility isn’t a word often used in connection with Boris Johnson, although it’s hardly valued at all in Westminster, so perhaps he is following a slightly different definition to the rest of us. Or perhaps his line that he is ‘humbled’, which he used again at his Downing Street press conference just now,  was written for him which is why he delivered it with a lack of conviction. He certainly doesn’t seem to be accepting responsibility for attending leaving parties for staff: this afternoon, he once again defended this as being an important part of leadership.

Katy Balls

Did the Sue Gray report move the dial?

14 min listen

The long-awaited Sue Gray report is finally published today. It included new photographs (including of the birthday bash, though James Forsyth describes the photo as looking more like 'an enforced office socialising occasion' than a party), colourful details (one staffer was threw up at one drinks) and some unsavoury revelations (Sue Gray was damning about some of the staffers' treatment of cleaners and security staff). But amidst all this, has the report really worsened the situation for Boris Johnson? Katy Balls talks to Isabel Hardman and James on this episode.Produced by Natasha Feroze and Cindy Yu.

Freddy Gray

Is Kissinger right about Ukraine?

32 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to Sergey Radchenko a Cold War historian and Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and visiting professor at Cardiff University. They discuss a recent speech by Henry Kissinger who believes that Ukraine should made territorial concessions to Russia – is he right?

Kate Andrews

What the Sue Gray report tells us about the ‘party elite’

Britain’s ‘party elite’ – perhaps better-termed ‘Covid elite’ – were hiding in plain sight throughout the pandemic. Even before the parties, trysts and suitcases of wine were exposed, we knew politicians and government officials were leading radically different lives to everyone else during last year’s extended lockdown. Trips abroad for ministers when it was illegal for the rest of us to leave the country, protection from ‘ping-demic’, an ‘event research programme’ full of trial parties that happened to align with Whitehall’s favourite freebee events. It wasn’t hard to document because no one was trying to hide it.

James Forsyth

Why Tory MPs are staying quiet about Boris’s partygate troubles

The loudest sound at Westminster today has been the silence of most Tory MPs. A few such as Tobias Ellwood have demanded that Boris Johnson should go. Others have defended the PM publicly. But most Tory MPs have chosen to say nothing. Indeed, because only 13 Tory MPs wanted to contribute to the statement the PM made about the Sue Gray report, the chair had to call opposition MP after opposition MP, rather than going from one side of the House to the other as he normally does. What does this silence of the majority of Tory MPs mean? It tells us that while backbenchers might not be prepared to move against Johnson, they don’t want to actively defend what happened either. They just want this whole story to go away.

Katy Balls

Boris’s new ‘masochism strategy’

How humbled is Boris Johnson by the publication of Sue Gray's report into partygate? Speaking in the Commons chamber, the Prime Minister attempted to strike a solemn tone at the first of three events today which have been dubbed a ‘masochism strategy’ of taking pain in the chamber, a press conference and then appearing before Tory MPs at a meeting of the 1922 Committee. Johnson told MPs: ‘I am humbled and I have learned a lesson’. He went on to point out how ‘the entire senior management has changed’ including a new chief of staff, a new director of communications and a new principal private secretary.

James Kirkup

The Sue Gray media circus is political journalism at its worst

It’s a helicopter day at Westminster. I’m writing this at my desk, which is about 200 metres from the House of Lords. My office is full of the racket made by a chopper flitting about over the Palace of Westminster and Whitehall, providing aerial camera shots of politicians – mainly the PM – moving around the place. The reason today is the Sue Gray report, but helicopter days are relatively common at Westminster. The drone of the rotors is the easiest way to tell that this is a Big News day, when journalists spend more than the usual amount of time talking about extraordinary events and major developments. As with so many things, there’s a mundane reason helicopter days seem to come around so often.

Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Partygate isn’t Johnson’s only problem

Sir Keir Starmer used Prime Minister's Questions today to show how hard it is going to be for Boris Johnson to move on from the Sue Gray report. The Labour leader acknowledged as he opened that there was going to be a statement on that inquiry right after this session, and so he was going to focus on the cost of living. It underlined that even if the Prime Minister manages to keep his backbenchers sufficiently calm to 'survive' the Gray report, that survival is not going to be followed by a swift recovery of his political fortunes. Long-time critic of the Prime Minister William Wragg asked a zinger of a question Starmer started by asking when the U-turn on a windfall tax on the profits of energy companies would come.

Steerpike

Six of the worst bits from Sue Gray’s report

Politics' longest-running farce is at a close. Sue Gray, that pillar of Whitehall officialdom, has today delivered her report into whether Boris Johnson did indeed break lockdown rules during the pandemic. And while there will no doubt be some relief for those in No. 10 that Gray's inquiries didn't investigate any further parties to those previously reported, some of the details contained in her findings do make for excruciating reading. Below are six of the lowlights from the Sue Gray report.... 1. The Met torpedoed Gray's probe Few institutions emerge well from partygate but the Metropolitan Police probably came out worst.

Steerpike

Tory staff demand change over sleaze in parliament

Sleaze is the watchword in Westminster at the moment. Morale amongst staff on the parliamentary estate was already low before the latest partygate shenanigans. Recent embarrassments about outside interests, dodgy MPs, drinking on the estate and historic sex offences have taken their toll. Few of the twenty-somethings who work in the Commons have a good word to say about our elected members at present, whether it's Neil Parish watching porn or Liam Byrne getting just a two day suspension for bullying his staff. Parish fiddles while Byrne roams, indeed.  Will anything change as a result? Some of those in parliament have had enough.

Sue Gray

Full text: The Sue Gray report

The investigation into Downing Street lockdown parties by the civil servant Sue Gray has been published. You can read the full report below: ALLEGED GATHERINGS: REPORT On 8 December 2021 the Prime Minister asked the Cabinet Secretary to carry out an investigation into allegations reported in the media relating to gatherings in No 10 Downing Street and the Department for Education during November and December 2020. On 17 December 2021 the Cabinet Secretary recused himself from the investigation as a result of allegations concerning an online quiz held by his private office in the Cabinet Office on 17 December 2020 in 70 Whitehall. It was at this point that I was asked to lead this work. The terms of reference for the investigation were published on 9 December 2021.

Steerpike

Sue Gray releases her partygate pics

Well, it's finally here. After five months of waiting, Sue Gray has today released her report into the parties that went on in Downing Street during Covid. Her 60-page report is currently being pored over by hacks, spinners and MPs across parliament, ahead of Boris Johnson’s appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions today. But initial attention has focused on the nine pictures which Gray released as part of her inquiry (many more images of the lockdown shindigs were reportedly taken).  And the early conclusion is one of surprise at just how anodyne the gatherings seem to be, in light of the frenzied speculation about what they would depict.