Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer had a dilemma at Prime Minister’s Questions. Focus on the Boris Johnson psychodrama, or the more tangible story about mortgages and interests rates? He went for Tory infighting first. But then Sunak took the curious approach of deciding to use Starmer’s opener as an opportunity to address the Johnson question head on, rather than trying to argue that his sole focus was on the economy and the cost of living. He told the chamber that ‘I followed the process to the letter’ and that he had stuck by the convention of all prime ministers in sending Johnson’s peerages unamended, rather than blocking it as Starmer said he should have done. Starmer has spent this week arguing that Tory disruption and ‘tantrums’ are deterring investors from the UK.

Boris Johnson has announced he will be standing down from parliament with immediate effect, after the Privileges Committee recommended a ten-day suspension for his conduct over partygate.  There will be a by-election in his constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Johnson will not contest his seat. In his resignation letter, the former prime minister attacks the committee, saying it has made clear to him in a letter ‘that they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of parliament’. He insists that ‘they have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons’, and that ‘they know perfectly well’ that he was not doing this.

Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden’s White House press conference started late, presumably to make a point that the two had just found so much to talk about in their bilateral. Like a date that had gone really well. When the pair eventually appeared before journalists, they spent most of their opening statements banging on about how much they had in common and how they agreed on everything. Biden described the ‘depth and breadth of our relationship’, ‘our common values’ and said ‘there’s no issue of importance – none – that our nations are not leading together on’. Sunak claimed that ‘not for decades has the relationship between our two nations been so important’, and that the only thing that had changed was ‘the challenges that we face’.

An appearance from ageing rocker Gene Simmons from KISS, watching from behind his dark glasses in the gallery, was one of the few highlights from today’s stand-in session of deputy Prime Minister’s Questions. This session wasn’t so much glam rock as it was rock bottom boring. Oliver Dowden and Angela Rayner had written a list of stock jokes and attacks that both were very keen indeed to use, regardless of the questions or answers they were actually dealing with. There was a supportive question in the opening by Tory MP David Johnston about reading standards and Labour party policy. This allowed Dowden to celebrate the recent news that England was now in the top five international rankings for reading in primary schools.

What’s wrong with the government’s AI strategy? Labour has been claiming today that it is ‘already out of date’, with shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell arguing that developers should be licensed by the government before they can work on advanced AI. Powell has suggested that an arms-length body could run the licensing regime in the same way as medicines and the nuclear industry are governed. But when she pitched up on the World at One this afternoon, she didn’t sound fully up-to-date herself. There needs to be more of a narrative from the opposition than just ‘we would do this better’ Sarah Montague asked quite reasonably why, if Labour was so worried about AI, the party hadn’t really been talking more about this before.

Where have Boris Johnson’s diaries and WhatsApp messages gone? The row over the demands of the Covid Inquiry for evidence from the former prime minister and his aide Henry Cook took another twist yesterday, with his team insisting that he has already handed over all the relevant material to the Cabinet Office and that it is in fact the government that’s holding the whole thing up. The inquiry wants all messages from Johnson’s phone, and had demanded them by 12 May, then 4 p.m. yesterday, and now there’s another deadline extension of 1 June.

As luck would have it, the Home Secretary was down to answer departmental questions in the chamber this afternoon, and a lot of those questions were on her speeding ticket. ‘I hope this isn’t going to be a repetitive session,’ said Suella Braverman in the Commons, before offering exactly that for an hour.  Braverman had not come with a different answer to every question, regardless of the details each MP was asking for. Instead, she said the exact same thing, in the exact same tone, over and over again. She had been speeding in the summer. She regretted that. She paid the fine and took the penalty. ‘Mr Speaker, last summer I was speeding. I regret that. I paid the fine and took the points. In relation to the process, in my view I’m confident nothing untoward has happened.