Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Matthew Lynn

Inflation is the real lockdown scandal

No. 10 was an endless series of parties. The Chancellor was more interested in socializing than sorting out the economy. And the Prime Minister was imposing rules on everyone else that he cavalierly ignored himself. It remains to be seen whether Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak can survive the fines handed out for breaking the lockdown rules and the public anger over their behaviour. And yet, in reality, there is a far larger lockdown scandal and one that will cause far more lasting political damage: inflation. The ‘partygate’ scandal, and its fallout, has distracted attention from yet another sobering set of inflation statistics. Today we learned that prices are now rising at an annual rate of 7 per cent, up from 6.2 per cent last month.

Steven Fielding

Tory MPs have a point about not removing Boris now

According to the Metropolitan police, Boris Johnson broke his own lockdown rules during the Covid crisis and, according to almost everybody else, he repeatedly lied to the Commons and the nation to cover it up. This is presumably why 57 per cent of people surveyed in one snap poll think he should resign as prime minister over partygate. But ordinary Britons will not end Johnson’s tenure in Downing Street. Given he is refusing to resign that can only be accomplished by a minimum of 54 Conservative MPs who need to write to Graham Brady, chair of their 1922 committee, expressing a lack of confidence in Johnson as party leader. Brady would then be obliged to call a vote of confidence.

Steerpike

David Lammy gets it wrong (again)

Oh, those rotten Tories. You've got a PM being fined for parties, a Home Secretary making a mess of our borders and a Culture Secretary who can't even spell the name of the Channel 4 star she's berating. Sleaze is rife, inflation is back: it's like the nineties without the hope. What could be worse? Well, there's always the Labour party.  Jeremy Corbyn may be gone but Sir Keir Starmer's barmy army is still stuffed with socialists of the hard-of-thinking variety. Richard Burgon is banished to the backbenches but there's always good old David Lammy, the ardent Europhile handpicked by Starmer to shadow Her Majesty's principal secretary of state for foreign and Commonwealth affairs.

Ross Clark

Boris’s real failure wasn’t breaking lockdown

Boris Johnson made a big error, alright. But it wasn’t walking into a room where his wife had prepared him a surprise birthday cake. It was in overriding his liberal instincts and imposing highly prescriptive lockdown rules in the first place. If, in March 2020, he had stood up to advisers and said that no, it was not the business of the state to micromanage people’s lives – had he banned large gatherings, closed crowded pubs but left private meetings to our sense of personal responsibility – then he would not be in the position he is today.  Moreover, many Britons would not have died alone or succumbed to crippling loneliness. As he has admitted, rather too late, many lockdown rules were simply inhumane.

Christopher Booth

Russia’s failure to communicate

'So you’ve got one, right, Chris?' Lev Lvovich leaned in closer, and his beery breath was warm and damp on my face. 'It’s all OK,' he reassured me with a slur. 'We’re friends. You can tell me!' It was the middle of the evening, already long dark, and Lev and I were playing a drunken game of chicken to see who might reveal something valuable to the other. I was the BBC Moscow bureau chief, and he was our ‘kurator’ at the Russian foreign ministry, the guy who signed off on accreditations, and who was charged with keeping an eye on what we reported. 'Got one what?' I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about. Lev and I would meet every now and then to pretend we were good mates.

Katy Balls

Has Boris got away with it?

Boris Johnson has had a surprisingly positive 24 hours since receiving a police fine. While not exactly positive, today's front pages are far from a nightmare selection. A number of Tory-leaning papers call for a sense of perspective with the Daily Mail asking of the PM’s critics ‘don't they know there's a war on?’.  On hearing the news that Johnson, his wife Carrie Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak had each received a fixed penalty notice, most Tory MPs came out to defend rather than attack the Prime Minister (see The Spectator’s updated list here). Notably, Roger Gale who had previously put in a no-confidence letter said that now was not the time to oust a Prime Minister and that he backed Johnson.

Tuesday

Lloyd Evans

Boris’s crazy defence

‘I was very busy. The party was crap. I’m sorry you’re angry. Now leave me alone.’ That was the gist of Boris’s statement about being fined for attending an event in Downing Street to celebrate his birthday.  A flustered-looking Prime Minister delivered the Partygate Declaration in a small, wood-panelled room with a nicely-lit painting behind him. Not a bad setting. It looked homely, low-key, reassuringly domestic. If he’d sat at a varnished desk flanked by a Union Jack and a Nato flag he’d have sent the wrong signal. And he delivered his mea culpa in a standing position, as if he were dealing with a minor office problem while hurrying to more important meetings elsewhere. This was not a great performance.

Katy Balls

Rishi Sunak breaks his silence

After Boris Johnson issued an apology (along with a pool clip) over the fixed penalty notice he received for attending a birthday gathering in 10 Downing Street, attention turned to the silent Chancellor. Would Rishi Sunak resign in response to the fixed penalty notice he was handed? It's clear he's been uncomfortable with the partygate disclosures and did not expect to be issued with a fine.  Several hours after Johnson's statement, Sunak has confirmed that he plans to fight on. He said he 'deeply regrets the frustration and anger caused' and offers an 'unreserved apology': 'I can confirm I have received a Fixed Penalty Notice from the Metropolitan Police with regards to a gathering held on 19th June in Downing Street.  I offer an unreserved apology.

Isabel Hardman

Boris thinks he can ride this scandal out

Boris Johnson has now apologised for receiving a fixed penalty notice for attending a lockdown-busting party. In a clearly very carefully scripted statement read to camera, the Prime Minister also made it clear he hadn't thought he was breaking the rules by attending the gathering in the Cabinet Room, which lasted 'less than ten minutes'. 'I have to say it did not occur to me that this might have been a breach of the rules, he said. But, he added, 'of course the police have found otherwise and I fully accept the outcome of their investigation'. He said he had 'paid the fine and I once again offer a full apology'. Johnson clearly thinks that his defence of inadvertently breaking the rules is sufficient for his party (though not good enough for the police).

Steerpike

Boris and Carrie apologise for lockdown fines

This evening the Johnsons have apologised for the fines dished out by the Metropolitan police earlier today. First up was Carrie Johnson who it appears organised the infamous birthday party in June 2020 that led to her husband and next-door neighbour both being fined. Whoops! A spokesperson for the First Lady of Downing Street said that: 'Mrs Johnson has paid a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) relating to a gathering on the afternoon of 19 June 2020. Whilst she believed that she was acting in accordance with the rules at the time, Mrs Johnson accepts the Met Police’s findings and apologises unreservedly.' She has now paid her FPN fine. Then it was the turn of Boris who admitted he had been served with a FPN – believed to be a fine worth £50.

Katy Balls

Is Rishi politically naive?

Before the war in Ukraine, ministers and Tory MPs believed a fixed penalty notice for the Prime Minister would mean the end of Boris Johnson. It would result in enough no-confidence letters from Tory MPs to trigger a leadership contest which would run into the summer. There would be a new Prime Minister in time for the party conference in the autumn. But now the Prime Minister has been told he will be fined by Scotland Yard for attending parties during lockdown, no one is quite so sure. The reason? The circumstances around Johnson are changing. Until now, stories about lockdown parties in No. 10 had been overshadowed by the Ukrainian crisis. Johnson has also impressed MPs and the party membership with his response.

Brendan O’Neill

Partygate is shameful – but Boris shouldn’t resign

I feel torn on partygate. Like most other people, I have flashes of rage over the vision of government ministers living it up with booze and birthday cakes while the rest of us risked arrest if we so much as popped round to our mum’s for a cup of tea. But there is something in the pushback against partygate that grates, too. It feels opportunistic, possibly even anti-democratic, with Boris’s legion of loathers among the media elites clearly hoping that this scandal will do what they so spectacularly failed to do at the ballot box – get those pesky Brexity Tories out of Downing Street. This is not to downplay the seriousness of what has happened.

Ross Clark

What Rishi should do next

How tempting it must be for Rishi Sunak to chuck in his job as Chancellor. ‘My chances of ever becoming PM have plummeted to next to nothing,’ he must be thinking, ‘so why not go off and earn some serious money instead, away from the spotlight?’  I have no insight into the state of the Sunak marriage but I wouldn't be surprised if he was also tempted to resign for his wife's sake. ‘Let's get out of the public eye,’ he might well be tempted to say, ‘and enjoy being rich again.’ But if Rishi had hired me for some advice on reputation management I would give him a better idea. You have obviously wanted to be PM for a long time, so why give up now? Your political reputation is not beyond repair.

Robert Peston

This is a constitutional crisis

The police have today concluded that Boris Johnson, the Chancellor and the PM’s wife all attended illegal parties that breached Covid laws written by the PM. This is most serious for the prime minister of the three of them because it was he who told MPs on 8 December that he had been ‘repeatedly assured’ there were no parties and that no Covid rules were broken. He now has the challenge of his life to prove that he did not willfully and knowingly mislead MPs – because if he did deliberately mislead MPs then he has no choice but to resign under the code of conduct for ministers, which he signed off and approved in keeping with normal practise on becoming PM.

Isabel Hardman

Boris and Rishi fined: what happens next?

15 min listen

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have been told that they are going to be fixed penalty notices by the Metropolitan Police over parties held in Downing Street. The Chancellor has already had a tough week – might he now resign? Could Tory MPs push the Prime Minister out of No. 10? Isabel Hardman speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls.

Patrick O’Flynn

Why Boris may well survive

When the original Sue Gray report was published at the end of January it seemed indisputable that Boris Johnson would be toast if he received a fixed penalty fine as a result of the partygate furore. Back then the PM was hanging on to majority support on the Tory benches in Parliament by his fingertips. He put on a disastrous, flailing-around show in the Commons chamber involving various failed attempts at distraction, such as his notorious ‘Jimmy Savile’ attack on Keir Starmer. The media clamour around alleged breaches of Covid laws by Johnson and his circle was running white hot and had garnered plenty of traction among the British public. A hitherto durable Tory poll lead evaporated in a matter of days.

Steerpike

Six times Boris and Rishi denied breaking the law

Well, that's that then. This afternoon the Metropolitan Police fined the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of Exchequer for breaking lockdown laws. It follows an investigation into alleged Covid law-breaking at 12 gatherings in Whitehall and Downing Street. Both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have maintained their innocence right up until this week. Below are six of the most memorable denials by the two men since claims emerged last year. 1 December 2021  At Prime Minister's Questions, Johnson denies that Covid rules had been broken. He tells the House of Commons: 'All guidance was followed completely in No. 10.' 3 December 2021 Asked whether rules had been broken Johnson told the BBC: 'That's not true. We followed the guidance throughout.

Alex Massie

The Prime Minister must go

It isn’t just the fines. It isn’t just the behaviour that has led to the Prime Minister being issued a fixed penalty notice by the Metropolitan police. It isn’t just the lies told about that behaviour, lies issued with the most sweeping confidence inside and outside the House of Commons. It isn’t just the fines and the indifference to the rules he and his ministers set for everyone else and demanded they follow – on pain of arrest – and the lying about that behaviour and the cavalier assumption that public opinion can go hang. It is all of those things wrapped together.

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak fined over partygate

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are both to receive fixed penalty notices for attending lockdown parties, it has just emerged. The police fines for breaking Covid laws, which these two men created, throw everything around the Prime Minister and the Chancellor into the air. Previously, many Tory MPs had said this would be a resigning matter for a serving PM to be found to have broken the law. A No. 10 spokesperson confirmed the fines, saying: ‘The Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have today received notification that the Metropolitan police intend to issue them with fixed penalty notices.

Katy Balls

Are Tories faced with another sleaze scandal?

11 min listen

Crispin Blunt, a Conservative MP, was forced to apologise today after he tweeted support last night for Imran Ahmad Khan, another Tory MP who was found guilty of sexual assault. His statement called the verdict 'a dreadful miscarriage of justice' that relied on ‘lazy tropes of LGBT+ people'. ‘The condemnation has been pretty universal. I haven’t spoken to anyone that has who has stuck up for him [Crispin Blunt].’ - Lucy FisherIn the wake of the David Warburton scandal last week, does the Conservative party have a more widespread culture problem?Also on the podcast, 50 more fines have been made for partying in Westminster during the lockdown. How serious is this?Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and Lucy Fisher, the chief political commentator at Times Radio.