Hotels housing asylum seekers became a lightning rod this summer for political and community tensions over illegal migration, and over the dramatic increase in the number of migrants arriving in Britain on small boats. Large numbers of people are still being housed in these hotels, though the government has promised to end the practice by the end of this parliament, in 2029. As of June 2025, 32,059 asylum seekers were being accommodated in hotels. That’s 8% up on last year’s level (though actually down from a peak of 56,042 in September 2023).

One council, Epping Forest, has argued in court – unsuccessfully – that using hotels in this way is a breach of planning laws. The government has also been criticised by the Home Affairs Committee of MPs for its general failures in its management of asylum accommodation, and for squandering billions on hotels.

What is the context to all this?

The number of asylum seekers coming to the UK has risen sharply in recent years, because of small-boat crossings. In the year ending December 2024, a record 108,138 people claimed asylum (84,231 main applicants plus 23,907 dependants). The figure for 2019 was 44,494. When asylum seekers have been processed, if they are judged to be “destitute”, as most are, they are eligible for accommodation and subsistence while their claims are being assessed (most are not allowed to work).

New arrivals are placed in “initial accommodation”. Then they are moved to longer‑term “dispersal accommodation” – flats or houses of multiple occupation, often in areas such as the North West, where housing is cheaper – until an asylum decision has been made. But when this is not available, “contingency accommodation” is used: usually hotels. All this accommodation is provided by private contractors: in 2019, the Home Office gave 10-year contracts to three companies: Serco, Clearsprings Ready Homes and Mears.

Why are hotels being used so much?

Until 2020, they were used only in very limited circumstances. But when the pandemic struck, the contractors began placing asylum seekers in hotels – partly for public health reasons, and partly because empty hotels were a useful place to house growing numbers of people. This was only ever intended as a temporary measure, as a response to the pressures of the pandemic. However, it soon became a major part of the asylum accommodation system: at one point, 400 hotels were being used.

After the pandemic, demand continued to grow – because of rising numbers, and because of Boris Johnson’s decision to stop processing asylum claims as his government pursued its Rwanda policy, meaning that more people were stuck in the system. Around a third of the total are now housed in hotels.

Why is it seen as a problem?

Firstly, asylum hotels are poor value for money. The average daily cost of housing an asylum seeker is about £145 per person – compared with £23 in “dispersal accommodation”; catering, laundry, onsite security and so on raise costs. As a result, the expected cost of those three 10-year contracts has risen from £4.5 billion to £15.3 billion, according to the Home Affairs Committee.

Hotels are also unsuitable for asylum seekers themselves: some spend years living in hotels. Bored and unable to work legally, asylum seekers have little to do but stay in their rooms or loiter in the local area; some have committed crimes. Residents living near these hotels often complain that they feel unsafe; The Bell Hotel in Epping, along with others, have become flashpoints for protests and violence.

Are there any alternatives?

There are few easy solutions. From August 2023, some 500 male asylum seekers were moved to the Bibby Stockholm barge docked off the Dorset coast; but that prompted protests and legal challenges, and within 16 months it had been emptied. At present, two large former Ministry of Defence sites are being used to house them: Napier Barracks near Folkestone – found by the High Court in 2021 to be “filthy” and overcrowded – and a former RAF base at Wethersfield in Essex. Napier is due to close by December.

Another option, proposed by the Refugee Council, would be for ministers to grant time-limited leave to remain in Britain to all asylum seekers from five countries (Syria, Eritrea, Sudan, Iran and Afghanistan) whose claims are almost certain to be successful, which would allow asylum hotels to be closed within six months.

What’s the government doing?

It wants to tackle the problem by reducing the number of people in the asylum system: speeding up the processing of claims; reducing irregular arrivals by cracking down on criminal gangs; stepping up returns of those who have been rejected; and perhaps tightening up the rules in general. Keir Starmer has said that he wants asylum hotels “emptied as quickly as possible”. Labour wants to open asylum camps on disused Army bases and on government land, including barracks in East Sussex and Inverness. It’s also trialling a plan to give asylum seekers £100 per week so they can live with family or friends.

Will the hotels be closed?

The PM has told ministers that he hopes to be able to end the use of hotels next year. By then, the government aims to have readied military sites, and made progress in cutting the asylum backlog (which Labour says has fallen by around 20% since it took office). Still, plans to house asylum seekers on government land are likely to encounter local opposition and legal challenges. It’s likely to be expensive, too: such sites often cost more even than hotels. The Home Office’s record does not inspire confidence: the Home Affairs Committee described it as “chaotic”. It had failed, for instance, to claw back millions in “excess profits” owed by contractors to the public purse until prompted by the Committee.

Nigel Farage has announced Reform UK's tough new proposals for dealing with the “Boriswave” of migrants which, he claims, could end up costing the British taxpayer hundreds of billions of pounds in benefit payments.

The liberal immigration policy overseen by Boris Johnson after the UK left the EU was, said Farage, “the biggest betrayal of democratic wishes in anyone’s living memory”. He’s not alone in his criticism. Keir Starmer has also called it an “experiment in open borders, conducted on a country that voted for control”.

What is the ‘Boriswave’?

The term refers to the sharp increase in migration to the UK after January 2021, when new post-Brexit points-based visa rules came into force.

The then home secretary Priti Patel vowed the new system would slash immigration numbers and cherry-pick only “the best and the brightest” but, by the end of 2022, net migration reached 873,000: four times more than it had been before Brexit. The numbers did drop to 431,000 in 2024, according to Office for National Statistics data, but they are still higher than they were in the 2010s.

What happened?

There are differing views within the Conservative party of what went wrong, said The Telegraph. Some say the system Johnson designed was "flawed”; some say the “myopic and incompetent Home Office let Johnson down”, and others say “Johnson was mostly mugged by circumstance”. But the “most damaging accusation” is that Johnson and his top team “knew what they were doing and what the consequences would be” but “consciously opted to ramp up net migration for economic reasons”.

Speaking on The Sun’s podcast last year, Johnson said he was forced to keep the migration policy loose to ensure there were enough workers to “stack the shelves and fill the petrol stations with petrol”. Everyone was “freaking out” and “saying we need more pairs of hands to get things done”, said the former PM. Under pressure to fill labour shortages, especially in lower-paid sectors such as care, his government lowered the qualification and salary thresholds needed to get visa points – and the number of visas issued to lower-skilled workers ballooned.

A recent report from Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee found the “insufficient” intra-governmental collaboration on “workforce strategies” meant the Home Office lacked a “full understanding of the potential consequences” of its immigration policy changes. To put it more bluntly, said Michael Simmons in The Spectator, the Home Office “didn’t think about how a flood of new working-age migrants (and their dependants) might affect salaries, services or housing”.

And now, with millions of Boriswave migrants close to having spent five years in Britain and therefore able to apply for indefinite leave to remain (and the means-tested benefits that come with it), there is concern that they will end up taking more from the British state that they contribute.

What is Reform proposing?

Farage has promised to abolish indefinite leave to remain status, which, once granted, allows migrants the permanent right to live, work and study in the UK, and access the health and benefits system. It would be replaced with a renewable five-year visa for those who meet certain criteria, and those who currently have settled status would be forced to re-apply.

His plans would “save British taxpayers at least £234 billion over the lifetime of these migrants”, said Farage, citing a report by the Centre for Policy Studies think tank. The Centre for Policy Studies has since said, however, that the fiscal data contained within its report was the “subject of dispute”.

Labour, which is already consulting on plans to increase the waiting criteria to apply for indefinite leave to remain, has said Farage’s forecasted savings “have no basis in reality”.

Keir Starmer is getting ready to celebrate his first Christmas as PM, having secured one of the biggest election landslides less than six months ago.

But amid slumping poll numbers, a flurry of negative headlines, grim economic forecasts, millions calling for an early general election and even a parody song closing in on the festive Top 10, he could be forgiven for thinking the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future are visiting him all at once.

"Clearly it's a pretty grim time to be prime minister at the mo," said Sam Blewett in Politico's London Playbook, but "Starmer's hardly the first" British PM to "have a less-than-merry Christmas".

What did the commentators say?

In past years, there have been "wars, invasions, natural disasters, international plots and dramatic resignations", all helping "to spoil prime-ministerial Christmasses", said Sue Cameron at Prospect.

Having refused to give Downing Street staff a week off over Christmas in 1941, Winston Churchill had to practise "what he'd preached" in 1944 and, following a community uprising in Athens, fly to Greece at 1am on Christmas morning, to negotiate a settlement.

In 1956, Anthony Eden, Churchill's successor as Tory leader, "had one of the most miserable Christmasses of any Number 10 incumbent", as the Suez crisis became "mired in deceit and failure".

And Labour PM Jim Callaghan returned from a Christmas Caribbean summit in 1979 to find the Winter of Discontent raging, sparking the famous "Crisis? What crisis?" headline, from which he never politically recovered.

Modern PMs have fared little better. In 1997, Tony Blair may have been basking in approval ratings Starmer can only dream of, but that did not stop protestors, angry at changes to disability benefits, derailing his first Christmas in Downing Street by throwing red paint over the gates and writing "Blair’s blood" on the ground.

Having finally made it to Number 10, Gordon Brown had a torrid series of Christmasses, facing fears of a recession in 2007, dealing with the collapse of the global financial system in 2008, and culminating in a 2009 end-of-year plot to oust him that splashed on the front page of the Daily Mail.

And the list goes on. Theresa May was "dealt a nightmare before Christmas" back in 2016, said Blewett in Politico. MPs voted for the government's Brexit plan to be published before the UK invoked Article 50, leaving Parliament "irate", voters "restless", and even Queen Elizabeth "reportedly miffed".

But few had it as bad as Boris Johnson, who spent Christmas 2020 holed up in Downing Street ordering mass lockdowns as the Covid pandemic raged. His nadir came at Christmas 2021, when the fun-loving PM "got a series of nasty surprises, all of them worse than a lump of coal", The New Yorker reported at the time. These included the leaking of the now infamous clip of Downing Street staff joking about a lockdown-busting Christmas party – revelations that would, eventually, lead to Johnson's downfall.

What next?

Downing Street has confirmed that Starmer will spend Christmas Day at the PM's country retreat, Chequers, before heading off abroad for his first family holiday since the summer's election.

Having cancelled his last planned getaway in August to deal with the fallout from the Southport riots, he will be praying that the curse of Callaghan does not create another crisis that calls him back early – and ultimately dooms his premiership.

Having wished for a "better, brighter future" in his festive message to the nation, the PM "better have left one hell of a large inducement behind to encourage a miracle down one of Downing Street's chimneys" because the papers are currently teeming with "reasons why the hard months gone by may give way to even harder ones to come", said Politico.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

Rishi Sunak faces a dilemma about how to deploy Foreign Secretary David Cameron as the former PM grabs the spotlight abroad and increasingly at home.

As if to stress his renewed world standing, Cameron made a detour on his US trip to meet with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida on Monday.

As Ukraine allies seek to convince the presumptive Republican presidential nominee of the need for continued US aid, Cameron, "and allies awaiting a debrief, will hope his involvement elevated the argument above the attrition of US politics and offered clarity on a crisis", said Sky News.

'Weight and heft'

This week's US trip comes after what the Financial Times described as the "extraordinary rehabilitation" of Cameron's reputation, from a former prime minister blamed for calling the Brexit referendum to a "high-profile figure on the international stage" once again.

Senior British diplomats told the paper that since accepting Sunak's cabinet role offer last November,  Cameron had brought "weight and heft" to the Foreign Office, and injected fresh confidence and ideas into British foreign policy.

"Being a former prime minister lends him stature and opens doors," said The Guardian. And as a member of the House of Lords rather than an MP, Cameron "has no constituency to worry about, nor does he have to hurry back from abroad for tricky Commons votes".

A series of short, slick promotional videos posted on X highlighting his first 100 days in office, and his recent trip to Brussels to mark the 75th anniversary of Nato showcased his understanding of what is required of a foreign secretary.

Cameron's communication skills were a "key factor" in his appointment, said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman. "The trouble is it's all working out better than expected." The "contrast" between the former and the current PM is "impossible to miss" and "it's not doing Sunak any favours".

'Won an election for us'

Unusually, said The Guardian, Cameron "seems to have been given licence to set British foreign policy" while Sunak "focuses on domestic issues ahead of the general election".

Downing Street has denied any suggestion of a split with Cameron on high-profile stances such as his suggestion that the UK was prepared to diverge from the US and recognise a Palestinian state.

"Frankly, I don't think Rishi Sunak is very interested in foreign affairs and I think he's happy to leave that to Cameron," said Peter Ricketts, who served as national security adviser and ambassador to Paris.

But there are now "genuine worries in No. 10 that Cameron is overshadowing him", said Cunliffe. "The ease with which Cameron has slipped back into the role of representing Britain on the world stage and the effortless authority he is able to convey highlights the weakness and chaos of the Sunak regime."

Team Sunak also faces the challenge of what to do with three other former Tory PMs – Boris Johnson, Theresa May and Liz Truss – let "off the leash", said i news. But the "arguably thornier dilemma" is what to do with Cameron.

Cameron is “enjoying being back at the frontline of politics", a Conservative insider told the news site. "There's a risk he could steal the limelight from Sunak, but he did win an election for us." And he could also prove pivotal in swaying wavering Tory moderates in the so-called Blue Wall.

Boris Johnson could be drafted in to help save the Conservatives from annihilation at the general election – and prepare for a possible return to politics should the party be wiped out.

Johnson has largely stayed out of the political limelight since he was ousted from power in the summer of 2022. Since then, however, his party's fortunes have nosedived, and a feeling is growing that the man who won the Tories a huge majority in 2019 is the only person who can save them this time.

Tory fears of a mass exodus of voters across the so-called "red wall" in the north of England has been heightened by the defection of former party deputy chair Lee Anderson to a surging Reform UK party. 

"There are many in the party who don't think we have a hope in hell of winning unless Boris comes back," one backbencher told The Telegraph. "Of course there are some who can't forgive him for Partygate but we're running out of better ideas."

What did the commentators say?

In the wake of the Partygate scandal, the notion of "bringing back Boris" appeared "complete folly", said Camilla Tominey in The Telegraph. "Yet the resurgence of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for US president, combined with the Tories this week falling to their lowest level of poll support in almost 50 years, have increased the likelihood of a Cincinnatus-style comeback." Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was the Roman statesman recalled as dictator referenced by Johnson in his outgoing speech as PM.

A comeback has been made more likely by a significant "thawing" of relations between Johnson and Rishi Sunak over the past six months, said The Times's political editor Steven Swinford. Tominey also reported that "sources familiar with the former prime minister's thinking" had revealed last month the former PM would welcome a personal telephone call from Sunak to ask for his help campaigning in the general election.

While undoubtedly a divisive figure nationally, Johnson still retains widespread support among the Tory grassroots and those who voted for the party for the first time in 2019. In a focus group reported by The Telegraph in the red wall seat of Wellingborough ahead of February's by-election, four out of seven participants pinpointed Johnson's departure and subsequent Tory infighting as the reason why they had given up on the party.

A look at the latest polls and the distribution of target seats shows that "the difference between losing the next election and annihilation lies in great measure in getting former Conservative voters to show up on election day", said Anne McElvoy on the i news site. In this Johnson could be decisive and would "probably make a difference", agreed one veteran Tory backbencher.

With Sunak failing to move the dial, some in the party are even "muttering about some sort of complex putsch" in which Johnson is reinstalled as leader before the election, said the Mail on Sunday in an editorial. This would most likely backfire, said the paper, but a "more sensible course of action which would tend to unite rather than split the Tories" would be for Sunak to "make full use of this powerful asset in the developing campaign".

Johnson has a "unique power to charm and captivate a national audience, and there is no point in Sunak or any other leading Conservative being envious of this", the Mail on Sunday added. But "given the many egos and fractured bromances in this story, the only way Johnson is likely to resurface is if he sees personal gain in doing so", said McElvoy.

What next?

While any involvement in the campaign is likely to start off informally – he could "visit marginal constituencies, make speeches and appear on leaflets", said The Times – there have been suggestions that Johnson could make a comeback as an MP before the election or be parachuted into a safe seat after.

HuffPost said that Johnson's hopes of a political comeback have been "dealt a major blow" by the Tory candidate in his former seat of Henley insisting in an LBC interview that she would not make way for him. 

But the "real field of play for Johnson", said McElvoy, "is the immediate period after the likely election rout". Then, a "rump party, with a bunch of ambitious contenders on the right, will assess the Reform Party's performance – and the possible appeal of a Farage-Johnson dream team", she said. 

In practice, this would most likely be a "fissile combination", but "something profound is likely to shift in the Conservative Party – and Johnson has always seen moments of instability as an opportunity".

ITV's new Covid drama "Breathtaking" is "breathtakingly good". 

That was Carol Midgley's assessment in The Times. She said "it's the best I have seen" from the lead actor, Joanne Froggatt, because "her performance as the consultant Abbey Henderson was more powerful for being restrained".

This is a "tour de force, exposing political complacency and reminding us how, despite all the clapping, NHS staff, many of whom died in the line of duty, are still taken for granted".

'Unparalleled attention to detail'

"Rarely does television feel so visceral," said Rachael Sigee on the i news site. "The attention to detail is unparalleled," she added, "from the scuffs on the walls to the red imprints of mask outlines on faces", and "that authenticity carries into the performances".

Sigee added a "big caveat", though. "It might be essential viewing but it is equally essential to do so with care. It may make you want to scream, but it's more likely you will watch in stunned silence."

As a polemic it is "powerful", said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. But it does at points become "so caught up in the fierceness of its message that it forgets the basics of hooking an audience".

Lucy Mangan, in The Guardian, had a similar take. "By the end, despite great performances from the whole cast, Breathtaking feels more like a cathartic rush for the writers, rather than something that deepens our understanding of what doctors and patients – and to some extent what we all – went through."

'Sad and authentic'

Ultimately, though, it is a "deeply sad and often triggering drama", said Sean O'Grady in The Independent. It is also a "highly authentic" one, based as it is on the book by Dr Rachel Clarke, who worked in hospitals during the pandemic.

"Without lapsing into heavy-handed propagandising, the drama has the voice of Boris Johnson in 'Mayor in Jaws' mode floating above the traumatic scenes, with the juxtaposition between lazy spin about 'sending the coronavirus packing', and the "frantic reality of people basically drowning, adding to the tragedy."

Boris Johnson has admitted that he should have "twigged much sooner" about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic as he began giving evidence to the Covid inquiry in London.

The former prime minister's appearance at the public inquiry had been the "most eagerly awaited moment so far", said The Guardian, with his evidence having implications for his own legacy as well as for the current PM Rishi Sunak.

Johnson opened with an apology, saying he was sorry for the "pain, loss and suffering" that occurred as he led Britain through the pandemic. 

But he was "quickly interrupted by the inquiry's chair", Lady Hallett, who ordered protesters in the gallery to sit down, said Politico. The protesters were being "quiet, but holding signs aimed at Johnson" and were removed after refusing to sit. As he tried to continue, somebody shouted "You're not sorry." 

Johnson said the government had done "our level best" and admitted things could have been done "differently". He later said he "took responsibility for all decisions made" during the pandemic, The Guardian reported, and admitted that "mixed messages" were given to the public by the various devolved governments. 

"Too many meetings were too male-dominated," he accepted, answering questions on previous claims from witnesses that there was an "institutional bias against women" in decision-making.

That led to questions about a "toxic culture" in 10 Downing Street that has "already been laid bare" in the inquiry, added The Guardian. Johnson did not fully concede that such a culture existed but said he would "make a distinction between the language used and the decision-making". The Blair and Thatcher governments also had "challenging and competing characters whose views about each other might not be fit to print", he said, but he argued that they got "an awful lot done".

Johnson also said that the former health secretary Matt Hancock may have had his "defects" but he was "doing his best in very difficult circumstances".

Boris Johnson will come under scrutiny for his government's response during the first year of the pandemic as he faces the Covid inquiry this week.

The former prime minister will give evidence on Wednesday and Thursday, ahead of an appearance by Rishi Sunak next week. 

Johnson is likely to face several "difficult" questions, including over his decision-making during the Covid-19 crisis and claims that he said he would rather "let the bodies pile high" than impose another lockdown, said The Mirror. 

And while the ex-leader "is expected to apologise" and acknowledge his government got things wrong during the pandemic, said the BBC, he will "also argue his government got many of the big calls right".

Scrutinising the 'early days'

There have been "repeated suggestions" Johnson did not fully appreciate the dangers when Covid began to spread rapidly at the start of 2020, said The Guardian. 

Scientists who sat on the government's scientific advisory group, Neil Ferguson and Graham Medley, both told the inquiry that by February 2020 they were "worried the NHS was going to be overwhelmed", said the BBC. But despite their fears, Johnson failed to hold an emergency Cobra meeting until the following month.

WhatsApp messages from Dominic Cummings – then Johnson's chief of staff – reveal that after the meeting, Johnson still didn't fully grasp the severity of the situation. Johnson "doesn't think it's a big deal", Cummings wrote in a message released by the  inquiry.

The former PM will "surely be asked about his response in those early days", said the BBC, including whether he should have "acted sooner".

Johnson will reject claims that he was distracted during the February 2020 half-term because he was writing his as-yet-unpublished book "Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius" at Chevening, the grace-and-favour mansion in Kent, said The Telegraph. He will cite diaries showing that he returned to No. 10 for meetings during this time.

But this defence, said the paper, "is sure to be scrutinised by the inquiry's legal team, which has at points expressed alarm at the lack of written proof of work on Covid during that period".

Questions on the 'bombshell' claims

The former PM has also repeatedly denied claims that he said he was willing to "let the bodies pile high" in the autumn of 2020. But the alleged outburst has been given "more credibility" after one of his "long-term allies" and former chief of staff Lord Udny-Lister told the inquiry that he heard Johnson make the statement in opposition to a third national lockdown, said The Guardian. Udny-Lister described it as "an unfortunate turn of phrase" used under intense pressure.

Johnson "will be asked under oath if he still denies making the remarks", said The Mirror. He'll also be questioned on other "bombshell" claims from the diaries of Patrick Vallance, the government's former chief scientific adviser, such as allegations that he argued Covid-19 is "just nature's way of dealing with old people".

One of the most "unexpected" claims to emerge from the inquiry is that Johnson allegedly asked scientists if people could kill Covid by blowing a hairdryer up their nose, after he watched a YouTube video, said The Mirror.

Vallance told the inquiry that Johnson was often "bamboozled" by graphs and added that watching him "get his head round stats is awful".

Boris Johnson struggled to get his head around Covid-19 data and scientific advice during the pandemic, the diaries of Patrick Vallance reveal. 

Testifying before the Covid inquiry, the government's former chief scientific adviser read out excerpts of what the i news site described as "one of the most important contemporaneous accounts of the crisis from an insider's perspective".

The prime minister is "clearly bamboozled", Vallance wrote in May 2020 after a meeting to discuss the Covid plan for schools across the UK. "Watching PM get his head around stats is awful," the scientist wrote the following month.

Other entries described how Johnson wondered out loud whether "we are licked as a species" ahead of plunging the country into another lockdown, and asked if graph curves were a "mirage". 

"Taken through the graphs but it was a real struggle to get him to understand them," said another excerpt.

Addressing the public hearing in London, Vallance qualified his diary extracts by saying the former PM would be "the first to admit" that scientific concepts were not his forte. Despite the "apparent frustration" exhibited in his diary, said The Telegraph, Vallance pointed out that Johnson was not the only world leader with a lack of scientific understanding.

But the former chief scientific adviser also argued that the government failed to act quickly enough during the early phases of the pandemic, when Johnson was said to have insisted that "my gut tells me this will be fine". 

And scientific advisors did not know about Rishi Sunak’s "Eat Out to Help Out" policy until it was announced, Vallance said.

His testimony, following a week's break in the inquiry, "marks the resumption of a round of politically explosive hearings", said The Independent. The public hearing in London has featured a string of officials embedded deep in the heart of government during the pandemic, including Dominic Cummings, Lee Cain and Helen MacNamara.

Johnson will appear before the inquiry in the next two weeks, while Sunak is set to give evidence before Christmas. Claims that the then chancellor said the pandemic was about "handling the scientists, not handling the virus", are expected to present difficulties for the now PM.

Boris Johnson's ex-wife Marina Wheeler is to become the Labour Party's new "whistleblowing tsar" for women.

Wheeler, a leading barrister, will advise Labour on its plans to strengthen protections for women against workplace harassment and abusive colleagues.  

Women who are bullied or sexually harassed in the workplace will be given "new protections as whistleblowers" under a Labour government, reported The Independent. 

Wheeler and Johnson were married for 25 years before separating in 2018, a year before he succeeded Theresa May as prime minister. 

The background

Workplace whistleblowers are "already protected from unfair dismissal", said the BBC, but the law "only applies in certain circumstances – such as when employers have committed criminal offences". 

Labour is planning to extend protections to "cover people who want to go public about unacceptable behaviour they have faced from bosses, something the party says disproportionately affects women".

In recent years, dozens of MPs have been accused of sexually harassing and bullying members of staff. Most recently, Conservative MP Peter Bone is facing a six-week suspension from the House of Commons after parliament's Independent Expert Panel found that he bullied and exposed himself to a staff member.

The move "also follows allegations of rape and sexual scandal against comedian Russell Brand", said The Independent, which "came to light after a number of women broke years of silence over the matter". Brand has denied the claims. 

The latest

In a speech to the Labour Party conference last week, shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry said that women suffering sexual harassment in the workplace face a "terrible choice: if she speaks out, the individual responsible may be investigated, but even then, she still risks losing her job and her other employment rights, while he gets a slap on the wrist.

"It is time we offered the same protections to people reporting sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination in the workplace as we do to other whistleblowers," she said. 

Speaking to The Independent, Wheeler said it was a “privilege" to help Labour protect women from abusive colleagues, and said many women experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace were forced to "suffer in silence" in order to "keep their jobs".

Wheeler highlighted a recent survey of NHS staff, which found that nearly two-thirds of women surgeons said they had been the target of sexual harassment and a third had been sexually assaulted by colleagues in the past five years.

"Having spent over two decades litigating employment disputes, I am delighted to be working with Emily Thornberry to help formulate solutions – including law reform where necessary – to encourage women to come forward," she added.

The reaction

The "irony" of Wheeler's new job has "not been lost on seasoned Westminster watchers", said Caroline Wheeler in The Sunday Times. "Johnson, who has himself faced accusations of sexual harassment – which Downing Street denied – saw his political career implode last year when he was accused of covering up for the alleged sexual misconduct of one of his ministers."

Chris Pincher, who served as Johnson's deputy chief whip, resigned his seat as an MP in September after losing his appeal against a proposed Commons suspension for drunkenly groping two men.

While Wheeler told the paper she has "no political allegiance", her appointment has nevertheless been viewed "as a coup for Sir Keir Starmer". 

Wheeler is also the "second high-profile woman from outside party politics" who will now advise Labour, said the Daily Mirror. Former senior civil servant Sue Gray, "whose report into lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street during Johnson's tenure contributed to his downfall", started work as Labour's chief of staff over the summer.

The first public hearings in the long-awaited Covid inquiry finally began this morning with a film featuring testimonies from bereaved families followed by opening statements.

This first stage of the inquiry, which officially opened last year under retired judge Baroness Hallett, examines the UK’s resilience and preparedness before the pandemic. In all the inquiry, which will cost more than £100 million, will be split into six modules, according to the Evening Standard, “with public hearings scheduled to conclude by summer 2026, and interim reports published before then”.

“Whereas most inquiries deal with a single incident or organisation,” said The Economist, “this one will anatomise almost the entire British state, from the prime minister’s office downwards.”

“In complexity, political sensitivity and the number of British victims, only the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war comes close,” added the newspaper.

What do the papers say?

The Daily Mirror’s front page went in hard on the current psychodrama gripping the Tory party. “As our PM and ex-PM bicker like toddlers, the grieving families of 227,000 decent ordinary Brits wait to finally learn the truth about No10’s handling of the pandemic,” it said.

But with the government continuing to play hardball over the release of private messages between ministers during the pandemic, some question whether the full truth will ever come to light.

The first module, on the “resilience and preparedness” of the UK, is “arguably the most important of all the many different topics the Inquiry will cover, as it will hopefully allow us to better prepare for the next one,” said The Telegraph. This incudes whether the risk of a coronavirus pandemic was properly identified and planned for and if the lessons from earlier cases at home and abroad were properly considered and acted on.

Among the other key questions people want answered, said the BBC’s health correspondent Nick Triggle, are: how can we better protect people when there is another pandemic; how did the UK get to have such complex and confusing rules; how can we support children to recover and avoid such harm in future pandemics; how do we avoid lockdowns in future pandemics; and how should the system be changed to work out the trade-offs of the decisions we make?

“Inquiries seek to do three things,” said The Economist: “establish the facts; bring a sense of resolution to victims; and help to prevent a repeat. With covid, all these look extraordinarily hard.”

“The problem of judging the judges is hard,” agreed The Times, referencing the fact that many of the usual scientific experts expected to be called to assess the government’s response were themselves employed as government advisers or in Covid modelling groups. “The problem of judging the evidence is harder still. It is nothing compared to the problem of collecting it – of collating a national experience,” concluded the paper.

What next?

Evidence this week will focus on how prepared the UK was for Covid-19 but tensions are already running high between the inquiry and those whose loved ones died in the pandemic. None of the 20 potential witnesses put forward by campaign group Covid Bereaved Families for Justice has been called to give evidence, with lawyers representing them set to speak in their stead.

Next week former PM David Cameron, ex-chancellor George Osborne and former health secretary now chancellor Jeremy Hunt are expected to be called, “effectively putting the Tory policy of austerity on trial”, said the i news site.

In assessing the impact of the coalition government’s spending squeeze on areas such as the NHS and social care, “the Conservative party’s economic policies since 2010 will be placed in the dock as much as its health policies”, argued the paper’s chief political commentator Paul Waugh.

Yet attention is already turning to the module 2 hearings scheduled for the autumn on “Core UK decision-making and political governance”. This will focus on the decisions of the prime minister at the time, Boris Johnson, and his inner circle, including the current PM Rishi Sunak, between January 2020 when Covid first emerged and March 2020 when the first lockdown was imposed.

Requests for evidence have been sent to 450 politicians, officials and scientists. This highlights “the scope and width” of the inquiry compared to commissions in other countries that have already finished their reports, Hugo Keith KC, the chief counsel to the inquiry described by The Guardian as its “chief inquisitor”, said.

“That much is true,” said The Economist. “It will be the inquiry’s great virtue. And its great weakness.”

Boris Johnson sent shockwaves through the United Kingdom on Friday when he announced that he was stepping down as a member of Parliament. His exit triggers a by-election for his West London seat in the House of Commons, and ends the political reign of one of Britain's most controversial politicians.

Johnson announced his resignation ahead of the expected release of an ethics investigation looking into his behavior as prime minister. In a lengthy statement detailing his departure, Johnson, who was ousted as prime minister less than a year ago, said the investigation was determined to "drive me out of Parliament," claiming the probe has "not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons."

The investigation, helmed by a parliamentary committee, examined the so-called "Partygate" scandal that enveloped Johnson. The scandal alleges that Johnson lied to lawmakers about hosting parties at 10 Downing Street during the COVID-19 lockdown, despite stay-at-home orders being enforced across London at the time. While the committee hasn't released its actual report yet, it would likely "recommend a suspension from the Commons" for Johnson, Politico reported.

Johnson said that he had decided to step down after receiving a preview of the committee's findings, though he did not elaborate on any details.

"They know perfectly well that when I spoke in the Commons I was saying what I believed sincerely to be true and what I had been briefed to say, like any other minister," Johnson's statement added. He further claimed to have "corrected the record as soon as possible," writing that "I and every other senior official and minister — including the current Prime Minister and then occupant of the same building, Rishi Sunak — believed that we were working lawfully together."

Johnson added that the investigation was "the very definition of a kangaroo court."

The Conservative Party faced another raft of damaging headlines this week amid fresh scandals involving senior members of the party.

Critics called for Home Secretary Suella Braverman to be sacked following reports that she asked civil servants to help her avoid a speeding fine by arranging a private speed-awareness course. The allegations, dating from her time as attorney general, raised questions about whether she violated the ministerial code, but Rishi Sunak ruled out an investigation following discussions with his ethics adviser.

In a further row involving the Tories, Boris Johnson was referred to police over new allegations that he breached lockdown rules. The Cabinet Office referred the former prime minister after his diary allegedly revealed visits by friends to Chequers during the pandemic. Johnson insisted the claims of further lockdown breaches were “totally untrue”.

There was more drama yesterday, when a car drove into security gates at Downing Street. Metropolitan Police officers arrested a man on suspicion of criminal damage and dangerous driving, but the force said the incident was not terror related.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

1. A US zoo apologised to which country over the mistreatment of a bird?

• South Africa
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Brazil

2. Which singer-songwriter got an on-stage spooky surprise when a keyboard began playing by itself during a gig?

• Beyoncé
• Adele
• Taylor Swift
• John Mayer

3. The EU this week formally asked which country to investigate allegations that it is abandoning migrants at sea?

• Hungary
• Greece
• Italy
• Poland

4. An EU spat has broken out over Ireland’s plans to label which product with detailed health warnings?

• Junk food
• Alcoholic drinks
• Fizzy drinks
• E-cigarette vapes

5. What percentage of 16- to 18-year-olds believe the world is “likely” to end in their lifetimes because of climate change, according to a newly published poll?

• 5%
• 24%
• 45%
• 53%

6. Ron deSantis announced his 2024 presidential bid on which social media platform?

• TikTok
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram

7. Which major US city is sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers?

• Chicago
• San Francisco
• Houston
• New York

8. Former New Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell has called for the introduction of primary school lessons in what?

• Arguing
• Boxing
• DIY
• Personal finance

9. Michael van Gerwen has made Premier League Darts history by winning the tournament how many times?

• Four
• Six
• Seven
• Nine

10. Which royal made a surprise visit to this week’s Chelsea Flower Show?

• Anne, Princess Royal
• The Duke of York, Prince Andrew
• The Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton
• The Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle

1. New Zealand

Viral footage showed visitors at Florida’s Zoo Miami patting a kiwi, a nocturnal bird, under bright lights during a $25 “Kiwi Encounter” experience. The zoo apologised for having “offended a nation” following an outcry in New Zealand, where kiwis are a treasured national icon.

2. Taylor Swift

The chart-topper was visibly shaken when her keyboard began playing notes by itself during the Era Tour show in Massachusetts. Swift subsequently explained that the seemingly possessed instrument had malfunctioned after being damaged by rain during a previous concert.

3. Greece

Recently revealed video footage captured on the Greek island of Lesbos appears to show 12 African migrants, including a baby, being towed out to sea and abandoned on an inflatable raft. Amid growing concern over illegal pushbacks of asylum seekers, the EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, said her officials had written to Athens with a formal request “that this incident be fully and independently investigated”.

4. Alcoholic drinks

Ireland will be the first country in the world to mandate labels on alcoholic drinks warning of the risks of cancer and liver disease and of drinking in pregnancy, and listing calorie content and grams of alcohol. EU members including France, Italy and Spain have asked the European Commission to investigate whether the move would contravene EU law. Find out more with The Week Unwrapped podcast.

5. 53%

Of more than 1,000 sixth-form pupils surveyed by think-tank Civitas, 26% also said that climate change had made their anxiety or sadness worse. And half said that people should have fewer children in order to tackle climate change and overpopulation.

6. Twitter

Florida Governor DeSantis is the first major candidate ever to announce their run for president on social media, during a chat with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces on Wednesday. But the campaign launch was marred by technical glitches and audio problems, as the social network’s servers struggled to cope with the surge in demand.

7. New York

According to a new study by the US Geological Survey (USGS), New York is sinking by 1-2mm per year, in part owing to the enormous weight of the city’s buildings, which total an estimated 771 million tonnes. The researchers also blamed other phenomena including groundwater withdrawal and shifting tectonic plates.

8. Arguing

Addressing an audience at the Hay Festival in Wales, Campbell said: “I think we should teach our kids to be interested in and engaged in politics.” The strategist and journalist added that rather than “call it politics”, such lessons could be called “arguing”, “policy” or “big issues”.

9. Seven

The Dutch star beat Gerwyn Price 11-5 to win the Premier League Darts final at London’s 02 Arena on Thursday. Van Gerwen takes the titles record from six-times winner Phil Taylor.

10. The Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton

The Princess of Wales joined the Chelsea Flower Show’s first ever children’s picnic, part of a campaign by organiser Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) to boost school gardening. The annual show also featured exhibitions paying tribute to Queen Elizabeth II.

A flight from Houston to Atlanta was delayed for three hours because thousands of bees swarmed on the wing of the airplane. “My flight leaving Houston is delayed because bees have congregated on the tip of one of the wings,” tweeted a passenger. Speaking to CBS News, an airline spokesperson said: “Bee-lieve it or not, Delta flight 1682 from Houston-Bush to Atlanta took a delay this afternoon after a friendly group of bees evidently wanted to talk shop with the winglet of our airplanes, no doubt to share the latest about flying conditions at the airport.”

Police officers in Scotland ordered to shave

Police Scotland is planning to introduce a new clean-shaven policy for frontline officers, according to the BBC. It means “hundreds of officers will have to shave off their beards and moustaches by the end of the month”, said the broadcaster. The Scottish Police Federation, which represents police officers, said there had been multiple complaints about the policy, with four officers understood to be taking legal action.

Hancock paid £10,000 for interview

Matt Hancock was paid £10,000 for a television appearance in which he claimed he did not “primarily” go on a reality television show for the money. The former health secretary declared the fee from ITV for an interview on Good Morning Britain in the latest register of members’ financial interests. Earlier this year, Hancock was condemned by constituents and politicians for entering the Australian jungle for I’m A Celebrity.

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Boris Johnson’s political future hangs in the balance after the former prime minister endured a three-hour grilling by MPs about the Partygate scandal.

Appearing before the cross-party privileges committee on Wednesday, Johnson said that “hand on heart, I did not lie to the House” about gatherings in Downing Street during Covid lockdowns that he insisted were “essential work events”. But the embattled ex-PM struggled to maintain his composure as he was quizzed by MPs including committee chair Harriet Harman, who accused Johnson of having relied on “flimsy” assurances from No. 10 officials that no rules were being broken.

If the committee concludes that the Tory’s former leader “intentionally or recklessly” misled Parliament, the resulting penalties could trigger a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency – potentially scuppering his chances of a return to power.

This week marked three years since the then prime minister addressed the country to announce the first national lockdown as Britain battled to stop the spread of Covid-19.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week

1. Which film star is on trial in Utah over a “hit and run” skiing accident?

• Natalie Portman
• Salma Hayek
• Gwyneth Paltrow
• Michelle Pfeiffer

2. Which country has been named the world’s happiest, for the sixth consecutive year?

• Finland
• Iceland
• Sweden
• Norway

3. Which animal is to be reintroduced to west London for the first time in 400 years?

• Tundra vole
• Pine marten
• Beavers
• Wild boar

4. New research suggests babies born in the wealthiest parts of London can expect to live for how much longer than those born in Glasgow?

• 4.5 years
• 6 years
• 9 years
• 12 years

5. Which Jilly Cooper novel is being turned into a Disney+ adaptation starring David Tennant and Danny Dyer?

• Rivals
• Riders
• Polo
• Mount!

6. What percentage of Brits suffer from a psychological condition known as misophonia, according to a new study?

• 5%
• 12%
• 15%
• 18%

7. Which sports governing body has banned transgender women from elite female competitions?

• International Tennis Federation
• World Athletics Council
• Fifa (International Federation of Association Football)
• World Professional Boxing Federation

8. How many times will media mogul Rupert Murdoch have been wed following his upcoming marriage to US radio personality Ann Lesley Smith?

• Two
• Three
• Five
• Six

9. Newly unearthed documents suggest a slave trafficked to Italy was the mother of which famous Renaissance figure?

• Galileo Galilei
• Niccolò Machiavelli
• Michelangelo
• Leonardo da Vinci

10. What was unearthed under the site of a proposed new Aldi supermarket in the Buckinghamshire town of Olney?

• Medieval coin haul
• Great Plague burial pit
• Roman mosaic
• Remains of Ice Age mammoth

1. Gwyneth Paltrow

The Oscar-winning actor is being sued by a man seeking $300,000 in compensation for injuries allegedly sustained when she crashed into him on a Utah ski slope in 2016. Paltrow claims retired optometrist Terry Sanderson collided with her and is countersuing for “a symbolic” $1 in damages.

2. Finland

Finland, Denmark and Iceland ranked highest in the UN’s World Happiness Report, based on data from the Gallup World Poll. Britain dropped two places to 19th in the index, while Lebanon and Afghanistan were named as the unhappiest nations.

3. Beavers

Eurasian beavers were hunted to extinction in Britain in the 16th century, but a breeding pair will be reintroduced to wetlands in Ealing this summer in a bid to help tackle climate change by promoting a biodiverse ecosystem.

4. 12 years

Glasgow has an average life expectancy of 76 years, compared with 88 in north London’s Hampstead area, according to an analysis of ONS data by Health Equals. The campaign group blamed “startling” regional disparities on substandard housing, poor education and poverty. Find out more with The Week Unwrapped podcast.

5. Rivals

The newly announced cast of the upcoming eight-part series – set in the cut-throat world of independent television in 1980s England – also includes Aidan Turner, Claire Rushbrook, Oliver Chris and Emily Atack.

6. 18%

Sounds such as chewing, sniffing and loud breathing are intolerable for one in five Brits, the study found. Researchers from King’s College London and Oxford University quizzed more than 770 people to determine how many had a fight-or-flight response to such everyday noises.

7. World Athletics Council

The ban, which comes into effect on 31 March, applies to transgender women who have undergone male puberty. The governing body’s president, Seb Coe, said the controversial decision had been taken to “protect the future of the female category”.

8. Five

The 92-year-old billionaire met Smith, 66, at his at his Bel Air vineyard last September, less than a year after his divorce from fourth wife Jerry Hall was finalised.

9. Leonardo da Vinci

Carlo Vecce, a professor from Naples, discovered documents in the archives of Florence which show that shortly after the artist’s birth, his father freed a slave called Caterina – widely agreed to be the name of Da Vinci’s mother but about whom little else is known.

10. Roman mosaic

“You’ll be surprised at what you can get at Aldi,” said The Times, which listed “groceries, power drills, inflatables, sewing machines” and a “Roman mosaic”. The “archaeologically significant” discovery points to the existence of a high-status Roman house, or domus.

Months of recriminations over Britain's "partygate" controversy crescendoed this week with a hearing before the House of Commons' powerful privileges committee in which former Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended his actions during the scandal, one of several that contributed to his exit from the job under pressure last year. Johnson, his political future on the line, said during the three-hour hearing that he acted in "good faith" and never intentionally misled Parliament when he said as news of the scandal broke that no illegal gatherings had taken place at his Downing Street offices. "Hand on heart," he said. "I did not lie to the House."

Johnson started out defiantly, saying the effort to hold him in contempt of Parliament was "manifestly unfair" because lawmakers have found no evidence he was warned in advance anything illegal was happening at No. 10 Downing Street. He said a photo of him surrounded by colleagues with drinks showed that "perfect social distancing" wasn't observed, but argued that gathering was essential for work. He said if it was "obvious" that people were breaking lockdown rules, as critics in Parliament have argued, other top officials in his government including current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would have known what was going on, too. Sunak was Johnson's chief financial minister, and his resignation last July set Johnson's downfall in motion.

The proceedings took a turn for the worse for Johnson when members of his own Conservative Party started grilling him. Conservative MP Alberto Costa said Johnson should have relied on senior civil servants to make sure everything in his office was being done by the book, instead of hiding behind the advice of aides as a "deflection mechanism." Committee Chair Harriet Harman of the opposition Labor Party said Johnson's effort to defend himself was "flimsy." The Scottish National Party's deputy leader in the House of Commons, Mhairi Black, said Johnson's "absurd claims were exposed as not remotely credible" under interrogation. "Most people watching will conclude it's now beyond doubt that the Tory former prime minister not only broke the law but also deliberately misled Parliament," she said.

'Nothing lasts forever'

"Boris Johnson's political career ended" before our very eyes just now, said Tanya Gold in Politico, "with stuttering and fake politesse." Johnson's "famous bonhomie" has gotten him out of pickles all his life, but it failed him when he needed it most. Johnson needed a serious defense "against the charge that he repeatedly lied to parliament when he said guidance was followed in No. 10." Instead all he could muster was "distraction," smokescreens, and "sentences that tripped along ring roads, going nowhere." He gave the committee no reason not to rule against him, which could cost him his seat. Oh, well. "Nothing lasts forever."

Conservatives and rightwing journalists had hoped it was going to "be the day Johnson launched his recapture of the Tory party from Rishi Sunak," said Martin Kettle in The Guardian. But his allies, and even his enemies, made a fatal error by assuming that the members of the Commons privileges committee "would be partisan pushovers. "Instead, the MPs calmly and devastatingly sliced and diced Johnson and the evidence about Downing Street COVID gatherings he has given this week." But Johnson's disastrous day was a gift to Sunak, who only got the job because his predecessor, Liz Truss, imploded so quickly. "Sunak has no reason to fear Johnson" anymore.

Johnson's political obituary is premature

This could indeed cost Johnson his seat in Parliament, in theory, said Martin Ivens in Bloomberg. "If MPs vote to suspend him for 10 days or more," voters in his constituency "will be entitled to hold a recall petition to trigger a by-election. If he's defeated, that would normally scupper any thought of a political comeback. That's a lot of 'ifs.'" The "smart money" is on a penalty of less than 10 days, with "Johnson getting off with a groveling apology." Tory MPs on the committee that will decide his fate reportedly "dread the so-called 'nuclear option'" of longer time-out. "It would be quite a first to engineer the expulsion from parliament of a former prime minister — one from their own party no less." And "Johnson's vengeful supporters" might respond by trying to oust his Tory critics in their next elections.

Johnson still has supporters who are "undeniably loyal," even among people who aren't buying his "partygate" excuses, said Paul Waugh in the i. A new poll of Tory members by the ConservativeHome website found that most members of his party "think he broke lockdown rules, that he didn't deliberately mislead Parliament and that he should remain as an MP. But most really aren't keen on his return as party leader." After the drubbing he has taken, he has the "deep" support he needs to stay alive politically, but it's too "narrow" to put him back in power.

Fiona Bruce has been “hung out to dry” by BBC bosses after she was accused of trivialising domestic abuse during a discussion about Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley, on Question Time last week.

That is according to friends of the presenter and long-time women’s rights campaigner, who told The Telegraph that BBC producers had provided her with lines to defend the corporation from potentially defamatory allegations should the topic of domestic violence come up on the show.

The paper reported that Bruce is “devastated” by the online reaction to her comments and has quit her role as an ambassador for the domestic violence charity Refuge. Her allies have called upon the BBC to “better support its talent”.

What was said?

In a debate on Thursday’s Question Time about reports that the former prime minister had put his father, Stanley Johnson, forward for a knighthood, journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said the 82-year-old’s alleged history of violence was “on record” and that he was a “wife beater”.

At this point Bruce, the Question Time host, interjected saying: “I’m not disputing what you’re saying, but just so everyone knows what this is referring to, Stanley Johnson’s wife spoke to a journalist, Tom Bower, and she said that Stanley Johnson had broken her nose and that she’d ended up in hospital as a result.

“Stanley Johnson has not commented publicly on that. Friends of his have said it did happen but it was a one-off.”

It was this reference to it being a “one-off” that appears to have created the uproar.

What has the reaction been?

While the presenter of the BBC show has “faced a social media backlash”, said the Independent, she has been backed by a number of high-profile figures.

This includes Alibhai-Brown, whose initial comments sparked the outcry. Writing for i news, she said Bruce, who “has been championing the rights of victimised females for over 25 years… doesn’t deserve this”.

Saying she understood why she had interjected, Alibhai-Brown said Bruce “was legally obliged to put out that clarification” and “did what she had to do”.

Speaking on Tuesday’s edition of Good Morning Britain, presenters Susanna Reid and Ed Balls described the row as “outrageous”, said HuffPost. Balls said it was a host’s “responsibility” to offer the other side of an argument but “you get these pile-ons on social media where people assume that if we say that, that’s what we believe”. He argued that Bruce was not saying what she believed but simply what the other side in the argument had said.

What are the consequences for Bruce?

In a statement given to the PA news agency, Bruce said that she was “required to legally contextualise” a response about Johnson and the words were not an expression of her own opinions and she would never minimise domestic abuse.

However, following the backlash to her comments, which provoked in her words a “social media storm”, she announced she was stepping back as an ambassador of domestic abuse charity Refuge.

In a statement, the charity said: “Refuge’s position was, and remains, clear: domestic abuse is never a ‘one off’, it is a pattern of behaviour that can manifest in a number of ways, including but not limited to physical abuse. Domestic abuse is never acceptable.

“These words minimised the seriousness of domestic abuse and this has been retraumatising for survivors. Survivors of domestic abuse are, and will always be, Refuge’s priority. Our focus must remain on them.”

The public response compounded a nightmare week for the BBC, which was already dealing with the furore over Gary Lineker’s comments on the government’s illegal migration bill and reports that the corporation had bowed to right-wing pressure not to air a documentary narrated by David Attenborough that allegedly criticised the government’s environment policies.

There is, however, no suggestion that Bruce could be asked to stand down from her role presenting Question Time.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Britain to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine to prevent the “stagnation“ of his country’s war against Russia.

Addressing the UK Parliament after a meeting with Rishi Sunak yesterday, the Ukrainian president said that jets provided by the West could “give us wings for freedom”.

Sunak subsequently told a press conference that “nothing is off the table”. But while the prime minister is under pressure to offer further military aid following Zelenskyy’s surprise trip to London, questions are also being asked about whether Britain has jets to give.

‘Nothing to be lost’

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine “will help define the 21st century”, said Tory MP Bob Seely in an article for the Daily Mail, and Britain “must” send jets to the invaded nation. Citing his experience “serving in the UK’s past four major military campaigns”, Seely argued that “the least dangerous course of action is to give the Ukrainians ‘the tools to finish the job’ – as Winston Churchill put it to President Roosevelt in a similar context”.

The Sun also called on Sunak’s government to “give this heroic nation the jets that it needs – now”. To defeat Russia, Zelenskyy “needs a hell of a lot more than his warm welcome from our King and MPs”, said the paper.

The Times made a similar case. The UK and its Nato partners have “drawn the line” at sending aircraft to Ukraine so far, said the paper’s editorial board, but Zelenskyy’s “powerful case for the help his country needs” should prompt its allies “into giving Ukraine the fighter jets needed to survive”.

Boris Johnson has weighed in too. In a tweet following Zelenskyy’s speech, the former prime minister insisted that “there is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by sending planes now”.

‘Decades of cuts’

Some UK government members “remain sceptical about the idea” of providing Ukraine with air power, according to the i news site. An unnamed cabinet minister reportedly warned that “we haven’t got any f***ing jets to give”.

Sunak should “perhaps have a look at exactly what is on his table” before making any promises, wrote Sky News’s security and defence editor Deborah Haynes. “Here is a clue: it isn't much.” Following “decades of cuts” to the UK Armed Forces, she continued, the Royal Air Force is “a runt of its former self, with far too few planes, pilots and instructors to teach new talent”.

The Telegraph also warned that “from treaty permissions to long training times”, Sunak “will have a tough job getting Zelenskyy’s men in the air on British planes”. The RAF’s “dwindling fleet” of Typhoon jets “won’t be going anywhere fast”, the paper’s associate editor Dominic Nicholls explained, because they are made in collaboration with three other countries – Spain, Italy and Germany – and they would all “need to give permission to donate the aircraft”.

Even then, the jets are only for air-to-air defence, rather than the ground-attack role that Kyiv would require. “It is possible to convert them but it would take months,” said Nicholls, and that is “another reason they will not be sent to Ukraine”.

Kim Sengupta, world affairs editor at The Independent, suggested that instead, Ukrainian fighter pilots might undergo training courses with the RAF before being sent out to battle in American F-16s.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has said there would be no immediate transfer of UK fighter jets. He told the BBC that it was “not a simple case of towing an aircraft to the border” and that it was more “realistic” to expect the UK to provide aircraft in the long-term to help with security after the war.

“Britain knows what Ukraine needs and is very happy to help in many ways trying to achieve the effect. Those same effects can be done, but potentially through a different way - and without taking months, which of course gifting fighter jets would take,” he said.

Local performer Robert Burck, known as the Naked Cowboy, plays in Times Square amid the snow in New York. The northeast of the US was “walloped by a fierce winter storm”, which dropped more than 2ft of snow on some areas “while packing high winds”, said Reuters.

After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, images of “tearful goodbyes” began to emerge as women and children were forced to flee the country by train, leaving their husbands and fathers behind to fight in the war, said ITV News. “The unfolding crisis has torn families apart.”

Anoosheh Ashoori and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe finally arrive back in the UK. Six years after she was first detained in Iran, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “reunited with her family, hugging and kissing her seven-year-old daughter in emotional scenes at RAF Brize Norton”, said The Guardian.

Amber Heard appears at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Virginia. Millions watched the actor’s “blockbuster” libel battle with her ex-husband Johnny Depp, which represented “the most high-profile airing of Hollywood’s dirty laundry in years”, said The Sunday Times.

A Ukrainian police officer stands inside a school gymnasium in the village of Vilkhivka near Kharkiv after it was retaken from Russian forces. For the West, Vladimir Putin’s invasion has become the “biggest test of its power and integrity in the 77 years since Nazi Germany surrendered”, said Foreign Policy.

At the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, four-year-old Prince Louis “delighted crowds” and stole the show, said Harper’s Bazaar. “In scenes that will have no doubt drawn a knowing smile from parents everywhere”, the young royal was “seen pulling a series of faces and refusing to co-operate for his mother”.

Boris Johnson announces his resignation outside 10 Downing Street on 7 July. After a turbulent term in office, he ended his speech amid clapping and cheering with the words “Hasta la vista, baby”.

China’s army and navy conduct a military drill in Zhangzhou City, Fujian province. The “massive intimidation effort” came after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the disputed island of Taiwan, said the South China Morning Post. As the largest display of force since 2016, it “established a new baseline that could see China’s military respond ever more aggressively to future perceived transgression”, said the paper.

The newly crowned King Charles III and members of the royal family follow behind the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II after her state funeral at Westminster Abbey. The death of the monarch, aged 96, at Balmoral Castle triggered a ten-day mourning period.

Just seven weeks after Liz Truss was named prime minister, she was out of Downing Street and replaced by former chancellor Rishi Sunak. With five prime ministers in just over six years, Britain has seen “the fastest turnover in new occupants of 10 Downing Street for nearly a century”, said The Independent.

A woman at the World Cup match between Wales and Iran holds up a football shirt with the name Mahsa Amini, a reference to the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman whose death sparked months of protests in Iran. Amini was arrested by morality police, who accused her of breaching their strict dress codes.

Mauna Loa, the planet’s largest active volcano, “stirred to life for the first time in nearly 40 years”, said Discover magazine. “Dramatic imagery” of the Hawaiian volcano’s “breathtaking” eruption showed lava fountains “as high as 13-story buildings” and rivers of molten rock flowing down the mountainside.

Covid largely disappeared from Britain’s front pages in 2022 – but the pandemic headlines were swiftly replaced by the cost-of-living crisis, Ukraine war and merry-go-round at No. 10.

Newspapers grappled with the death of the Queen, in the year of her Platinum Jubilee, and the dawn of the Carolean era. Column inches were dedicated to record-breaking temperatures and a spate of strikes, with revelations about royals and global tech firms in between.

Here are some of the most memorable front pages of the year.

‘Barbaric’

In March, several papers dedicated their covers to a picture of a pregnant woman being evacuated on a stretcher after a Russian missile strike on a hospital in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

It “has become one of the defining images of human suffering in the war” and a “grim symbol of how Russia’s campaign in Ukraine was increasingly targeting civilians”, said The New York Times. Four days later, AP reported that the woman and her baby had died.

Boris raises a toast

Partygate continued to dominate newspaper headlines in the first half of the year. In May, ITV News pipped Whitehall investigator Sue Gray to the post by releasing images of one of the Downing Street parties during lockdown.

One picture, showing Boris Johnson raising a glass during leaving drinks for his former director of communications, was featured across the papers the following day. The Telegraph said the photos put pressure on Scotland Yard to explain why the prime minister had not faced more than one fine for partying during lockdown.

Pincher resigns

Just a few days into her new job as The Sun’s political reporter, Noa Hoffman was behind a splash that revealed Tory MP Chris Pincher had quit as deputy chief whip amid allegations that he groped two men while drunk.

Media trade magazine Press Gazette named it one of the “scoops that brought down the Prime Minister”, as it received “widespread praise” for its role in “triggering” events that led to Johnson’s resignation.

Burning Britain

“Burning hot Britain”, declared Metro in July, as temperatures hit a record high of 40.3 degrees Celsius. Fires were pictured on front pages as flames ravaged through homes and buildings.

Many papers carried a quote from West Yorkshire’s deputy chief fire officer Dave Walton, who called it a “wake-up call” for the impact of climate change on heatwaves.

The Bin Laden donation

In a scoop for The Sunday Times, Gabriel Pogrund and Charles Keidan revealed that the then Prince Charles accepted a £1m payment from Osama bin Laden’s family. Clarence House said the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund (PWCF) received the donation after “thorough due diligence” and the decision was taken by the trustees.

“No rule has been broken, no law has been broken,” said BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond. But “did Prince Charles or his inner circle really think it was a good idea to take money from the Bin Ladens?” Once it became public, “however many checks were made and rules were followed – it was always going to look horrible”.

The Uber files

The Guardian published its global investigation into 124,000 leaked documents from Uber over the summer. The mammoth exposé, in which 180 journalists across 40 media organisations trawled through data spanning 40 countries from 2013 to 2017, claimed the tech company had “flouted the law, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments across the world”.

Uber said it would not “make excuses for past behaviour that is clearly not in line with our present values”, but asked the public to judge it on what it had done in the years after 2017 and “what we will do in the years to come”.

Death of the Queen

As the nation woke up to its first day following the Queen’s death, newspapers in Britain and across the world “published historic editions to commemorate her 70-year reign”, said The Spectator.

“How to find the words? Our grief is a hundred emotions, all of them hard to grasp,” wrote columnist Sarah Vine on the front page of the Daily Mail.

‘Lettuce rejoice’

The Economist’s unfavourable comparison of Liz Truss’s shelf-life to that of a lettuce inspired the Daily Star to launch a livestream of an iceberg lettuce next to a framed photograph of the prime minister – to see which would last the longest.

The stunt hit headlines across the globe, with The Washington Post explaining to baffled US readers that the PM had become the “butt of quintessentially British jokes”. In the end, Truss’s Downing Street stint expired faster than the well-watched veg and the Daily Star celebrated with a front page declaring the lettuce “victorious”.

A lost decade

The cost-of-living crisis was high on the news agenda as inflation soared and disposable incomes fell. The i splashed with “UK’s lost decade” following Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement in November.

The chancellor admitted he would have to take “difficult decisions” on areas such as tax and public spending to ensure stability and growth. The paper said the country had seen the “biggest drop in living standards on record… sending British earnings back to 2013”. Britain is paying the price for “Putin’s war in Ukraine, the pandemic, Brexit policies and Liz Truss’s damage to market confidence”, it said.

Boris Johnson has told the Cop27 summit that now is “not the moment to abandon the campaign for net zero”.

Speaking at an event hosted by The New York Times, the former UK prime minister said “it is incredible to think” how much “damage has been done in just one year to our great common purpose of tackling man-made climate change”.

Johnson ridiculed people who want to “frack the hell out of the British countryside”, which, observed Sky News, “some might say is a criticism of Liz Truss” who had proposed a resumption of fracking. In a headline-grabbing address, he even alluded to his own recent woes by joking that the summer heatwaves had contributed to the “political turmoil”, when he was evicted from Downing Street.

Johnson’s speech came as more than 40,000 attendees descended on the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, for the 27th round of global climate talks.

What’s on the agenda for Cop27?

The summit has made a delayed start, due to “extremely challenging” negotiations over what should be discussed, Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at the non-profit Climate Action Network International, told Reuters.

Eventually the UN said the crucial goals of the summit are to “review the implementation of the convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement”, and “adopt decisions to further develop and implement these three instruments”.

Structurally, the first two days are dedicated to the world leaders’ summit and there are also theme days to come, including finance, biodiversity and decarbonisation.

As the conference is being hosted in an African country, “issues that are of particular importance to the continent, such as adaptation to climate change and climate finance, are expected to be a priority”, said The New Statesman.

Will it be a success?

Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, has described the summit as the world’s “first opportunity in this new era of implementation to demonstrate progress”.

However, the talks will be “more fragile than ever after year of turmoil”, said The Guardian’s environment editor, Fiona Harvey. The war in Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis and the fact that the world’s two biggest emitters, China and the US, are “now at loggerheads”, makes progress harder than ever.

Indeed, said Politico, the “inconvenient truth” is that “climate change won't be solved in this desert” because “events elsewhere in the world are pushing in the opposite direction”.

The events “spoiling the vibe before the event has started” include “soaring energy costs and Russia’s war in Ukraine”, with the resultant “renewed push” to produce fossil fuels, as well as “the rise of far-right politicians who oppose taking action on global warming”.

Nevertheless, the organisers are determined not to let these issues get in the way. “We have to try to isolate these geopolitical tensions, disagreements, and focus on how do we move forward together,” said Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister who will chair Cop27, “because we can’t move forward independently – we won’t be successful”.

The success or failure of Cop27 is “likely to depend on getting wealthy countries to deliver on reparations”, said CNBC. Reparations, sometimes referred to as “loss and damage” payments, are “likely to dominate proceedings”, said the broadcaster. Diplomats from more than 130 countries are “expected to push for the creation of a dedicated loss and damage finance facility”.

Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives are among the nations pressing for compensation from richer countries responsible for most of the world’s pollution. Disagreements over reparations “threatened to derail the success of last year’s climate talks in Glasgow”, said The Telegraph.

Was Cop26 a success?

A “deal of sorts was hammered out” at the Cop26 talks in Glasgow last November, said The Times. This, “on paper at least, kept the 1.5 degree goal on track”.

“Yet already it’s as if Cop26 belonged to a different age. The fight against climate change has been overshadowed by war, soaring energy prices and a global cost of living crisis,” said the paper.

Last month, the UN warned in a new report that the world is “nowhere near” hitting its targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

It said that under current national emissions targets from 193 countries, global temperatures are set to rise by 2.5C. While countries were “bending the curve of global greenhouse gas emissions downward”, current efforts “remain insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century”, said the report.

Liz Truss resigned as Britain's prime minister last Thursday after wreaking havoc on the economy with her failed fiscal plans. Her 45-day term became the record-shortest in Britain's history and has left the U.K. scrambling to appoint a new PM. The Conservative Party has announced that a leadership decision will be made by Oct. 28 between the candidates in the ring (notably not including former disgraced Prime Minister Boris Johnson). Britain's new leader will be 42-year-old Rishi Sunak, who'll become the fifth Conservative Party prime minister in just over six years and the third just within this parliamentary term, according to CNN.

The ongoing political turmoil has resulted in heavy criticism of the Conservatives, also known as the Tories, as well as a call for an immediate general election, especially by those in the opposition party. (The U.K.'s next general election is not due until at least 2024, following Boris Johnson's victory in 2019). Some have also viewed Truss' failure as a failure of democracy. Should Britain hold an immediate general election, and what do the recent failures say about the country?

Britain desperately needs a general election

Britain's Conservative Party has been facing immense pressure to hold a general election, with some arguing that it is necessary. John Cassidy, a columnist at the New Yorker, wrote that despite the Tories holding the majority in the House of Commons, "common sense, basic decency, and Britain's reputation as a healthy democracy" demand an immediate general election.

He's not the only one to feel that way. An official Parliament petition has gathered almost 800,000 signatures calling for an immediate general election due to the chaos. Additionally, during Truss' resignation speech, protesters in the back could be heard shouting "general election now" — a clear call for change.

The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, has insisted that "the British public deserves a proper say on the country's future." Cassidy concurred with the statement, writing, "Who could disagree that it's time for the voters to be heard?"

The Tories are in their flop era

One criticism that has strongly emerged from the fiasco is the recognition of the failures of the modern Conservative Party. While the party was once renowned for its credibility, including its legendary leaders like Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, guest writer Peter Oborne argued in The New York Times that now "the Conservatives are synonymous with chaos."

Overall, many are tired of the party's antics, with Starmer also saying that Britain cannot afford "another experiment at the top of the Tory party." According to polls, support for the Conservatives is at its lowest level in history, at a mere 14 percent. The opposition Labour Party has seen its support skyrocket, currently hovering around 53 percent of the vote by comparison. Data by Electoral Calculus predicts that if elections were to be held today, the Labour Party would likely gain 304 seats while the Tories would lose 317 seats — putting the probability of a Labour majority at almost 100 percent.

In his column, Oborne describes how Truss' failure has made Britain a "global laughingstock" and the "Conservative Party must collectively take responsibility" for choosing her even though "she was obviously not up to the job."

"Their obstinacy is ensuring the ruination of Britain."

A failure of democracy

While many are calling for a general election, there are a number of reasons why it likely won't happen. U.K. general elections are usually held once every five years, meaning the next one is due before Jan. 2025, CNN reports. Since poll numbers for the Tories are so low, they are likely not eager to hold an election that they would almost certainly lose.

This unfortunate political reality has caused many to look upon the current situation as a failure of democracy. A member of the Conservative Party in Parliament, Charles Walker, said in reference to his own party that he's "had enough of talentless people putting their tick in the right box, not because it's in the national interest but because it's in their own personal interest."

Since Boris Johnson and other candidates have dropped out of the running, 42-year-old Rishi Sunak is set to lead the country. Before that recent turn of events, though, Johnson had appeared to be seriously in consideration, which one person said "feels like such a letdown of democracy." Rafael Behr, a columnist for The Guardian, wrote that the Conservative Party "[harbors] in its ranks the idolatrous sect that worships character traits exactly opposite to the ones required for sound government" in response to the possibility of Johnson being given another chance as prime minister.

With Sunak's victory, there is still an air of doubt after the two prime minister failures. Laura Beer wrote in a CNN opinion piece, "Changing leaders twice in the course of a parliamentary term without consulting the British electorate is the political equivalent of whacking your brother just because he annoyed you."

She continued saying that not giving the electorate the chance to voice their opinions "would risk further eroding faith in Britain's democratic process, at a time when democracy is under significant threat around the globe."

Britain's former treasury secretary, Rishi Sunak, became the prohibitive favorite to win leadership of the Conservative Party and become Britain's next prime minister — the third in seven weeks — after main rival Boris Johnson dropped his comeback bid Sunday night.

Johnson, who resigned amid scandal in July, claimed in a statement that "there is a very good chance that I would be successful in the election with Conservative Party members — and that I could indeed be back in Downing Street on Friday," but he has "sadly come to the conclusion that this would simply not be the right thing to do."

Whether or not any of that is true — Sunak had a commanding lead in public and private support among the 357 Tory members in the House of Commons, while Johnson may not even have had enough support to top the threshold of 100 MPs — the opposition parties in Parliament said it's high time for all voters decide the next prime minister.

"The Tories are about to hand Rishi Sunak the keys to the country without him saying a single word about how he would govern. No one voted for this," deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner said. "We need an election now — people deserve a vote on the future of the country." Labour leader Keir Starmer told the BBC that Britain "needs to get rid of this chaos."

Daisy Cooper, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the public doesn't want "another Conservative coronation" and will be "rightly be furious that they're set to endure a third Conservative PM in just as many months."

"That the Tories can foist upon us a third prime minister in just three years without an election, in the midst of a cost of living and economic crisis of their making, speaks to how unfair and undemocratic this Westminster system is," agreed Scottish National Party parliamentary leader Ian Blackford. "

"The majority of Brits say they want a general election, even though one is not required until January 2025," The Washington Post explains. "An election can be called early but it would require the support of Conservative lawmakers, which seems unlikely given that the party faces a near wipeout if an election was held today."

But at least one Tory, former culture secretary Nadine Dorries, agreed that Johnson is the only Conservative with a popular mandate to lead, and with him out of the running, "it will now be impossible to avoid" a general election.

Rishi Sunak, the former British Chancellor and a visible star within the Conservative Party, officially announced his bid Sunday to become the next prime minister of the United Kingdom. He now appears to be the front-runner for the job after former Prime Minister Boris Johnson dropped out of the race.

Sunak had been tapped as a likely potential candidate to replace Prime Minister Liz Truss, who announced her resignation after just 45 days in office amidst a growing economic crisis in the U.K.

Sunak already has significant support behind him from his colleagues in the Conservative Party, which looks primed to retain the office of prime minister. The Wall Street Journal noted that Sunak appeared to be the clear front-runner in the race, with the BBC reporting that of the 227 Conservative members of Parliament who have publicized their choice for prime minister, 146 of them were backing Sunak.

It was presumed that Sunak would face a familiar foe in his bid, as Johnson had served as Truss' predecessor from 2019 before being ousted in September. Johnson is not even 50 days removed from holding the office, and despite shrinking approval ratings throughout his term, he looked primed to make a run for the top job again.

However, despite Johnson having some support in his party, he confirmed late Sunday that he would not seek to lead the Conservatives again. The move came as a shock to many, with the BBC reporting many of Johnson's allies had expected him to push for the role.

It has been another turbulent week in British political history after Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned from her post just six weeks after she came to power.

In a statement made outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday afternoon, Truss said that she could not “deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party” and had spoken to King Charles to tender her resignation. She is to remain as PM until a successor is chosen in a leadership election that is to be “completed within the next week”, she said.

Truss is now the holder of an ignominious record as the shortest-serving prime minister in modern British political history and leaves her party in chaos as – in the words of the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason – they attempt to “dredge a name” out of their ranks to avoid going to a general election.

As the Conservative Party leadership race begins, former prime minister Boris Johnson has reportedly flown back from a holiday in the Caribbean to launch his campaign – just three months after he was ousted from the job by his own MPs. His allies say they are confident he can secure the 100 backers needed to get his name on the ballot.

Johnson’s former chancellor turned leadership rival Rishi Sunak has also secured early backing from MPs, as has the leader of the House of Commons Penny Mourdant, who was knocked out in the fifth round of the last leadership race, which took place over the summer.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?

• Citizens across China have marked the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 20th congress this week as officials came together in Beijing for the occasion. President Xi Jinping is expected to begin an unprecedented third term as the CCP’s leader and military commander-in-chief.
• A Hong Kong pro-democracy protester described how he was beaten in a “barbaric” attack by Chinese diplomats after being dragged into their consulate grounds in Manchester.
• Iranian competitive climber Elnaz Rekabi was greeted by hundreds of supporters at Imam Khomeini international airport outside Tehran as she returned home from the Asian championships in Seoul, South Korea, where she had competed without wearing a hijab.
• BBC chair Richard Sharp insisted that the broadcaster’s “best days are ahead” as the institution turned 100 this week.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is officially gone from 10 Downing Street, thus concluding his scandal-filled tenure marked by COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, and — lest we forget — the hugely-consequential EU secession campaign that was Brexit.

Despite a penchant for zippy one-liners (and other humanizing qualities), the floppy-haired Johnson was ultimately a polarizing political figure who boasted a complicated relationship with the public he led. And as the U.K. ushers in a fresh era of leadership under the newly-appointed Liz Truss, one might wonder how pundits and voters will immortalize BoJo's truncated turn as premier — one that started with a bang, but ended with a crash.

Below, the international media ponders such a legacy.

Speaking of Brexit …

For many, it's almost impossible to separate Johnson's enduring impact from his execution of Brexit, a sizable political feat that simultaneously appeased his supporters but further alienated his critics.

"Johnson's dramatic exit notwithstanding, no singular achievement seems to tower over his legacy more so than securing Brexit — because, without him, it may never have happened," Yasmeen Serhan wrote for Time. In fact, Johnson's choice to support Vote Leave and his accompanying "11th-hour" newspaper column served as a "pivotal" and perhaps deciding moment in the debate. As the public continues to weigh the referendum's long-term consequences, it seems obvious that "the outcome of Brexit and the impact it has on the future unity of the U.K. will weigh heavily on Johnson's legacy, not least if he comes to be remembered as the prime minister who ushered in a return of unrest in Northern Ireland or the breakup of the U.K.," Serhan argued.

"Evaluating Johnson's legacy really amounts to evaluating Brexit, since his fingerprints were all over the departure,'' added New York Times opinion writer Peter Coy. Long after "the world has forgotten the tousled hair, the quotations in Homeric Greek, the fibs, fabrications, and scandals," Johnson will be remembered for his work pulling Britain from the EU.

He threw away the playbook

Though Brexit remains undoubtedly significant in determining BoJo's legacy, "perhaps even more consequential" is the impact he's had "on British politics itself," Serhan continued for Time. Johnson was popular because he successfully pitched himself as an outsider, despite being an insider, and "wasn't afraid to play fast and loose with longstanding norms and traditions, especially when he saw them as a barrier to his political goals." Further, he broke the "political mold," in ways both good and bad, thus modeling "how future prime ministers could do the same."

His leadership "certainly widened the field of what is possible for future prime ministers," Anand Menon, director of think tank U.K. in a Changing Europe, told Serhan. "He has questioned the rules of the game and if someone else wants to come in and see how far they can stretch the system, I think it's more stretchy now than it was before."

Shame and lies

In the end, Johnson's resignation ends a "dismal and destructive time for British democracy," said The Guardian editorial board. Save for his support for Ukraine and his work battling COVID, BoJo's government "has been without a meaningful agenda" since the conclusion of Brexit. Voters will not soon forget his callous and contemptuous approach to the electorate, nor will they "forgive" his fellow Conservative party members "who were so long complicit in the pretense that Britain had a functional prime minister and a respectable government." Ultimately, a "thorough regime change" is needed to rid of the stench he's left behind.

Jack Blanchard, U.K. editor at Politico., issued a somewhat-concurring opinion back in July: "Johnson could, and did, lie for England" … and "in Westminster, it is the lies that will be the legacy."

The rest is still unwritten

No one knows exactly what Johnson might do next, but "few doubt that he will cast a long shadow from the sidelines," Therese Raphael posited for Bloomberg. And "that has made his legacy contested territory."

In some ways, of course, "Brexit, and the politics it unleashed, represent such a historic pivot that it must be at the center of Johnson's legacy." But there was also some "vision to note," like certain government attempts to correct income and opportunity gaps, as well as praiseworthy efforts to support Ukraine, which "revealed a keen sense of the geopolitical moment."

Despite his exit, it's unlikely Johnson "stays very quiet for long," Raphael wagers. For one thing, it's not like he'll have trouble communicating with his base; the media will cover and analyze every one of his sideline dispatches, which could at any given moment prove devastating to Truss or some other political hopeful alike. But "in the meantime, the Tories will keep debating Johnson's legacy, some hoping to use it to bury him and others to resurrect a stronger version from the ashes of failure," Raphael mused. "Liz Truss rode to power on his coattails, but she'll be nervously looking over her shoulder at what he does next."

For the first time ever, Queen Elizabeth II will not return to Buckingham Palace to receive the next prime minister of the United Kingdom, CNN reports.

The 96-year-old will instead remain at her holiday home in Scotland, where outgoing PM Boris Johnson and his successor will travel to meet her. The unprecendented decision was apparently made so as to "provide certainty for the Prime Minister's diary," CNN summarizes, per a royal source; in other words, the arrangement avoids any last-minute, health-related travel complications on behalf of the queen.

Appointing a new prime minister is one of the monarch's principal responsibilities, CNN notes. The outgoing Johnson originally announced his plans to resign back in July, though he said he would stay on until his replacement is chosen. He will tender his resignation before Queen Elizabeth next week.

Otherwise, the new Conservative Party leader will be officially announced Tuesday, though the results of the contest — which pits Foreign Secretary Liz Truss against former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak — are expected Monday. The winner will then have an audience with the queen at Balmoral, shortly following Johnson's.

Boris Johnson has ruled out the introduction of any new emergency measures to help struggling UK households cope with soaring costs before he quits Downing Street.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson said there were no plans for a Cobra meeting to address the cost-of-living crisis before either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak take over in No. 10 in September. The “bigger challenges” for family budgets “are coming towards the end of the year”, the spokesperson added.

Annual energy bills are “now forecast to top £4,200 from January”, said The Guardian, and soaring inflation and an interest rate hike to 1.75% are also hitting households across the UK. Here is the government support currently available.

£400 energy bills discount

As part of the government’s cost-of-living support package, every household in England, Scotland and Wales will receive a £400 energy bill discount. Administered by energy suppliers, the discount “will be paid to consumers over six months with payments starting from October 2022, to ensure households receive financial support throughout the winter months”, said Gov.uk.

The payment was initially intended to be a £200 reduction to be repaid in instalments over five years, but has now been doubled and does not need to be repaid.

Households in council tax bands A-D in England are also getting a £150 rebate to help pay rising bills. Most eligible households have already received this rebate through their council tax bill.

Analysts have warned that the payments are “not enough to make a dent” in soaring energy bills. Dr Craig Lowrey, a principal consultant at Cornwall Insight, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that high energy costs were “very much a long-term problem for households that is going to need concerted and enduring action by the government to help manage that.”

£650 Cost of Living Payment

Almost eight million households on means-tested benefits are eligible for a one-off Cost of Living Payment of £650, which is being paid in two instalments. A lump sum of £326 was paid out in July, and the “second instalment of £324 will follow from the autumn”, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.

The payment is being made to people who receive any of the following benefits: Universal Credit, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Pension Credit. There is no need to apply, and the payment is paid straight into recipients’ bank accounts.

£300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment

Households that receive the Winter Fuel Payment, which is paid to nearly all homes with at least one person of pension age, will receive an extra £300 in November and December to help cover the rising cost of energy.

Pensioners who claim pension credit will receive this payment in addition to the £650 support for those on benefits. The government will make these payments directly to eligible households.

£150 Disability Cost of Living Payment

People on disability benefits will receive a one-off payment of £150 from September. This includes people on Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, Attendance Allowance, Scottish Disability Benefits, Armed Forces Independence Payment, Constant Attendance Allowance and War Pension Mobility Supplement.

Household Support Fund

The government has announced a further £500 million of support via the Household Support Fund, first introduced in September 2021, which will now run until March 2023. The fund provides households with payments to help with essentials like food, utilities and clothing.

Distributed by local councils, eligibility varies according to area and is generally assessed by a person’s financial ability to meet basic needs.

National Insurance Contribution threshold rise

National Insurance starting thresholds rose to £12,570 from July 2022, which the government says will “benefit 30 million working people with a typical employee saving over £330 a year”.

But Channel 4 has said that for those who are self-employed the change is worth only £250 a year, adding it “does nothing for those who were already earning below the National Insurance threshold, those who are not in work, or pensioners”.

Tax breaks for self-employed workers

From April 2022, self-employed individuals are not liable for Class 2 National Insurance contributions on profits between the Small Profits Threshold and Lower Profits Limit. It means that lower-income self-employed workers could see a tax-bill reduction of up to £165 a year.

Reduced Universal Credit taper rate

Sunak’s autumn budget reduced the taper rate of Universal Credit from 63% to 55% and increased work allowances by £500. The government says the change means that “1.7 million households will on average keep around an extra £1,000 on an annual basis”.

Fuel duty cut

The government cut fuel duty by 5p a litre in March, which it said “represents savings for consumers worth almost £2.4 billion”. But the RAC has said the fuel duty cut looks “paltry” when compared to action taken by other European countries and said the UK government had done “the least to support drivers through the current period of record high fuel prices”.

Boris Johnson became prime minister on the promise that Brexit would bring prosperity and pride. Did it? Here's everything you need to know:

How did Brexit come about?

The United Kingdom narrowly voted to leave the European Union in a 2016 referendum after a bitter campaign rife with misinformation and racism. The main cheerleader for the Leave camp was Boris Johnson, who claimed loudly, repeatedly, and falsely that Britain was sending 350 million pounds to the EU every week. Brexit, he said, would give Britons their money back — as well as let them set their own immigration policy, so they wouldn't have to accept so many asylum seekers or EU migrants. After negotiations with the EU over the terms of the exit dragged on for years, Johnson resoundingly won the prime ministership in 2019 on the pledge to "get Brexit done." Now he is leaving 10 Downing Street in a cloud of lies and scandal, and while Brexit is done, few are happy with the result. Britain's GDP per capita has grown just 3.8 percent since the referendum, while the EU's has leaped 8.5 percent. Companies are struggling to recruit skilled workers, and trade with Europe has slumped. "If you can't ship your goods into the biggest market on your doorstep," said Gyr King, chief executive of King & McGaw, a print company, "you have got to be shooting yourself in the foot."

What was Brexit supposed to bring?

In laying out his case for Brexit in The Telegraph ahead of the referendum, Johnson focused mostly on sovereignty issues, saying that up to 60 percent of new British legislation was being written in Brussels and that Britons must take back their country. He was long on stirring rhetoric and short on economic specifics. Other prominent Brexit supporters, such as then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, floated the prospect of the U.K. as Singapore-on-Thames, a low-tax and low-regulation haven that would thrive by attracting international business. The U.K., such supporters said, would strike its own, more advantageous trade agreements with the U.S. and other countries.

How much of that happened?

Not much. Yes, the British no longer are bound by EU legislation. But the Brexit deal that Johnson reluctantly backed tied British regulatory policy closely to that of Europe (because otherwise the EU wouldn't buy British goods) and generated costly red tape. In one of the U.K.'s four constituent countries, Northern Ireland, EU law still largely reigns, because the EU refused to jeopardize Irish peace by erecting a hard border across the island of Ireland. Instead, there is a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain, a rift that infuriates many Northern Irish. And because Johnson keeps trying to rewrite that provision of the Brexit agreement, the U.S. — which had taken the lead in writing the Irish peace accords — has refused to sign a major trade agreement with the U.K.

How is Britain's economy?

It's not in good shape. Immediately after the referendum, the pound fell 10 percent, and it has not recovered. That pushed up prices of imports and delivered what the Center for Economic Policy Research called "a swift negative shock to U.K. living standards." Things deteriorated further when the U.K. actually left the European single market in December 2020, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. The flow of goods snarled because of the loss of European truck drivers, and manufacturing took a hit because firms were shut out of EU supply chains. Just a decade ago, the average Briton was about as wealthy as the average German; now that Brit is 15 percent poorer than the German. Brexit Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg was ridiculed recently when, asked to name the economic benefits of Brexit, he resorted to touting the avoidance of a 2 percent hike in the price of fish sticks.

Surely there were other pluses?

Britain has indeed taken back control of its immigration policy, and it no longer pays dues to the EU. Some argue that immigration is now fairer, since EU members are no longer automatically favored — although immigration rates have remained steady, rather than dropping as promised. The U.K. has also adopted stronger polices than the EU on animal welfare, an issue dear to British hearts, and has banned the export of live farm animals. More generally, Brexit has had a significant psychological effect, restoring a sense of proud independence to a nation that never quite got over losing its empire. Still, that renewal of English patriotism has a dark side: The Brexit campaign demonized immigrants, and hate crimes have more than doubled since 2015. In a recent poll, just 17 percent of Brits said Brexit had made their lives better.

How will Johnson's departure affect Brexit?

The Conservative Party's race to replace Johnson as prime minister, pitting Foreign Secretary Liz Truss against former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, has taken shape as an ideological battle over Britain's post-EU future. It's become Tory orthodoxy to express no regret over Brexit, and Truss, the favorite, took some flak for having voted Remain. But she now supports the Singapore-on-Thames option, saying she would slash regulation. Sunak, by contrast, would spend on social services and raise taxes on corporations. Meanwhile, -the opposition Labour Party under Keir Starmer has adopted the new slogan "Make Brexit Work," vowing that if it took power it would make the most of what it calls a "poor deal." Other key Labour figures, though, including London Mayor Sadiq Khan, want the U.K. to rejoin the European single market. Brexit, Khan said, is "the biggest piece of self-inflicted harm ever done to a country."

A divided kingdom

Brexit has weakened the bonds among the U.K.'s four countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The new customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. is a symbolic break between Belfast and London, and there's now talk among Northern Irish nationalists of holding a long-shot referendum on leaving the U.K. to unify with Ireland. Scotland is even more likely to hold an ­independence vote. Most Scots, 62 percent, voted to remain in the EU, and many want to rejoin. While Scottish voters rejected independence in 2014, in a poll last year more than half said they wanted another referendum. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is currently battling in court to give them one. "Scottish democracy," she said, "will not be a prisoner."

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Well, you can't say he doesn't have a way with words.

Speaking at his final weekly parliamentary address on Wednesday, outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ended his last Q&A and debate session with a comment surely as unique as his truncated time on Downing Street.

"We've helped, I've helped, get this country through a pandemic and help save another country from barbarism. And frankly, that's enough to be going on with. Mission largely accomplished," Johnson said. "I want to thank everybody here and hasta la vista, baby."

The Terminator-inspired finale was met with "a round of applause from most on his own side," Reuters writes. Schwarzenegger — er, Johnson — then followed things up with a bit of advice for his successor: "[S]tay close to the Americans," focus "on the road ahead," and "remember, above all, it's not Twitter that counts. It's the people that sent us here."

Johnson earlier this month agreed to step down from his role as leader after a series of long-running scandals prompted resignations within his cabinet. The race to replace him has now narrowed to two finalists: former finance minister Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. The winner will be announced in September, and Johnson will stay on until then, per The Washington Post.

The race to replace resigning U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson got a bit smaller on Wednesday, after candidates Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi were knocked out of the contest, The Associated Press reports.

The former health secretary and treasury chief, respectively, were unable to garner the necessary 30 votes from Conservative lawmakers required to stay in the running. The remaining six aspirants will now work to win over both ousted candidates' supporters. Additional rounds of voting are scheduled for Thursday and if, needed, "next week, until just two candidates remain," writes AP.

At that point, the final two candidates will compete in a runoff vote held amongst approximately 180,000 Conservative Party members nationwide, with the winner slated to be announced Sept. 5. He or she will then automatically become prime minister, as well as the leader of the Conservative Party, without a national election.

Among the candidates still in the race, Former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt, and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss are likely the most high-profile, as well as the top 3 contenders, respectively, in terms of polling. Betting odds place Sunak and Mordaunt at the top of the pack.

Johnson resigned last week, in the wake of widespread party chaos triggered by months of ethics controversies, AP reports. He will stay on as prime minister until his replacement is chosen.

One of the most dramatic weeks in British political history ended with Boris Johnson’s resignation as Conservative leader and a promise to step down as prime minister in the autumn.

Johnson announced yesterday afternoon that he is quitting as Tory leader just over a month after surviving a confidence vote in the wake of the Partygate scandal.

But it was allegations over his handling of the Chris Pincher scandal that ultimately brought him down after two of his top ministers – Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid – dramatically resigned from the government on Tuesday evening, triggering an avalanche of departures from junior ministers and aides.

Johnson seemed determined to fight on right up to the last minute, refusing to step down despite receiving more ministerial resignations than any other prime minister in history. But faced with a government that could no longer effectively function, he finally threw in the towel on Thursday.

“I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world – but them’s the breaks,” he said during his resignation speech outside No. 10 Downing Street.

The timetable for the Conservative Party leadership contest will be announced next week, but the race is already on to replace Johnson as party leader, with MPs Tom Tugendhat and Suella Braverman already launching early bids.

Japan has been rocked by the assassination of former prime minister and political titan Shinzo Abe, who died in hospital after he was shot at a political campaign event in the city of Nara.

Prime minister Fumio Kishida described the attack on the 67-year-old Abe, who was Japan’s longest-serving PM, as “barbaric and malicious”. A 41-year-old male suspect was arrested at the scene and is now in police custody. He is thought to be Tetsuya Yamagami and a resident of the city, with no known occupation.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?

• Three people were killed and several others wounded when a gunman opened fire in a Copenhagen shopping mall.
• Experts have called for a probe into excess deaths as mortality rates in England and Wales climb despite a drop in coronavirus deaths.
• Labour leader Keir Starmer has ruled out rejoining the EU as he laid out his party’s plan to tackle the issues caused by Brexit.
• The last Brit standing, Cameron Norrie, will take on defending champion Novak Djokovic in the men’s singles semi-finals at Wimbledon today.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who as recently as yesterday was said to be defiantly clinging to his job, has officially announced his resignation.

In a speech Thursday, Johnson said he will resign as British prime minister, though he plans to stay in office until a replacement is chosen. "The timetable will be announced next week," he said, despite facing calls to leave office immediately. He also resigned as leader of the Conservative Party and appointed a Cabinet to serve with him "until a new leader is in place."

The British prime minister had for months faced calls to resign in the wake of a scandal surrounding parties held at 10 Downing Street in violation of COVID-19 lockdowns, and a wave of officials quit Johnson's government this week. He survived a close no-confidence vote in June.

In his resignation speech, Johnson touted his accomplishments in office and said he tried and failed to convince his colleagues that it "would be eccentric to change governments" right now, adding that it's become clear that "no one is remotely indispensable" in politics. He also vowed to provide "as much support as I can" to his replacement.

"I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world," Johnson said. "But them's the breaks."

Johnson's remarks received mixed reactions. "This was not a great speech," CNN's Christiane Amanpour said. "Clearly, he had not prepared anything."

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has agreed to resign and will formalize his decision in a public announcement on Thursday, The Associated Press reports, citing an official in his Downing Street office. The BBC's Chris Mason reports that Johnson will resign as Conservative Party leader but "continue as prime minister until the autumn," acting as caretaker head of government until the Conservatives pick a new party leader before their annual conference in October. It's not clear he will be allowed to stay on that long.

Johnson has been facing increasingly fierce pressure to step down for days, and his ouster was expected after two of his top Cabinet ministers, Treasury chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid, resigned in tandem on Tuesday, starting a wave of resignations that continued Thursday morning. New Treasury chief Nadhim Zahawi publicly called on Johnson to step down minutes before news broke of his resignation and "just 36 hours after Johnson put him in the job, while another newly appointed Cabinet minister quit her post," AP notes.

Johnson, 58, had dug in his heels on Wednesday, refusing to quit even after a group of his most trusted Cabinet ministers visited him at his office and told him to resign because he had lost the trust of his party. Instead, Johnson fired one of the ministers, Michael Gove, setting off more resignations.

Britain's Conservatives began to get restive about Johnson's leadership after snowballing revelations of parties at his office and residence that violated his own government's COVID-19 lockdown rules, leading to a no confidence vote he narrowly survived. This week, Johnson acknowledged he had elevated a Tory lawmaker to a senior position even though he knew about previous sexual misconduct allegations.

Given the chaos and vacancies in Johnson's government, "is it sustainable for him to carry on until the autumn?" the BBC's Mason asks. "That argument will rage today. And another will begin: who should be our next prime minister?"

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson refused to resign on Wednesday as senior members of his Conservative Party urged him to make a "dignified exit."

Home Secretary Priti Patel, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis, and Welsh Secretary Simon Hart were among those who urged Johnson to resign during a Wednesday meeting at No. 10 Downing Street, The Liverpool Echo reported.

Johnson responded, "No, I'm not going," Sky News reports. He also warned his colleagues that, if he resigned, "chaos" would ensue, and the Conservatives would lose the next election.

According to the Echo, 39 senior and junior ministers have resigned from Johnson's government so far. Johnson also fired Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, one of the first Cabinet ministers to urge him to resign. In response, one senior party member said, "[Johnson] has lost it. He has become like Caligula."

Last month, Johnson survived a vote of no-confidence, receiving 211 votes when he needed only 180 to remain in office. Nevertheless, The New York Times said Johnson had been "badly wounded" politically by the "too-close-for-comfort result."

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson "suffered a potentially lethal political blow" on Tuesday, The New York Times reports, and "is fighting for political survival," BBC News adds, "after two of his top ministers attacked his leadership and resigned." In a span of 10 minutes on Tuesday afternoon, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid quit and released biting resignation letters explaining why they have lost confidence in Johnson's competence and integrity.

Johnson has had a rocky few months. A government report found that he and members of his staff participated in boozy lockdown-violating parties at his office and official residence, leading to 126 fines, including one against Johnson; he narrowly survived a no-confidence vote last month, with 41 percent of fellow Conservative members of Parliament voting to oust him; and Conservative candidates were then soundly beaten in two special parliamentary elections, leading to the resignation of Conservative Party chairman Oliver Dowden.

"Until Tuesday his Cabinet had largely stayed put and loyal," The Associated Press reports.

The public resignations of Sunak and Javid, followed quickly by several junior ministers, were evidently prompted by the latest scandal surrounding Johnson, involving suspended Conservative lawmaker Chris Pincher. Johnson appointed Pincher deputy chief whip in February despite, he finally acknowledged Tuesday, being aware of sexual misconduct allegations against him as early as 2019.

"Both Sunak and Javid are seen as possible contenders to replace Johnson if he is forced out," AP reports, but "Johnson has in the past proven to be an adept politician, fighting off criticism to prolong his career." Johnson quickly replaced both officials with loyalists. And other key Cabinet ministers stuck with Johnson, including Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, another possible successor.

Still, Johnson has clearly been politically weakened by the successive scandals. A snap YouGov poll released Tuesday found that 69 percent of Britons — including 54 percent of Conservatives — think Johnson should resign. And The Times of London, Johnson's former employer, published a brutal editorial Wednesday calling "game over" for the prime minister, saying "he has lost the confidence of his party and the country" and should resign.

After the dual departures of Sunak and Javid, "I can't see a way he gets through this — it really does look like the end of the road this time," Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, tells The New York Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if he were a woman, United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson told German media outlets on Tuesday.

"You need more women in positions of power. If Putin was a woman — which he obviously isn't, but if he were — I really don't think he would've embarked on a crazy macho war of invasion and violence in the way that he has," Johnson said. "If you want a perfect example of toxic masculinity, it's what he's doing in Ukraine."

So, would Vladimira Vladimirovna Putin have left Ukraine alone? Maybe, but history provides no basis for that assumption. Female leaders appear to be just as bellicose as male ones, if not more so. Russian Empresses Elizabeth, Anna, and Catherine the Great all fought multiple wars during their reigns.

Johnson's own country provides plenty of examples. Within his lifetime, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher waged the undeclared Falklands War against Argentina. British forces took part in around 50 international conflicts during the reign of Queen Victoria. Queens Elizabeth I and Mary I both sent troops to fight on the European continent.

In fact, a 2017 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that, between 1480 and 1913, European queens were 27 percent more likely than European kings to wage war.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a “perfect example of toxic masculinity” and wouldn’t have happened if the Russian president was a woman, Boris Johnson has said.

The prime minister was speaking at a Nato summit in Madrid when he described the invasion as a “crazy, macho war” and called for “more women in positions of power”.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace later supported this assessment by telling LBC Radio that Putin had “small man syndrome” and that a “macho” view of the world had caused the war.

'Hypermasculine performances'

It is not the first time Putin has been denounced for his “hypermasculine performances of power”, as Alia E. Dastagir described them at USA Today; performances that have become “part of his persona and crucial to his brand”. Since the beginning of the war, a debate has emerged over whether “Putin’s brand of manhood” has been a causing factor in the invasion as he attempts to justify his motives.

Past images of the Russian leader horse-riding shirtless, shooting guns, and competing in judo matches are all part of the “PR machine for toxic masculinity” wrote Brad Slager at conservative US blog Red State, making up for a lack of “charisma”.

This public persona of Putin has been starkly juxtaposed with his counterpart in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, since the war began. Putin is an example of masculinity the “modern world is trying to leave behind”, said Annalisa Merelli at Quartz, while Zelenskyy – who once appeared in a pink suit on the Ukrainian equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing – is unafraid to show “empathy and vulnerability”. Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s “oppression and authoritarianism” fits into a wider movement to “push back against and replace patriarchal values”.

It is what Ukraine stands for, “its assertion of autonomy”, that has been the causing factor in Putin’s “patriarchal belief that Ukraine’s proper ‘feminine’ role was to submit to the will of its stronger neighbour”, wrote four political science experts at The Conversation. Ukraine’s democracy, and adoption of more progressive gender rights, are a threat to Putin’s “cult of masculinity” and Russia’s reliance on “unequal gender roles”, said political science professors Valerie Sperling, Janet Elise Johnson, Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom and gender studies expert Alexandra Novitskaya.

‘Blinkered’ by identity politics

Of “all the ill-informed explanations” for why Putin invaded Ukraine, this is “perhaps the most absurd”, argued Jessa Crispin at UnHerd shortly after the war began. Viewing a geopolitical conflict through the lens of “the very Western, very modern framework of identity politics” is “shockingly irresponsible”, she said.

While the concept of toxic masculinity is not “empty”, the West’s discussion around Ukraine “is blinkered”. “Part of the problem is that toxic masculinity is squishy language, used to describe everything from war crimes to taking up too much space on the subway,” explained Crispin.

Importantly, an over-simplification of a war “between good and evil” leads us to ignore the “roots in centuries-old discussions of territory and autonomy” and means the West avoids facing “our own hypocrisy”, said Crispin. “We have invaded sovereign nations. We have killed civilians,” she said.

War though, is almost always caused by a “particular kind of men behaving a particular kind of way”, countered Darryl Peers in the Press and Journal. Conflict, including Putin’s, is the “inevitable result” of societies where “virile maleness” is the “ideal quality for institutions to exhibit”.

Not so cut and dried

While “there is indeed a certain gendering of political leadership impulses, anyone who remembers Margaret Thatcher pushing her often uncertain cabinet into war over the Falklands, knows that things are never so cut and dried”, said Mark Galeotti in The Spectator.

He pointed to other examples, such as “Catherine the Great, who conquered and colonised the lands of Novorossia – which just happens to be where Russian troops are fighting today” and Maria Zakharova, Russia’s “pugnacious foreign ministry spokeswoman who slams western governments as having ‘neo-Nazi preferences’”.

Galeotti suggested Johnson’s comment about the Russian leader “speaks to a dangerous tendency of modern democratic leaders to make sweeping and exaggerated statements presumably meant to be crowd-pleasers, which risk backfiring in all kinds of ways”.

Sam Ashworth-Hayes at The Critic agreed that “Boris is almost certainly wrong”.

“From Boudicca to Elizabeth I through to Margaret Thatcher, British history alone provides plenty of examples of women who were more than happy to resort to armed conflict,” said Ashworth-Hayes, director of studies at the Henry Jackson Society national security think tank.

He pointed to research suggesting that greater female representation in executive governing bodies led to a higher likelihood of conflict behaviour and defence spending.

“As Rudyard Kipling once observed, the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”

1. Scrapping the NI protocol is just the start. Johnson’s trade wars are Trumpism in action

Simon Jenkins in The Guardian

on populist policies

Britain’s foreign policy is “at the mercy of Boris Johnson’s reckless quest for survival”, says Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. Every trip abroad “is treated as a photo opportunity” as he promotes “the most intense economic disruption” in Europe’s peacetime history, Jenkins says. An “absurd ‘bromance’ is even staged” with Emmanuel Macron; “never was machismo so synthetic”. Yesterday’s vote on a bill that would permit the scrapping of the Northern Ireland Protocol “was a classic”, being “motivated by a desire to appease the province’s fast-disintegrating Unionist majority”. Johnson’s suggestions for “a ‘soft’ border with Ireland are actually quite sensible. But Downing Street’s three years of anti-EU rhetoric have exhausted any wish in Brussels to be co-operative.” The prime minister is “set on” a trade policy that is “not Toryism but Trumpism”. As a “populist” leader, Johnson “measures success in biceps rather than brain power”. This, says Jenkins, “is not democratic government”.

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2. Cutting literature degrees is cultural vandalism

Melanie Phillips in The Times

on concerns about courses

Sheffield Hallam University has suspended its English literature course due to graduates’ difficulties in securing high-earning jobs. The news “follows a threat by the Office for Students” that universities face penalties for courses with low rates of graduate employment, writes Melanie Phillips in The Times. When this writer studied English, she assumed it would equip her “for nothing practical and everything that mattered”. Studying literature “was in essence a moral project”. Vocational skills are “vitally important”, says Phillips. “Britain has always shamefully neglected them, largely through its identification of social status with a university degree.” Phillips says it was “snobbishness, masquerading as a drive to improve social mobility” that led to polytechnics becoming universities, with “the doubly unfortunate result” of reducing high-value vocational course numbers and lowering the standards of degrees to accommodate many students “unsuited to academic study”. Sheffield Hallam’s decision may be “cultural vandalism”, she concludes, but universities “have already long vandalised themselves”.

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3. Questioning Nato relevance is misguided and dangerous

Tom Røseth and John Weaver at The Hill

on international allies

Nato leaders are gathering in Madrid this week for the alliance’s annual summit. “Despite its longevity and success – or perhaps because of it – many people question NATO’s relevance today,” write associate professors Tom Røseth and John Weaver at The Hill. Some have even called for the US to withdraw from the alliance. “These attitudes are misguided and dangerous,” the writers say. Nato is “not only still relevant” to its members, “it’s necessary”. It has been “a key pillar in the fight” against Islamic State, and the alliance “came to the aid” of America following 9/11. Today, Nato’s contributions of weapons and training to Ukrainian forces “have been a testament” to its “resolve”. Nato’s allies “would be better served by using the summit as a means to strengthen their purpose”, particularly given the “shifting” geopolitical landscape. And allowing Finland and Sweden membership would “send a strong message to other would-be aggressors, that NATO is alive and well”.

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4. Our Auntie BBC loves all 150 genders… but not the over-60s

Clemmie Moodie in The Sun

on audience demographics

The BBC is “the most inclusive state broadcaster in the world”, says Clemmie Moodie in The Sun. China’s citizens “would kill for such diversity”. The Beeb recently hired non-binary inclusion consultants “to teach staff there are at least 150 different genders”. Staff “are being urged to declare their pronouns on emails with a list which has expanded to include newly invented ones such as ‘xe, xem, xyrs.’ Really,” says Moodie. “So far, so ‘inclusive’… unless, that is, you’re edging towards a bus pass”, in which case “watch ya back, you senile, lumbering ol’ lump of lard!” The BBC “goes all-out to be all-things to all-people” but “the one demographic it appears to despise is the very one it should be nurturing”. DJ Tony Blackburn has “hinted at ageism” after his Radio 2 show was moved from a Friday to a Sunday, and learning that “some employers were not considering over-55s for jobs”. Moodie says that “woke Aunty needs to start rewarding” audiences’ loyalty – “quickly”.

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5. Keir Starmer’s stance on the strikes is a betrayal of the people who need Labour

Simon Fletcher in The New Statesman

on political positioning

“Keir Starmer’s handling of the rail strikes has taken a wrong turn,” writes Simon Fletcher, a former adviser to the Labour leader, in The New Statesman. A “monumental battle is underway” over incomes and “plummeting” living standards. Labour “cannot afford to stand on the sidelines”. When rail strikes were announced, the party’s transport team started out with a “creditable” position – that the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps should “take responsibility for the dispute”. That “shifted”. Starmer said he was “against the strikes”, and instructed frontbenchers “to stay away from picket lines”. Political management, says Fletcher, “is not just ordering people about”. And “a public bunfight between the party, the unions, the left, the party’s membership” and Labour voters is “what the Conservatives want”. These “new and extreme” economic times “demand a new political approach”. Just as the government “is not neutral over the strikes, neither should Labour be”. The party “has a rare opportunity to forge a new consensus” and unite “everyone who needs an alternative”.

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1. The Tories have been utterly humiliated. If Boris Johnson stays, they are doomed

Nigel Farage in The Telegraph

On a looming wipeout

Following defeats in both of yesterday’s by-elections, the Conservatives still “have no idea (in electoral terms) that worse is to come”, argues Nigel Farage in The Telegraph. The former UKIP leader and MEP says that Boris Johnson is “a cheerleader, not a leader”, and “in his efforts to please everyone he has pleased no one”. Farage says that the lesson from the Tiverton and Honiton result in particular is clear: “this is above all about the character of Boris Johnson and his cavalier approach to the truth.” Rural, middle-class England “is a law abiding place where honesty and truthfulness really matter”. If a “Liberal Democrat triumph in rural Devon” does “not provoke a Conservative Party rebellion then they are on course for a 1997-style wipeout” and if Johnson stays on as leader they are “doomed”.

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2. There’s a simple way to unite everyone behind climate justice

George Monbiot in The Guardian

On debts and destruction

“Rich nations owe a massive climate debt to poorer nations for the devastating impacts of the fossil fuels we have burned,” says George Monbiot, but they have “no intention of paying for the loss and damage they have caused”. Poor countries, meanwhile, “are deemed to owe massive financial debts to the rich nations, yet they cannot pay them without destroying their economies and their ecosystems”. He lauds the “brilliant idea” from Debt for Climate “to cancel both the climate and the financial debts, liberating the money poorer nations need to take climate action”. By “reviving the question of who owes what to whom, huge constituencies, labour and green, north and south, can develop a common platform,” writes Monbiot. “Climate campaigns are indivisible from global justice.”

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3. Elon Musk is not the populist he pretends to be

Isaac Lozano in the Los Angeles Times

On a ‘typical capitalist’

Elon Musk “often portrays himself as a maligned man of the people”, says Isaac Lozano in the Los Angeles Times, but “his record reveals that he’s hardly a populist ally”. In 2019, Musk broke California labour laws in a bid to prevent Tesla factory workers from forming a union, Lozano writes, and the company omitted hundreds of worker injuries from its workplace reports. Musk also paid nothing in federal income taxes in 2018. The entrepreneur nevertheless remains popular, which is “partially explained by the mythology of billionaire saviorism: that the needs of society can be addressed not through social safety nets but through a rich guy’s vision of grandeur”. Musk “seems to have successfully marketed himself as a populist, when behind the facade is a typical capitalist whose main agenda is perpetuating the system that has brought him billions”.

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4. Craven universities have appeased anti-free speech zealots

Jawad Iqbal in The Times

On fanatical findings

“The latest survey of what students actually think” paints a “disturbing picture of a student body that is ferociously intolerant and unwilling to be exposed to any viewpoint it doesn’t share,” writes Jawad Iqbal in The Times. “The idea of banning certain groups or issues from all public discussion – censorship, in other words – is accepted by the majority.” The Higher Education Policy Institute poll revealed an “almost fanatical desire to police viewpoints”, he writes, and “the truth is that it is not just the students who are careless about free expression”. In fact, the people in charge are no better. “Instead of trying to educate and engage the student body on the importance of freedom of inquiry, university leaders have repeatedly prioritised appeasing campus zealots.”

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5. Why I’m too scared to go to festivals like Glastonbury

Furvah Shah in The Independent

On unwanted advances

“I’ve always been enticed and excited by British festivals, but I have never attended one,” writes Furvah Shah for the Independent. Friends who have been to festivals have described to Shah the “rowdiness, the sexual harassment and assault, the drug use, and the fears of being crushed, which are often seen as so commonplace that they have pushed me away from the idea of attending”, she explains. A survey found that nearly half of female festivalgoers have experienced unwanted sexual behaviour when in attendance, and although more than 100 UK festivals have signed up to the Safer Spaces at Festivals campaign, which pledges to tackle incidents of sexual violence with a survivor-led approach, Shah worries this “won’t be enough”. As this summer’s biggest events for British music approach, she urges festival organisers to “think more carefully about how to keep festivalgoers from all backgrounds safe”.

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1. Odious Position

Leader comment in The Times

on Lord Geidt’s departure

“One of the stronger reasons for Conservative MPs to vote against Boris Johnson in last week’s confidence vote… was the certainty that with this prime minister, the next scandal will never be far off,” says The Times in a leading article. The resignation of Lord Geidt, the prime minister’s adviser on ethics, “inevitably raises fresh questions about Mr Johnson’s fitness for office”. Lord Geidt’s departure leaves a vacancy that now needs to be “urgently filled if public confidence in the integrity of the government, never more important than at a time of geopolitical and economic crisis, is to be maintained,” argues the paper, but to “recruit a credible figure, the role needs to be put on a statutory footing with the powers that Lord Geidt had requested”.

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2. The right to offend is a vital component of free speech

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain for the Jewish Chronicle

on free speech

“It is hard to know what was worse,” writes Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain in The Jewish Chronicle, “the intimidating protests outside cinemas showing The Lady of Heaven, about the succession battle after the death of Mohammed”, or the “surrender” of cinema bosses who halted all performances of it. “Free speech is a weapon for reform, enabling us to criticise wrong-doing, expose hypocrisy and shine a light on abuse of power,” he argues. “If we start censoring, how do we decide which faith it is legitimate to criticise and which not?” He notes that when Mormons were upset by the musical, The Book of Mormon, they saw it as an opportunity to publicise their faith, taking out a full page advert in the theatre programme inviting the audience to come to a Mormon meeting themselves and make their own mind up. “What a mature response!” writes the rabbi.

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3. Boris Johnson must not rest until we have taken back control… in full

Leader comment in The Sun

on rights and wrongs

The EU and its “superfan” Tony Blair ensured Britain was “bound hand and foot by the European Convention on Human Rights [ECHR]”, says The Sun. In a leader comment, the paper says the Human Rights Act became a condition of the Northern Ireland peace agreement, Scottish devolution and, years later under the Conservative Party, our Brexit deals with Brussels. “Ditching it would be a seismic event unlikely to get through Parliament,” so Dominic Raab’s Bill of Rights must instead “defang it”, enabling us to ignore ECHR rulings counter to our wishes and interests. “But if even that falls short, Boris Johnson MUST go further,” urges the paper, because “Brexit meant regaining power over our borders and laws”.

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4. Here’s why I’ll never get a pug or a bulldog – and you shouldn’t either

Sean O’Grady for The Independent

on cruel cuteness

Sean O’Grady has been thinking of buying a dog. But even though he thinks pugs and English or French bulldogs are “cute” and “excellent companions”, he will never buy such a breed “because what man has done to these sweet best friends has been unspeakably cruel”. Vets have pointed out that pugs have such short, squashed-up muzzles they sometimes can’t breathe properly and the English Bulldog has a “similar breed-induced ailment”, says The Independent columnist. “There are too many cases where the welfare of the animal has been callously sacrificed, and it’s cruel and unacceptable,” writes O’Grady. He suggests that Kennel Clubs adjust breed standards to make the creatures less of a caricature and more like their “genuinely healthy, working forbears” from centuries past. “Why not just say pugs should have a longer snout? Is that asking too much?”

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5. Blame cyclists for stoking the flames of the road culture war

Rowan Pelling for The Telegraph

on self-appointed sheriffs

Rowan Pelling spends half her life on two wheels, so she’s “mustard-keen on motorists giving bikes safe passage”. But, The Telegraph columnist continues, she loathes “the self-important, bulging-calved, Lycra-clad, road-hogging behaviour of Serious Cyclists”. She writes that “sharing incriminating GoPro footage has become the province of people who once campaigned to be school prefects just so they could report fellow pupils to teachers”. They “don’t confess to cycling the wrong way up a one-way street and making a stressed-out mum perform an emergency stop”, writes Pelling. “The self-appointed sheriffs of Britain’s highways and cycle lanes, with their Twitter feeds full of GoPro footage, are somewhat entertaining,” but she wants to “station these cameras by Vauxhall’s frantic cycle paths to see how much grace cyclists give pedestrians”.

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1. The Times view on royal interventions: princely politics

The Times Editorial

on private opinions

Behind closed doors, Prince Charles is unimpressed with the government’s plans to send migrants to Rwanda, according to a source who spoke to The Times on Saturday. While there is “no doubting the passion on either side of the asylum issue” and the prince’s “trenchantly held opinions were, to be sure, vented privately rather than as part of a public address”, the “potential for word to get out is a factor that senior royals must always take into account”, said The Times. Clarence House has not denied the report. Prince Charles has given “tacit indications that as monarch he will know to avoid controversy” but neither has he “shied from it before”. Some of his causes have been humanitarian and others, “such as his lobbying for homoeopathy, have no merit”. But Prince Charles – and second in line to the throne, Prince William – “need to show care in not using their hereditary privilege as a pulpit”.

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2. Millions of men support our abortion rights. We need to help them become stronger allies

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in The Guardian

on pro-choice men

“As the conversation about abortion rages, it strikes me that I have never heard a man tell his abortion story publicly,” writes Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in The Guardian. “But what, if you’ll forgive me for ironically borrowing a well-worn phrase, about the men? We hear a lot, too much, from men who are anti-abortion, and little from those who support it, or who have benefited from it,” she continues. “Men who are pro-choice, who have perhaps been told that abortion is a women’s issue, may feel the sensitive thing to do is to not speak at all,” Cosslett writes. “But can’t we find a way for men to talk about abortion without infringing a woman’s bodily autonomy, or speaking over her, so that they can become the ultimate allies: men who acknowledge that abortion will never relate to their bodies, but who support it because they believe it is a right.”

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3. Companies are treating the non-tech savvy like second-class citizens

Jane Shilling in The Telegraph

on customer care

An increasing number of companies “actively avoid direct communication with their customers”, writes Jane Shilling in The Telegraph, and instead leave customers to navigate a range of digital options and chatbots. What is striking about these online encounters is their “utter detachment from reality”, she writes. What once would have been “a simple negotiation between a customer and a supplier” has now become “the sole responsibility of the customer”, she says. For many people, such an experience is merely frustrating and time-consuming. “But for a significant number of people, who don’t have – or want – a smartphone, who live in an area (as I do) where mobile coverage is poor, or are unable to navigate a digital world as opaque as an unknown language, the domination of the smartphone in all areas of life, from parking to accessing a bank account or a doctor’s appointment, is a means of grievous social exclusion.”

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4. Boris’s rewilding obsession could backfire

Ross Clark in The Spectator

on competing policies

“Does Boris Johnson have the faintest idea what he and his government are trying to achieve anymore?” asks Ross Clark in The Spectator. The government is launching a new food strategy, in which it “demands that farmers grow more fruit and vegetables to make us less reliant on imported food”. But this “pulls in exactly the opposite direction as the one it announced just five months ago”. The new strategy contradicts Defra’s Landscape Recovery scheme, which seeks to “rewild” some 300,000 hectares of farmland. It may be that the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues have “changed their minds in reaction to the Ukraine war and the soaring price of food”, Clark contends. But if that is the case, “then they will have to withdraw” the rewilding plans. He concludes: “What the government cannot possibly do is to sustain two contradictory policies at the same time: one encouraging farmers to rewild their land and another trying to persuade farmers to turn wild land back into farmland. So, which is it to be: rewilding and green energy – or food security?”

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5. Is Prince Andrew the most deluded man in Britain?

Sean O’Grady in The Independent

on an unwelcome return

“Is Prince Andrew the most deluded man in Britain? Without knowing his precise views on Brexit (and one fears the worst) which could place him in a clear, unassailable lead, he must be in contention for this unhappy title,” writes Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Having lost his public role as a result of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal only a few months ago, Prince Andrew “wants his job back”. And “part of Andrew’s road to recovery”, according to royal sources, will involve him “being sequestered in Scotland to ‘rebuild’”. “Perhaps the flunkies and the men in moustaches down at Buck House should be told that Scotland has telephones these days, not to mention paparazzi, the internet, inquisitive journalists and a sense of shame,” writes O’Grady. He’ll “have to do and say and acknowledge an awful lot more to regain public respect than living in the comfort of Balmoral (presumably) doing not much for a few months (ie situation normal),” he writes. And in just a few days, at the annual Garter ceremony, “the Duke of York will be entitled to parade in fancy dress at Windsor Castle”, says O’Grady. “Too soon, Andrew. Way too soon.”

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1. The three steps Boris must take to save himself

David Frost in The Telegraph

On a serious plan

“The tumult and the shouting in the Conservative Party has died,” writes Lord Frost in The Telegraph, but the threat to Boris Johnson remains. The Tory peer urges the PM not to “ignore” the scale of discontent among his own MPs. Offering his advice to his former boss, he calls for tax rises to be reversed, VAT on energy bills to be slashed and the formulation of a “10-year Conservative plan” for changing Britain. “The ministerial team needs a refresh, but once that is done, ministers should be allowed to get on with their jobs,” he says. Frost acknowledges that Johnson “doesn’t like upsetting people” but insists that “any serious plan means making choices”. He says Johnson “needs to move, and fast”.

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2. If you want truffles, you have to get down with the pigs – it’s time for Keir Starmer to get nasty

Ayesha Hazarika for The i

On dirty hands

“With the Prime Minister on the ropes,” PMQs this week “should have been a chance for Starmer to be centre stage, landing blows and showing that he was ready and up for the fight,” writes Ayesha Hazarika on the i news site. “Starmer and his team do need to do better,” says the former political adviser to Labour. “He needs fresh content which the public actually care about – not all internal party politics and factional rows with the hard left.” She also says the Labour leader needs to get his hands dirtier. “He must have big ideas but he needs to be able to get into the often unseemly guts of the raw politics of the day – especially against Boris Johnson,” she writes. “If you want truffles, you have to get down with the pigs.”

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3. Sheryl Sandberg isn’t the first woman to realise that work in your 50s is no walk in the park

Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian

On a difficult decade

“Sheryl Sandberg is leaning out,” writes Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. “The queen of ‘can do’ American feminism is quitting Meta (formerly Facebook) after 14 years at the top of one of the world’s most powerful companies, for a future that sounds suspiciously vague.” However, says Hinsliff, Sandberg “isn’t the first 52-year-old woman to take stock of her life and decide it’s not too late to change, or even to discover that this is a messier and more unforgiving decade than it looks”. Midlife can “be a time of drama and surprises, as women who have hauled themselves over all the early hurdles fall at a second set of fences they simply hadn’t been expecting,” she says. “An older, wiser Sandberg has the financial and cultural clout to become an interesting advocate for older women if she chooses.”

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4. Ben & Jerry’s is wrong about Britain’s ‘racist’ Rwanda plan

Sam Ashworth-Hayes in The Spectator

On startling sentiments

“Why is an ice cream brand lecturing Britain on the morality of its immigration policy?” asks Sam Ashworth-Hayes in The Spectator. “Ben and Jerry’s, otherwise known for flogging overpriced junk food, has weighed in on the government’s new policy of sending mostly single men dodging Britain’s border control to Rwanda,” he continues. “It is not ‘racist’ for the people who currently live in Britain – no matter their ethnicity – to demand a say over who their new countrymen are,” he argues. The Rwanda policy is “clearly a massively controversial and highly political topic”, which “makes it all the more startling that Ben and Jerry’s – which, again, exists to sell ice cream – has made strong views on British immigration policy a major part of its online presence”.

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5. Ministers must defend the right to criticise religion

Jawad Iqbal in The Times

On sleepwalking society

“Britain prides itself on being free of blasphemy laws,” writes Jawad Iqbal in The Times, “rightly judging that this would be an infringement on freedom of religion and free expression, in particular the right to challenge religious ideas and beliefs.” However, he continues, “cinemas across the country are busy cancelling screenings of a film about Islam at the behest of an angry religious mob”. Indeed the UK is “sleepwalking into blasphemy protections for certain religious beliefs – all because politicians are too scared to fight for democratic and secular values in case they offend religious sensitivities”. He adds that “of course it is important to be considerate of our fellow citizens’ religious beliefs” but “those who shout loudest about their sensitivities must never be allowed the final word”.

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Boris Johnson is hoping to revive his political fortunes with a blitz of policy announcements after narrowly winning a confidence vote brought against him by his own backbench MPs.

After a weekend of celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, Johnson has been left clinging to his premiership after a Monday night confidence vote saw 41% of Conservative MPs vote against his leadership.

The vote exposed “deep rifts” within the Conservative parliamentary party, which is likely to pose a “continuing threat” to his authority as Johnson attempts to lead his party into the next election, said The Times.

Johnson himself hailed the result as a “decisive” and “convincing” win, but the margin of victory is far smaller than was afforded to Theresa May in a confidence vote on her premiership in 2018 – she was forced to resign less than seven months later.

Johnson has attempted to revive his premiership with two major speeches in which he promised tax cuts and set out plans to extend the Thatcher-era Right to Buy scheme to housing association renters, as well as allow people to use housing benefits to go towards their mortgage.

But among his raft of promises to the electorate were some bitter pills to swallow, too. He argued that workers will have to settle for real-terms pay cuts to avoid 1970s-style “stagflation” and soaring interest rates, and rowed back on a manifesto promise to build 300,000 new homes by 2025.

“I can’t give a cast-iron guarantee we are going to get to a particular number [of new houses] in a particular year,” he told reporters after his keynote speech in Blackpool yesterday.

New policy announcements may not be enough to save his ailing premiership. Writing in The Daily Telegraph today, Johnson’s former Brexit minister David Frost warned he could be ousted from Downing Street by the autumn if he failed to recognise the “depth of opposition” he faces within his party.

Frost called for Johnson to set out a “10-year Conservative plan to restore the viability of the British state”, reverse controversial tax increases, and cut VAT on energy bills.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?

• Two Britons captured by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine have been sentenced to death by pro-Kremlin officials after a days-long trial. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has branded the sentences a “sham judgement”.
• Britain will supply Ukraine with cutting-edge M270 rocket launchers to help the country defend itself from ongoing Russian attacks, the Ministry of Defence has announced. The US will send similar weapons.
• A massive hunt was launched for journalist Dom Phillips, who has gone missing in the Amazon rainforest days after reportedly receiving death threats.
• The UK could face the biggest rail strike in modern history as more than 40,000 staff from Network Rail and 13 train operators plan industrial action in June.
• The cost of filling an average family car with petrol has hit £100 on what the RAC described as a “truly dark day” for motorists.

1. Boris is deluded if he thinks firing Sunak can save him from oblivion

Allister Heath in The Telegraph

on chancellors and scapegoats

“Will Rishi Sunak jump, or will he be pushed?” asks Allister Heath in The Telegraph. Boris Johnson’s allies have reportedly “urged him” to appoint Jeremy Hunt as chancellor, while some of Sunak’s supporters “believe that, even at this late date, he would be better off leaping from a sinking ship”. But “such drastic action wouldn’t be enough to save the career of either man”. The prime minister may fire the chancellor “in a shameless attempt to pin the taxes and looming recession entirely” on Sunak, but “such a cynical ploy wouldn’t by itself rescue the PM”, writes Heath. “Virtually every decision” Johnson has taken since 2019 “has conspired to undermine” the “historic achievement” of delivering “a clean Brexit”. Britain faces “major, historic challenges” that require “bold and imaginative solutions” – sacking Sunak “won’t answer these epic questions, as even Boris Johnson must surely realise”.

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2. The infuriating reason why Fox News won’t broadcast the January 6 hearings live

Noah Berlatsky in The Independent

on channel choices

There is “an expected dynamic to political scandals”, writes Noah Berlatsky in the Independent. “Politician does bad thing, politician tries to cover it up, news media tries to expose the story” is how it used to go. But “thanks to the increasing dominance of hyper-partisan right-wing media”, they often now take a “different trajectory”. Now, “when conservative politicians do something horrible, Fox News” and other “like-minded imitators don’t try to expose the truth. They rush to cover it up.” Most networks are providing live, continuous coverage of the 6 January insurrection hearings “because it is a major, important news event”. But Fox News “is taking a different route”, instead broadcasting them on Fox Business, a much smaller channel than its flagship. “This is hardly the first time Fox has tried to mislead its viewers about the insurrection,” says Berlatsky. “Fox barely pretends to engage in journalism” and now “it is attempting to keep evidence of Republican complicity in the insurrection from its viewers”.

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3. Isn’t it frightening that a lone woman seeing a policeman now feels afraid, not reassured?

Zoe Williams in The Guardian

on rising fear

The Metropolitan Police is pressing its case against six people who attended the vigil for Sarah Everard in March last year. “At every turn, the force’s behaviour has been the exact opposite of what it should have been,” writes Zoe Williams in The Guardian. Any killing by the police “changes policing for ever, and changes the experience of being a police officer”. It is “impossible to overstate how damaging it is that a woman on her own, seeing a policeman, would be more likely to feel afraid than reassured”. Williams thinks that “the Met’s approach was too often similar to that of the Vatican when allegations of sex offences were first made against priests: circle the wagons, protect the insiders, wait for it to pass”. If a women’s citizen army were to spontaneously mass, “the Met needs to hear it… How can you show that you’re listening if you won’t acknowledge people's anger?”

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4. China’s smart cities have gone from utopia to dystopia

Frédéric Lemaître in Le Monde

on padlocking down

“Is it a coincidence” that Shanghai was named “the world’s smartest city” in February just as it became “the world’s largest prison”? writes Frédéric Lemaître in Le Monde, with 25 million people “strictly confined to their homes”. It may be “too early to draw up a balance sheet of this great – probably unprecedented – lockdown”, but the toll “has been much more dramatic than authorities have claimed”. The “illusion of a ‘dynamic’ management of zero Covid” has, says the French paper’s Beijing correspondent, “failed miserably”. At the end of March “Shanghai authorities were reduced to the most ancient of solutions: forcing the population to stay at home by putting good old padlocks on the doors of their residences”. In attempting to curb the spread of the virus, “China’s smart cities have been moving from utopia to dystopia”.

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5. Is the #MeToo movement dying?

Spencer Bokat-Lindell in The New York Times

on limited potential?

“If there is a standard metric by which the progress of the #MeToo movement has been measured, it is the conviction of high-profile men accused by women and girls of sex crimes,” writes Spencer Bokat-Lindell in The New York Times. It’s “small wonder, then” that the legal battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard “has been read as a low-water mark for the movement”. Even before the verdict last week, “commentators were declaring ‘the death’ and ‘the end’ of #MeToo”. Some say the movement “hasn’t actually done much to curtail sexual harassment and abuse”, and social media conversation around the trial “could indicate that the court of public opinion is also becoming less friendly to accusers”. But “Was #MeToo’s potential limited from the start?” Some have pointed to the movement’s “overreliance on punishment” to produce “social change for all women, not just the most well-off ones like many a Hollywood actress”, as a significant “flaw”.

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A bakery in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv has named a croissant after the UK’s prime minister. “Boris Johnson is not just a prime minister but is also now a croissant,” announced Cafe Zavertailo on Instagram this week. The accompanying photograph features row of pastries with meringue toppings, crowned with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to represent the PM’s chaotic locks. “We sell loads of them,” a spokeswoman told The Telegraph. “We can only make 42 at a time, three times a day, but we sell all we make within hours.”

Random Instagrammer offers to marry Heard

A stranger has offered to marry Amber Heard after she lost her case with Johnny Depp. The Saudi man sent a voice note to Heard’s official Instagram account and called himself better than “old man” Depp, News 18 reported. “Amber since all doors are closing on you, you have no one except me to take care of you,” he said. “I’ve noticed that some people hate and bully you, therefore, I decided to marry you. May Allah bless us both. You are a blessing, but people don’t appreciate that.”

Del Boy is a literary work

Derek “Del Boy” Trotter, the market trader in the TV sitcom Only Fools and Horses, has been deemed a “literary work” following a high court copyright ruling. The Guardian noted that the character’s new status was legally defined after a company, set up by the creator of the BBC comedy, won its copyright battle with the operators of an “interactive theatrical dining experience”, Only Fools the (Cushty) Dining Experience. The judge said that the character of Del Boy was a literary work, and that each script of the series was a dramatic work.

Fresh off the weekend's Platinum Jubilee excitement, public attention in the United Kingdom turned Monday toward embattled Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who survived a vote of no confidence led by disgruntled members of his own party. The final tally came in at 211 to 148. Here's everything you need to know:

Alright, back up — what happened here?

On Monday, Conservative Party official Graham Brady announced he had received letters from 54 of the 359 Tory MPs expressing a lack of faith in Johnson's leadership, thus triggering a vote of no confidence against the prime minister. The vote was held on Monday evening.

The expression of dissatisfaction with Johnson's leadership was anchored in a number of factors. For one thing, there are his contradicting sets of strengths and weaknesses, Mark Landler writes for The New York Times, citing Johnson's "rare political intuition" that is often "offset by breathtaking personal recklessness." But a number of catastrophic global events outside of Johnson's control — like the COVID-19 pandemic, rampant inflation, and a war in Ukraine — have also compounded his problems.

Nowhere, however, did it seem the prime minister suffered more than in the scandal that would eventually become known as "Partygate," in which Downing Street officials (including Johnson himself) were found violating their own stringent lockdown restrictions and taking part in social gatherings that were, at the time, forbidden. In November, when news of the festivities first broke, Johnson denied flouting any laws. But a police investigation later determined that wasn't true, and Johnson "himself was fined for attending his own birthday party in violation of the rules," Landler writes.

Though the war in Ukraine soon proved a welcome distraction from the Partygate press, it couldn't eclipse the scandal forever. During Jubilee celebrations on Friday, for example, Johnson and his wife were booed by the crowd. Monday's no-confidence vote was just the latest development in the saga.

"Tonight is a chance to end months of speculation and allow the government to draw a line and move on, delivering on the people's priorities," a government spokesperson said Monday, ahead of the vote. Johnson, meanwhile, "welcomes the opportunity to make his case to MPs and will remind them that when they're united and focused on the issues that matter to voters there is no more formidable political force."

How did the vote work?

The no-confidence vote was first triggered after 54 Tory lawmakers — more than the required 15 percent threshold — confidentially and formally requested one.

Then, on Monday, between 6 and 8 p.m. local time, MPs cast their vote as to whether or not they believed Johnson should remain in power. Notably, the vote itself was also secret, meaning "MPs who have stayed publicly loyal to Johnson" could still have voted to oust him — as long as they were "willing to lie about it afterward," CNN writes.

The final tally — 211 to 148 — fell short of the 180 votes needed to remove Johnson from office. Unless rules are changed (which is possible), MPs must now wait at least a year before holding another no-confidence vote, the Times adds.

Have votes like this happened before?

Absolutely. Former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May survived a no-confidence vote in 2018, though she resigned several months later. Before that, in 1995, John Major prevailed in a leadership challenge he brought on himself, only to lose in the 1997 general election. And in 1990, Margaret Thatcher was effectively forced out after winning one no-confidence vote in 1989 but conceding in another a year later.

Was Johnson's victory expected?

A number of political analysts on Monday predicted Johnson would succeed in fending off the ouster, but that "the vote could be remarkably close for a prime minister who helped his party win a landslide election in 2019," reports The Washington Post. His victory might also have something to do with the lack of a clear and obvious successor within his party, the Post adds.

What would have happened if Johnson lost?

In the event Johnson had lost the no-confidence vote, Conservative MPs would have begun the long process of replacing him. First, they would nominate and vote on candidates until there were just two possible options. Then they would open up the contest to "the nation's Conservative Party membership, which would vote to choose a new leader," writes The Wall Street Journal.

As for who might have stepped forward to replace Johnson, there was, of course, some speculation. Most frequently mentioned were Liz Truss, the "crowd-pleasing foreign secretary," and former Health Secretary and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Truss is popular with the base of the Conservative Party, the Times notes, and her profile received a boost when Johnson entrusted her with negotiating Northern Ireland's trade status with the EU. Hunt, on the other hand, would have offered "a cleaner break with Johnson's leadership and potentially a move back toward the center [...]." The Week U.K. had given Hunt 4/1 odds and Truss 7/1 odds in its evaluation of hypothetical contenders.

Will all the drama be put to rest now that Johnson's won?

Not necessarily. For one thing, that there was a vote at all "could cripple [the prime minister] as an effective and credible leader," the Times notes. Both he and his party will nonetheless "struggle to rebuild their brand in the face of soaring inflation and diminished public trust," adds the Post.

And history isn't exactly on Johnson's side. May and Thatcher were each later forced out after winning no-confidence votes, and Major lost the election following his. For both Thatcher and May, a "key factor" in their downfall was the resignation of a number of cabinet ministers, and it's possible Johnson's team rebels similarly.

There's also always a chance Johnson cuts his losses and decides to leave office on his own, rather than suffer through the drama again.

What did European leaders have to say about all of this?

News of the no-confidence vote was initially "greeted with mixed feelings in the European legislature," where Johnson notably lacks allies, Politico reports. But despite the body's cool attitude towards the prime minister, some were concerned an "even pricklier" European Union partner would emerge in his place.

"Johnson's departure would be good news for anyone who cares about the relationship between the EU and the U.K," Jeroen Lenaers, member of the EU-U.K. Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, told Politico. That said, "we don't know who would replace him, and it could be better or worse."

Now what?

Johnson's so-called victory marks "just the beginning of" his "fight for survival," argues The Atlantic, calling the prime minister "a populist who is no longer popular." But the problems Johnson faced were not exclusively of his own making — rather, "Johnson is just the latest prime minister to fail spectacularly at the job, though in his case, in uniquely grubby circumstances. He won't be the last."

Be that as it may, "only Boris Johnson would try to carry on after a vote like this," Tom Peck wrote for The Independent. Indeed, "his salvation may have been the lack of an obvious successor," The Washington Post adds. "There remains an active open rebellion from within the party, with many top voices now on-the-record saying this prime minister is unfit to serve."

Boris Johnson is staying put.

The British prime minister, who has been embroiled in scandal over revelations of lockdown-breaking parties at 10 Downing Street, on Monday survived a vote of no-confidence that could have resulted in his removal from office.

The final vote was 211 to 148, and he needed a simple majority of 180 votes to survive — though The Washington Post wrote that the vote was "remarkably close" all things considered, and ITV News' Paul Brand noted it was a "worse result than Theresa May suffered" in 2018.

The vote of no-confidence was initiated by discontented members of Johnson's own Conservative Party, with Sir Graham Brady announcing earlier on Monday that 54 of the 360 Tory MPs supported a vote. Johnson's office said he welcomed "the opportunity to make his case to MPs," adding that the vote would offer a "chance to end months of speculation and allow the government to draw a line and move on." Johnson surviving the vote means he can't face a vote of no-confidence for another year.

The British prime minister has been resisting calls to step down in the wake of reports of multiple parties at his office and official residence that violated his government's own COVID-19 protocols. The "Partygate" scandal resulted in Johnson being personally fined, and an investigation faulted his government for its "failures of leadership and judgment."

Though Johnson survived the vote, The New York Times noted that the "too-close-for-comfort result" leaves him "badly wounded."

1. The Times view on modern working: four-day week

The Times

on an experiment in efficiency

“Lockdown has led to the biggest change in the way people work since the Industrial Revolution,” says The Times. Technology “can bring the office to your own kitchen or bedroom, day or night”. But, the paper’s editorial says, “it won’t last”. Despite “myriad claims” of benefits to workers, “in most offices people are back at their desks”. “But are they more efficient?” the paper asks. An experiment has begun to see if workers can be more productive by working a four-day week, without taking a pay cut. “Will it help working mothers, cut energy use or lead to a happier workforce?” If so, it could establish “a new norm”. If not, “it will mean back to the office for everyone”. France has tested the theory before, and “it was disastrous. Jobs were not finished, overtime was not allowed and everyone complained.” Now, “robots” are “taking over”. “One day they’ll do it all for us and we’ll stay at home, controlling things in our pyjamas.”

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2. I may be wrong but I think Boris Johnson is done for. I can’t see his Tory cult surviving

Polly Toynbee in The Guardian

on ‘calamitous leadership’

“The jubilee coup is under way,” says Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. “The rumbling turmoil in the Tory party is a wonder to behold – but it runs deep, stretching far further back in time than Boris Johnson’s brief calamitous leadership.” The Conservative Party “used to pick itself up and start all over again with some new face and logo”, but “not this time”. The party is “riddled with eccentric ideologues too remote from moderate election-winning ground to select any leader but one of their ilk”. It’s said that Johnson “will have to be dragged out, clinging to No. 10’s handle”. For now, says Toynbee, “watch the dangerous spectacle of Johnson hurling everything at shoring up Tory MPs’ votes”. “I may be wrong,” this writer says. “But talk to people, read the runes, feel the shifting ground.” This time around “the ruling party’s breathtaking incompetence and hubris is weighed down with public service failures and a brutal cost of living crisis”.

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3. Justin Trudeau’s heartless hypocrisy

James Jeffrey in The Critic

on gold mining

Deposits of gold and other precious metals in the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray “appear to be a significant reason why Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not spoken out more forcibly against Ethiopia’s now 18-month-long conflict and all its crimes”, writes James Jeffrey in The Critic. His “quiet is very much at odds with his pledge” that Canada stands for democracy, peace and security. References to the conflict have been made in “round-about platitudinous terms supportive of the Ethiopian government that never actually mention Tigray itself”. The region is “seen as a potential treasure chest for Canadian gold-mining companies”, with mineral deposits worth a possible $4bn. “The general consensus” is that “the Canadian government has made the call that speaking out won’t make any difference to ending the war”. Jeffrey says: “Therefore, better to keep public pronouncements diplomatically restrained.” This situation has “held a mirror up to the darker side of Canada”. In Trudeau’s case, “the emperor doesn’t only have no clothes” – “he doesn’t have much of a heart either”.

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4. Who wants to be a stripper?

Kat Rosenfield at UnHerd

on ‘the female form’

“One of the few things that has remained constant in 200,000 years of human history is our fascination with the female form,” writes Kat Rosenfield at UnHerd. “And the only thing more exciting than a woman’s naked body is a body that is not yet naked, or never entirely so, glimpsed bit by bit in a slow unveiling that stops short of sex itself.” There’s an “intrigue surrounding strippers”, and society has a “conflicted relationship with them”. “We pity them. We envy them. We want to help them and also just want them,” she writes. “The eternal fascination with sex-adjacent professions” from time to time “coalesces into a pop cultural moment”. It’s happening now, with “multiple memoirs” being published – “without the implied subtext that these are the stories of fallen women”. The “most compelling story” of them all is “just the truth” – that “stripping is hard, and fun, and sad, and exciting, and messy, and human, and it's no surprise that 200,000 years later, we’re still writing songs about it”.

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5. Does Alcoholics Anonymous actually work?

Ian Hamilton in The Independent

on addiction

“There is an organisation that has been around longer than the Queen and is almost as popular, with millions of members worldwide,” writes Ian Hamilton in The Independent. “It is Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).” The organisation has a “place in our collective consciousness”, but “what do we actually know about how effective it is in supporting people from addiction to sobriety?” this writer asks. AA “has been slow to evolve over its lifetime”, and there is “still a belief that the only goal people should aim for is complete abstinence from alcohol”. That “won’t be achievable or necessary for many”. Hamilton says: “There is also a darker side to AA that is rarely mentioned, namely how members can be exploited” through the “buddy system” it operates. There is “an obvious benefit to members’ anonymity” but that “doesn’t absolve AA from its responsibility to objectively scrutinise not only its effectiveness, but serious reports of exploitation”.

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will face a vote of confidence in Parliament on Monday night, London time, after a backbench revolt by members of his own Conservative Party, Sir Graham Brady announced Monday morning. Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee that oversees Conservative leadership challenges, said 54 of the 360 Tory MPs had informed him by letter that they support a vote, surpassing the 15 percent threshold.

Brady said he had informed No. 10 Downing Street of the confidence vote on Sunday and Johnson's team agreed to hold the vote as soon as possible. Many senior Conservative lawmakers, including the majority of Johnson's Cabinet, announced they will back the prime minister in Monday night's secret ballot. Johnson "welcomes the opportunity to make his case to MPs," his office said, and the vote will be "a chance to end months of speculation and allow the government to draw a line and move on" after the months-long "Partygate" scandal.

If at least 180 Tory MPs vote against Johnson, he will be forced to step down and the Conservatives will begin choosing a new leader, with Johnson ineligible to stand for re-election. If Johnson wins the vote — as his predecessor, Theresa May, did in 2019 — he is immune from another confidence vote for another 12 months.

Still, prime ministers can "win" confidence votes and lose their job, the BBC's Nick Robinson notes, pointing out that May stepped down within six months of her winning vote and Margaret Thatcher did the same eight days after surviving a confidence vote. Johnson, he added, "will probably cling on and wait for something to turn up."

"Make no mistake: confidence votes are almost always bad news for political leaders," BBC News politics editor Chris Mason writes. Plenty of Conservative MPs — "including the rebels — expect Boris Johnson to win tonight. But an arithmetical win is not the same as a political one," and "what we will get tonight is an indisputable number: the number of Tory MPs who want the prime minister out. It's a number that will hang around Boris Johnson's neck for the rest of his time in office."