Boris johnson

Two weeks into this self-inflicted Tory sleaze scandal, Boris Johnson has set out plans to bar MPs from political consultancy roles and to make sure their outside interests are within ‘reasonable’ limits. Downing Street released this news just as Keir Starmer was giving a speech on Labour plans to bar most second jobs ahead of an opposition day debate on the matter tomorrow. The bar on political consultancy raises questions of how that would be defined, as I say in the magazine this week. Where is the line, for instance, between providing advice on the international economic situation and political consultancy? I suspect that for this ban to be meaningful it will have to be extended.

Number 10 will have been relieved that the weekend did not bring new stories about Conservative MPs raking in lots of money from second jobs. There were still sleaze angles in the Sunday papers, including regarding the Prime Minister's own dealings, but the air seems to be going out of the story a little. The past two weeks has opened up a chasm between the 'red wall' MPs elected in 2019 and more traditional Tories The trouble is that this week brings a whole host of new chances for the row to blow up once again. There's the Liaison Committee hearing with the Prime Minister on Wednesday, which will include questions on 'propriety and ethics in government'. Labour also has an opposition day debate in the afternoon, arguing for a ban on paid directorships and consultancies for MPs.

And so COP26 ended, not so much with a bang, but rather a whimper. Alok Sharma's tears aside, there was a muted feel to the unveiling of Saturday's Glasgow protocol, at which countries agreed merely to 'phase down' rather than 'phase out' coal. That sense of anticlimax was only enhanced by yet more strike action at the conference close, with the RMT union ensuring the cancellation of all sleeper trains back to London – just two days after the Foreign Office admitted Liz Truss took a domestic flight to the summit after the cancellation of her train. https://twitter.com/RMTunion/status/1459145830921871361?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Still, Boris Johnson has never been one to let facts get in the way of a good story.

‘This government ends if the red wall reverts back to type and we lose 45 seats then end up in hung parliament territory,’ warns one secretary of state. This comment is a reminder of how vital it is for Boris that levelling up is seen to be a success. The rewards of getting it right are considerable. The Tories’ reward for that would probably be another decade in power: one cabinet loyalist says, ‘The boss wants to see a world where Labour are shut out. We consolidate the red wall.’  Michael Gove and Andy Haldane have found inspiration in 15th-century Florence But fixing regional disparities isn’t easy: it is hard to find any country where levelling up is a mission accomplished (as opposed to a work in progress).

Does Boris Johnson really believe, as he told COP26 a few days ago, we’re at 'one minute to midnight' on the man-made climate change doomsday clock, and that 'if we don’t get serious about climate change today, it will be too late for our children to do so tomorrow'? I ask only because in 2013 he used his Daily Telegraph column to write:  As a species, we human beings have become so blind with conceit and self-love that we genuinely believe that the fate of the planet is in our hands – when the reality is that everything, or almost everything, depends on the behaviour and caprice of the gigantic thermonuclear fireball around which we revolve.

A week ago today, Tory MPs were getting increasingly nervous about Downing Street’s plan to stay the guilty verdict against Owen Paterson. Despite warnings from various senior MPs, the government pressed on – and the result has been a firestorm about second jobs, with Geoffrey Cox now facing Labour calls for an inquiry into his conduct. We are a week in and the scandal shows no sign of abating It is hard to see how Boris Johnson gets off the hook he has caught himself on. If he tries to resolve this scandal with a set of strict new curbs on outside interests he will infuriate a considerable number of his own MPs.

Why did Boris Johnson avoid the Commons chamber on Monday? The official reason for the Prime Minister skipping an emergency debate on MPs' standards is that he has a pre-planned visit. The problem for Johnson is that many of his MPs are taking it as another sign that he is missing in action when it comes to the escalating row over Tory sleaze, following the botched attempt to spare former MP Owen Paterson a 30-day suspension. While opposition MPs had plenty to shout about in that debate – with Labour leader Keir Starmer accusing the government of 'giving a green light to corruption' – it's the Tory benches where Downing Street has the most to worry about.

So, how did No. 10, the whips office and the Leader of the House get the Paterson situation so wrong? As I say in the Times this morning, experienced parliamentarians had warned that a Tory-only attempt to change the rules would fail. Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers, had suggested a week ago that a Speaker’s Commission could be asked to look at changes to the way the standards committee operated. This would have ensured that things were done on a cross-party basis; and with the Speaker in the chair, no party would have had a majority. But this advice was ignored. One government source complains that 'the chief whip just thought he could bulldoze it through'. How did No. 10 and the whips get the mood of the parliament party so wrong?

Owen Paterson has resigned as an MP. In a dramatic turn of events, Paterson has in the past 24 hours gone from being spared suspension over a breach of the lobbying rules to facing a fresh vote that many Tories thought he could lose. On hearing the news of the U-turn, Paterson issued a statement saying that he will be stepping down in order to pursue a life 'outside the cruel world of politics'. He continues to refute the commissioner's findings against him: I have today, after consultation with my family, and with much sadness decided to resign as the MP for North Shropshire. The last two years have been an indescribable nightmare for my family and me. My integrity, which I hold very dear, has been repeatedly and publicly questioned.

Jeremy Hunt asked an entirely reasonable question of the Prime Minister today in the Commons — and got an entirely unreasonable answer. Hunt raised an amendment he is tabling which would require Health Education England to produce regular forecasts for the numbers of doctors and nurses that the UK needs to train. This is quite a small thing to ask for, but Johnson's response was first to dodge his way around the question, and then to turn the issue into a party political attack on Labour. He said: My right hon. friend is absolutely right that we have to ensure that our NHS has the staff that it needs. That is why there are 50,000 more healthcare professionals in the NHS this year than there were last year –—12,000 more nurses.