Keir Starmer’s painstakingly thrashed out plan to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is facing renewed challenge.

Donald Trump originally backed the deal, under which the UK would relinquish sovereignty of the archipelago in return for a 99-year lease on the crucial US-UK Diego Garcia military base. But he began to waver after intense lobbying from US and UK politicians, including Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch. And now, perhaps irked by the UK’s refusal to allow him to use the British base there to launch potential attacks on Iran, he’s said the deal would be “a big mistake”.

UK opponents of the deal are now “increasingly optimistic they can block” Parliament from voting it into law and “force Starmer into a U-turn”, said The i Paper’s deputy political editor Arj Singh.

What did the commentators say?

The amount of time, effort and political capital Labour has spent over this deal may seem “odd”, said former Foreign Office special adviser Ben Judah in The Sunday Times but “it was not human rights waffle or some misguided fantasy about pleasing the global south that brought us to this point”. Following a 2019 International Court of Justice “advisory opinion” against continued British ownership of Chagos, both the UK and US risked losing access to the strategically vital military base or, worse, it falling into the hands of China.

The problem for Starmer is that the “three-step logic” driving the deal “cannot be expressed in a Tweet, or by a government spokesman, without causing diplomatic pain and embarrassment”. This means the deal is open to attack “from all sides for what it is not”: “woke” lawyer activism, “a misguided soft power exercise drawn up by brain-dead diplomats, even treason”. Actually, it is “a piece of Realpolitik firmly grounded in geopolitical trade-offs”.

Despite his latest salvo on Truth Social, Trump “hasn’t explicitly stated whether he will veto the Chagos agreement”, said Kamlesh Bhuckory and Ellen Milligan on Bloomberg. “The UK government is looking into whether he has the power to do so”, aware that former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, a vocal critic of the deal, has said it will fail without US support.

Mauritius, for its part, has accused a group of Chagossians, who have “settled” on a remote island in the archipelago, of staging a publicity stunt to scupper the deal. There are also reports that Mauritius “may launch legal action for compensation” if the treaty is cancelled, said The Telegraph’s editorial board. This only shows that “the financial aspect of this deal is far more important to Mauritius than the spurious claim to sovereignty under international law”. Trump’s “new-found antipathy” has offered Starmer “a way out of the hole he has dug for himself. He needs to take it.”

What next?

Starmer “has to get the treaty ratified before May or it fails”, said David Maddox in The Independent. The government has pulled plans for a vote in the House of Lords on Tuesday but there is still “some small hope” for the PM with signs that Liberal Democrat peers may abstain when the vote returns in early March. Even then, it still has to return to the House of Commons for final ratification.

Whatever brickbats have been thrown his way, Starmer has been praised for “his international statesmanship” but “now the Chagos nightmare suggests even that is unravelling for this ill-fated PM”.

As many as 23,000 UK deaths could have been avoided if the first lockdown had happened a week earlier, according to the findings of the Covid-19 Inquiry. The government’s response to the deadly virus was “too little, too late”.

The 760-page report of the second part of the inquiry’s hearings makes for “grim reading for the country’s former prime minister, and much of his top team”, said Andrew McDonald in Politico. “Boris Johnson, look away now.”

‘Lack of urgency’ led to ‘inexcusable’ delays

“A combination of incompetence and over-optimism at the heart of government” meant that warnings from China were “dismissed for weeks”, said Eleanor Hayward and Oliver Wright in The Times.

Inaction and palpable “scepticism” turned February 2020 into “a lost month”, said inquiry chair Heather Hallett. Covid cases were soaring but the Cabinet did not meet during the half-term break and Johnson did not chair a single meeting of the Cobra emergency committee.

Scientific models suggest that a nationwide lockdown on 16 March “would have halved the number of deaths in the first wave” but, by the time a lockdown was even considered, a week later, it “was already too late”. It was a difficult decision but the delays were still “inexcusable” – particularly when the same mistake was made before the second lockdown in November.

Downing Street culture was ‘toxic and chaotic’

Johnson “reinforced” a “toxic and chaotic” environment at the centre of government, in which the views of colleagues, “particularly women, often went ignored, to the detriment of good decision-making”, Hallett said.

This spread further than the prime minister. His special adviser at the time, Dominic Cummings, “materially contributed” to the sexist workplace culture. One “particularly disgraceful” WhatsApp message – “we cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that c***” – was symptomatic of his “offensive, sexualised and misogynistic language”.

Devolved nations ‘overly reliant’ on Westminster

The devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had to make “unenviable choices”, the report said. But they “failed to engage with the threat” and were “overly reliant” on Westminster to lead the response. A “lack of trust” between Johnson and the administrations’ First Ministers “coloured the approach to decision-making throughout the pandemic”.

None of the national cabinets acted with “sufficient speed” in the emerging crisis. The first case in Wales, for example, was identified on 28 February but, on 4 March, First Minister Mark Drakeford “chose to attend St David’s Day celebrations in Brussels rather than the Welsh Cabinet meeting”. In Northern Ireland and Scotland, “Covid-19 was only discussed under ‘any other business’ in meetings until as late as 24 and 25 February respectively”.

Partygate ‘undermined public confidence’

Rule-breaking and “Partygate” events resulted in public outcry. Then deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara told the inquiry that she “would find it hard to pick one day when the regulations were followed properly inside” No. 10.

Officials and ministers breaking lockdown rules, and that rule-breaking not being swiftly addressed, “undermined public confidence in decision-making and significantly increased the risk of people not complying with the rules designed to protect them,” said Hallett.

Scientific advice ‘flawed’ and ‘bamboozled’ polticians

Under the heading “Flawed scientific advice”, the report notes that, until 14 and 15 March, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance “advised that restrictions should not be implemented until closer to the peak of infections”. They believed the public might tire of complying with restrictions if they were imposed too early and went on for too long.

However, “scientific advisers had not appreciated the likelihood of the NHS being overwhelmed before then”. At this point, there was a lack of adequate infection data, as well as hospital and health service data.

The inquiry heard that “many ministers lacked confidence in their ability to understand technical material”, said Jessica Murray in The Guardian, with Johnson in particular singled out for struggling with scientific concepts. Vallance’s notes from the time said Johnson was “bamboozled” and that watching him “get his head around the stats was awful”.

Hallett made 19 recommendations, adding to the 10 issued in the first report. More will follow in eight further reports, set to be published over the next two years.

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.

British electricity prices, which were among the lowest in Europe in the early 2000s, are now very high by global standards.

Only Denmark, Germany and Ireland have more expensive domestic electricity, while industry pays at least 50% more for electricity in the UK than it does in most of the rest of Europe – and over three times more than in the US. Although this is bad for everyone, particularly poorer households, arguably the real crisis is in industry.

Energy-intensive manufacturers have been hit hard, leading to the closure of factories such as the CF Fertilisers plant in Billingham, and the Ineos oil refinery in Grangemouth; the steel industry is on its knees. Lowering energy bills is one of the current Government’s core “missions”, but the short-term outlook isn’t great, with the typical domestic bill set to be 44% higher this winter than four years ago.

Why are British prices so high?

The short-term cause is the Ukraine War. The average household “duel-fuel” bill (of which electricity makes up a bit more than half) went from around £1,200 per year in 2020 to £3,549 in October 2022, then down again, before creeping up to £1,720 now. The underlying causes are complex: they include an ageing national grid; high network operating costs; a lack of storage; and the practicalities of being on an island (in Europe, electricity can be transmitted to where it’s needed more easily). Finally, there are “policy costs”: levies to support green energy and vulnerable customers. Of a typical electricity bill, under Ofgem’s price cap (the highest tariff providers can charge), about 20% consists of network costs; 15% is the energy supplier’s costs; 11% is policy costs; 5% is VAT; and suppliers’ profits are 2.4%. But the biggest chunk, around 45% of a bill, is the wholesale cost of energy, which is largely dictated by the price of natural gas, which is both high and volatile, for reasons beyond government control.

Why is it underpinned by the price of gas?

UK non-fossil fuel sources – wind, solar, hydroelectricity, bioenergy and nuclear – generated around 58% of the UK’s electricity last year, with wind alone providing around a third of the country’s power since 2023. And wind and solar are, in theory, very cheap. However, much electricity for the grid is bought short-term, with an auction for every half-hour period, and the price is determined by the most expensive provider for that moment. Electricity is bought from generators – wind farms, power plants – in “merit order”: cheapest first. But the price for all is set by the last or “marginal” generator needed; and in the UK that’s almost invariably a gas-powered turbine. This is known as “marginal pricing”.

Why on earth use this system?

Electrical grids must be exactly balanced between supply and demand. In the UK, gas-powered plants are the only practical means of topping up the grid during a sudden shortage. Nuclear reactors can’t quickly be switched on and off; wind and solar are intermittent, and we can’t yet store enough of their output. For now, the only way to be sure of keeping the lights on when there’s a surge in demand involves gas. As a matter of economics, many, from Boris Johnson to the energy supplier Octopus, have questioned marginal pricing. But both Labour and Tory governments have concluded that it is the most efficient system; it is used across most of Europe and the US.

So how much do renewables cost?

In theory, the green part of “policy costs” comprises under 10% of our electricity bills. But the true price is much higher. Connecting the grid to wind and solar farms is expensive, as is back-up and grid-balancing. In 2024/25, about £2.7bn was spent balancing the grid – for instance, paying wind farms to “curtail” generation when the system was overloaded. Besides, high gas-derived prices often govern real renewable prices anyway. The UK relies heavily on gas, because it got rid of coal-fired stations. Marginal pricing means gas set the price of electricity 98% of the time in Britain in 2023, compared with the European average of 58% (in France, prices are mostly set by cheaper nuclear, and in Poland, by coal).

What is the Government’s solution?

To help industry, Labour is exempting around 7,000 companies from some levies, with extra support for those in energy-intensive sectors such as chemicals, steel and glass. But its long-term plan is to take gas largely out of the electricity system: to reach “grid net zero” (95% carbon-free electricity) by 2030. The UK will need about twice the generating capacity as it did pre-renewables, and a much more complex, dispersed grid. It is investing several billion pounds in renewables, aiming to double onshore wind capacity, triple solar and quadruple offshore wind by 2030; it is also investing heavily in nuclear, in projects such as Sizewell C in Suffolk. At the same time, it aims to improve network capacity and boost grid storage, with vast batteries and pumped hydropower. The hope is that, in the future, the marginal price will seldom be set by gas – greatly driving down UK energy costs, cutting emissions and creating high-quality green jobs.

Is this realistic?

Many are sceptical. Dieter Helm, the Oxford energy economist, doubts that renewables will reduce bills long-term. Decarbonising the grid by 2030 would be a massive undertaking. Big British infrastructure projects usually run hugely over budget and schedule. Mechanisms for balancing a mostly renewable grid are untested, and will be expensive. Vast amounts will need to be invested – which will come, ultimately, from Britain’s electricity bills. Manufacturing is likely to be lost to nations with cheaper power. Although reducing emissions is a worthy aim, if those emissions only go abroad, it won’t help the climate. Helm thinks it would be better to move more slowly, and to be cautious about phasing out fossil fuels.

Marginal pricing: the alternatives

The present Government has looked into having a “split market” – separate pricing systems for renewables and the rest. A linked idea, which has been pushed and fought against by opposing armies of lobbyists, is “zonal pricing”: replacing a single national price for electricity with different prices for different zones, lower in areas with cheap generation nearby.

Industrial areas such as Teesside and Grangemouth that are near offshore wind farms could, with lower prices, attract energy intensive industries such as steel, fertilisers, or data centres. Wind farms would no longer need to be paid to be turned off. Octopus Energy CEO Greg Jackson thinks the scheme would bring costs down by £5bn a year. The Government rejected zonal pricing in July. It was deemed too politically difficult: it would risk creating a “postcode lottery”, with customers in some regions paying more than others. Ministers also concluded that it would be too difficult to implement. Marginal pricing is a fiendishly complex issue, but it was thought to be the best method of setting prices in a way that incentivises investors and generators, and ensures a reliable supply. Ministers are nervous of anything that might interfere with security of supply.

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's general election campaign got off to a damp start as he announced the date of the vote outside No. 10 as heavy rain fell.

The D:Ream song "Things Can Only Get Better", used widely in Labour's 1997 election campaign, blared from a protester's speakers outside the Downing Street gates as the prime minister "became increasingly soaked", said the London Evening Standard. It was more like "Things can only get wetter". 

It joins the list of memorable moments in Downing Street in recent years.

Theresa's tears

When Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street in November 1990, she "dissolved into floods of tears", said Sky News. 

And nearly 30 years later, Theresa May did the same. "I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold," she said, after failing to deliver Brexit. She left with "no ill-will" but with "enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love".

This was the moment May's "usually steely demeanour collapsed", said The Guardian, her voice "cracking with emotion as she uttered those last few words". It was "like watching a woman shake off the patriarchal shackles she's been chained with for more than two years" and "finally exhaling", said The Independent.

Classic Cameron

In 2016, David Cameron was heard humming a tune as he walked back into No. 10 after announcing that he would resign as prime minister and hand the levers of power to May.  

There was immediate speculation over his choice of tune, with suggestions ranging from the theme tune to US political saga "The West Wing" to something from Winnie-the-Pooh.

Classic FM analysed the tune and said it was "almost fanfare-like in that confident leap of a fourth from G to C", but "quickly loses confidence when it mirrors the ascent later in the bar".

Them's the breaks

During her reign as PM, May used a podium made of "cedar", but her successor, Boris Johnson, went for a "darker wood and a sturdier design" because "aides knew he was fond of thumping it during speeches", said Mark Mason in The Spectator.

When he stood down in the summer of 2022, Johnson's farewell speech was not as gracious as that of his predecessor. He said he had "tried to persuade my colleagues that it would be eccentric to change governments when we're delivering so much", but "as we've seen, at Westminster the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves it moves".

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

Some were confused over exactly what the last phrase meant. It "deliberately breaks grammatical rules", said The Independent, and was "shorthand for suggesting he was unlucky".

Truss tower

"Never has a politician's lectern been more symbolic", said The Guardian. As Liz Truss stood outside 10 Downing Street to give her resignation speech, "all eyes were on the bizarre wooden structure that stood before her", which was "seemingly made from Jenga blocks, ready to take a tumble".

Eyebrows were raised when it later turned out that the "wonky tower" cost taxpayers nearly £4,200, said Metro. A year on, said The Mirror, the government had found no use for the "higgledy-piggledy pile of bricks".

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."

The political campaigning strategist credited with winning Boris Johnson the 2019 general election has returned to Conservative HQ as the party gears up to take the country to the polls.

It was just after the general election exit poll was announced on the evening of 12 December 2019, "indicating a crushing defeat for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party", that Conservative Party staff at their Westminster HQ "began chanting a name to the tune of The White Stripes' anthem 'Seven Nation Army': 'Oh, Isaac Levido…'", said Byline Times.

It was not "just a taunt at Corbyn, whose name had similarly been chanted to that tune by crowds of adoring supporters", but recognition from the Tory election team that "it was Levido's work as its campaign director that had delivered Boris Johnson’s landslide". 

Four years later, the Conservative Party is hoping once again that the 40-year-old "Australian wunderkind" can deliver a fifth successive election victory for Rishi Sunak's divided Tories.

The mind behind the UK's most recognisable campaign slogans

The "famously-hirsute" Levido is a protégé of "legendary campaign guru" Lynton Crosby, who helped David Cameron secure two election victories and Boris Johnson two stints as Mayor of London, said Politico. 

In political circles, Levido enjoys a quiet celebrity "best cultivated away from the cameras", said The House magazine. He is known to be "temperamentally reserved" with a "dry wit". 

Levido, 40, is said to be "obsessed" with Belgian cyclist Wout van Aert; a "domestique de luxe" in the highly successful Jumbo-Visma Tour de France team, a role which requires "half killing himself to protect his leaders and drag the team through the mountains". And Levido, it is said, expects "similar Tory discipline and graft as he tries to get Sunak over the line", said the Financial Times (FT).

Growing up in Maitland, New South Wales, he trained as an accountant before taking a master's at Georgetown University in the US, where he worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and later as a junior diplomat at the Australian embassy. 

Meeting Crosby in 2013, he joined his campaign consultancy company CTF the same year. He was brought into David Cameron's 2015 election campaign – an election that Cameron then "surprisingly won", having focused relentlessly on his "long-term economic plan", said the paper. 

As a political strategist, Levido has won a reputation as someone "adept at coming up with taut campaigning slogans", and credited with such hits as Johnson’s "Get Brexit Done" and the Covid-era "Stay at Home, Protect the NHS and Save Lives". 

He was slated for a top job as head of strategy after he helped Johnson become prime minister in 2019, but the role was instead given to the controversial political spinner Dominic Cummings. 

After the 2019 election win, Levido founded strategic communications company Fleetwood Strategy, which "has developed a reputation for discreet, data-driven influence advice", said Politico. But this month he returned to Conservative HQ to put the party on a battle-footing for the next general election, likely to come in late 2024.

Election campaign will put economy 'front and centre'

This week, Levido delivered a sharp reminder to the Tory party of the damage infighting was doing to the its election prospects. He was speaking to MPs after The Telegraph published a major poll suggesting Keir Starmer would win a majority of 120 if the election were held tomorrow.

He was quick to downplay the poll, as well as its "mysterious" Tory backers who "seem to be intent on undermining this government", said Katy Balls in The Spectator. But Levido warned MPs that "divided parties fail", adding that voters were unconvinced by Starmer and are "looking for reasons to vote for us. We must not give them any more reasons not to." 

When it comes to the message the Tories will be pushing in an election year, Levido plans to put the economy "front and centre", said Balls. And as for Brexit, the party will talk up "the benefits rather than reprosecute the case for it". 

Speaking to the FT, a veteran Conservative adviser called Levido "one of the best campaigners around". But he added that there were questions over "whether Rishi will give Isaac licence to run the campaign as he sees fit". 

"Will he be able to work with Isaac?" asked the unnamed adviser. "Frankly, they don’t have a better option."

Former prime minister Boris Johnson has joined a mounting revolt by right-wing Conservative MPs against Rishi Sunak's Rwanda bill.

Sunak is facing a Tory rebellion over concerns that his Rwanda migration policy will be "scuppered" because, in its current form, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill allows asylums seekers to lodge individual legal challenges against their deportation, said The Times. 

The PM faced a major "blow" to his authority over the weekend, said the BBC, when two deputy chairs of the Tory party, Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith, joined more than 60 MPs in backing amendments to the bill, which will return to the Commons tomorrow. And a further intervention from Johnson, whose administration introduced the Rwanda scheme, has left Sunak facing a "Conservative meltdown", said The Guardian. 

Government insiders believe the bill will pass the committee stage on Tuesday without amendments, but the third reading on Wednesday will be a "steeper challenge", as it would take just 29 Tory MPs to rebel, or 57 to abstain, for the bill to fail.

In an attempt to stave off revolt, Downing Street may announce plans to move 150 judges to the upper tribunal – the body that will hear individual legal appeals lodged by asylum seekers under the new legislation – in order to "fast-track" the process, according to The Times. But former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, as well as allies of leading Conservative rebels, told the Financial Times that the plans "did not go far enough". 

Even if Sunak does manage to get the bill passed, the "bigger problem for the PM is the rot", said Sky News's Beth Rigby. His government will face individual court battles and "perhaps a tussle" with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. And if in the end his policy doesn't work, he'll "face the wrath not just of many of his MPs but many former Conservative voters too".

It was still dark when Boris Johnson turned up for his first day of testimony at the Covid Inquiry last Wednesday, said Ian Dunt in The i Paper. 

The former PM is late for everything, yet that day, he'd made sure to arrive three hours early - presumably to avoid coming face to face with the protesters who'd gather later that morning, some holding signs branding him a murderer. Once his testimony finally began, however, there were no great surprises. 

As Baroness Hallett implied in her opening statement, Johnson had undermined the inquiry by seemingly leaking to friendly journalists what he planned to say. So we knew that he'd start with an apology; he was "deeply sorry", he said, about the "pain and the loss and the suffering" of Covid's victims; and as briefed, he admitted that mistakes had been made. But what mistakes, he was asked. From that point, it was the usual Johnson waffle. Asked, for instance, why he had not attended five Cobra meetings, in early 2020, he replied that Covid hadn't entered his consciousness as a potential national disaster. Yet the last of those five meetings was in late February – more than three weeks after the Italian government had declared a state of emergency.

'Uncharacteristically restrained'

Johnson is said to have spent almost a year preparing for his appearance; and as he was interrogated by lead counsel Hugo Keith KC, he stuck assiduously to his script, said Joe Murphy in The Independent. His first priority was saving lives, he intoned. The expert advice was mixed. He only said appalling things about old people (they'd had "a good innings") because he was playing devil's advocate; and he'd only asked stupid questions about letting the virus "rip" because he was the sole "layperson in the room", and wanted to test the replies on behalf of others. Meanwhile, the relatives in the public seating hissed their disapproval: "Shame on you!" one person called out; "How do you sleep at night, Boris?" demanded another.

Throughout, Johnson remained uncharacteristically restrained, said Tom Peck in The Times. He resisted the urge to make jokes, and kept his feelings in check. Even when four people held up a sign reading "The Dead Can't Hear Your Apology", he looked on almost respectfully. Yet what arguments could he really put up, asked Pippa Crerar in The Guardian. Even before he arrived, the inquiry had painted – in Keith's words – "an appalling picture of incompetence and disarray" at the heart of his Government.

A string of advisors had castigated his weak and vacillating leadership. His strategy was to minimise the negative headlines, which meant he could only offer evasion (he has forgotten a lot of meetings) and defensiveness: asked about his team's expletive-laden WhatsApp messages, for instance, he argued that if Mrs Thatcher's warring ministers had used WhatsApp, theirs would have been "fruity" too.

'The wrong PM at the wrong time'

To be fair, "many of his defences were valid", said The Independent. Covid was an unprecedented crisis. He was open to a wide range of expert opinion. And he did broadly follow the advice of his scientific advisers, especially at the start. So where is the evidence of his failed leadership, wondered the Daily Mail. The scientific advice was confused and often contradictory; with so much at stake, ministers, civil servants and advisers inevitably disagreed as to the best course to follow; tempers frayed and language became "salty". In high-pressure environments, that happens. Johnson has admitted that he made mistakes, but his defence for being slow to impose a lockdown was "robust".

He had to weigh up the likely impact on the economy, education and the nation's physical and mental health. These costs have, in fact, proven to be "ruinous". Yet the inquiry seems to have taken it as "Holy Writ" that lockdowns were the right approach. To justify its anticipated cost of up to £200m, we need the Covid Inquiry to be a rigorous investigation of what worked, so that Britain can be better prepared for the next pandemic. Instead, it feels like a trial with politicians in the dock, and one that is raking over very familiar ground.

Certainly, Boris Johnson's limitations were clear long before the inquiry started, said Matthew Flinders on The Conversation. "Attention to detail, serious reflection, stability, were never part of his skillset." He was, as one adviser put it, "the wrong PM at the wrong time". If the lesson is that we need to elect better leaders, it's a fairly obvious one. But public inquires are not just about learning; they are also about catharsis, about making sense of a crisis to heal a fractured nation. Dealing with an angry public is not easy, however, and the risk of this inquiry is that it makes things worse by fuelling anti-political sentiment. It may be quietly working on an analysis of the Government's preparedness and performance, but all we are hearing about is our politicians' incompetence, venality and buck-passing. How will that effect public trust in government when it comes to the next pandemic?

An empathy void divides the Middle East

Catherine Philp in The Times

Until Israelis and Palestinians can "appreciate each other's grief", peace will be "a struggle", argues Catherine Philp in The Times. Images of what is happening in Gaza "are absent from Israeli television screens", while in the "wider Arab world, denialism over the Hamas atrocities has taken root". A peaceful future "feels impossible when neither side will even entertain the other’s version of the past".

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The Covid inquiry has given us some justice – Boris Johnson finally squirming

Ayesha Hazarika in The i Paper

Boris Johnson "brought all the worst people, behaviour and practices into the heart of Downing Street", writes Ayesha Hazarika in The i Paper, and he "gave permission to all around him to be their worst selves". The Covid inquiry "provides a slice of justice" and his "momentary embarrassment and discomfort" is some consolation. "Let's hope this is the last we see of him anywhere near power."

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The Progressive Case for Bidenomics

Paul Krugman in The New York Times

"There are two big questions" about the US economy, writes Paul Krugman in The New York Times. "One is why it's doing so well. The other is why so many Americans insist that it's terrible." As well as Republicans, there seems to be a "significant number of progressives unwilling… to accept the good news". Biden's America isn't a "progressive paradise" but there has "nonetheless been real progress". 

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Farewell, Shane MacGowan, my Celtic soul brother

Bobby Gillespie in The Guardian

Shane MacGowan's best songs "made you cry and raise a clenched fist at the same time", writes Bobby Gillespie, the Primal Scream frontman, in The Guardian. Writing on the day of the Pogues singer's funeral, Gillespie remembers finding MacGowan "a gentle soul, quite shy actually, not like I’d imagined him at all". And his greatest songs "help the rest of us get through our lives".

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How can any of us move on from the pandemic in the face of Boris Johnson’s contempt?

Rachel Clarke in The Guardian 

The most "salient lesson" from Boris Johnson's testimony at the Covid inquiry is not an insight into pandemic management but "the exquisite pain that the misuse of words can inflict on the public", writes Rachel Clarke, an NHS palliative care doctor, in The Guardian. The former PM's testimony has only demonstrated to distraught and traumatised relatives "that he will not show them the courtesy of truth or sincerity". 

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The longer the Israel-Hamas war drags on, the harder peace will become

Kim Ghattas in the Financial Times

"Fury and fear are pulsating through both Israeli and Palestinian societies," says Kim Ghattas in the Financial Times. "Globally, a new generation on both sides of the divide is reconnecting with the viscerally intense feelings this conflict awakens." And while there are "many powerful voices speaking out in support for peace, more than we’ve heard in years… they may be drowned out by the extremes".  

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Junior doctors' strikes: Reckless Radicalism

The Times leading article

The British Medical Association has announced that junior doctors will stage the longest strike in NHS history over the festive period. This is an "egregious decision", said The Times in its leading article. Hospitals are "never busier or under greater pressure" than during winter. "To say that people will almost certainly die who ­otherwise might have lived as a result of this strike action is not an exaggeration." 

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Putin is close to victory. Europe should be terrified

Con Coughlin in The Telegraph

"With the Ukraine conflict languishing in stalemate, the possibility that Russian president Vladimir Putin might yet emerge victorious from his ill-judged invasion cannot be ignored, with all the implications such an outcome would have for Europe’s security," said Con Coughlin in The Telegraph. But despite the "obvious threat" that Moscow poses, Western leaders "appear disinclined to credit it with the seriousness it merits".

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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".

Politician or celebrity? Who knows any more?

Jemima Kelly in the Financial Times

"The lines between entertainment and politics have become increasingly blurry," says Jemima Kelly in the Financial Times. It's not just "I'm a Celebrity". "If you don’t fancy chewing a kangaroo's testicles live on telly, you can always dress up as a Spice Girl on 'Strictly'",  or land a spot on GB News. As "the politician-to-Z-list-celeb path is becoming well-trodden in Britain, in America, it tends to work in the opposite direction". But in both countries, falling public confidence in government demonstrates "the extent to which politics has become debased, and utterly unserious".

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Devastating evidence about 'bamboozled' Boris Johnson may benefit 'boring' Keir Starmer

The Scotsman's editorial board

Patrick Vallance's "devastating" evidence to the Covid inquiry has highlighted the problem with accepting "lightweight credentials" for the office of prime minister, said The Scotsman's editorial board. During "the greatest crisis of modern times", the UK's leader was said to be "bamboozled" by scientific data. The lesson here is that voters "need to get smarter about those we elect". And that could be "good news" for Keir Starmer, whose "boring" tag may become an "asset if public opinion turns against political ringmasters and circus acts in place of government".

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China’s workforce paradox and how to solve it

Joe Ngai in the South China Morning Post

China "is wrestling with a severe demographic challenge", with an ageing population and record-low birth rate, writes Joe Ngai, chair of McKinsey & Company’s Greater China region, for the South China Morning Post. Young professionals face a "relentless grind", while over-35s are "shockingly perceived" as being too old and "less employable than their younger counterparts". The solution is for workers to "embrace lifelong learning", while "AI can be deployed, with care, to avoid widening inequalities". Otherwise, this "workforce paradox" risks becoming "one of the biggest misallocations of societal resources".

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I Kind Of Love Madonna’s Dirtbag Style

Christian Allaire in Vogue

The Queen of Pop has "pulled off many different fashion eras" over her impressive career, says Christian Allaire in Vogue. Her "latest aesthetic off stage can only be described as, well, dirtbag-chic", with "plaid shirts, extremely baggy pants and even a cheeky Von Dutch trucker hat". On "an actual sleaze, the fashion’s a little on the nose", but on the "chameleonic singer", it "somehow reads as fresh". At 65, Madge is "still proving that she can reinvent herself yet again".

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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.

Gaza and 'the graveyard for children': the moral decline of Western politics

Chandran Nair in the South China Morning Post

"The worst wars of this century have a common thread: Western intervention, instigation, or historical entanglement," writes Chandran Nair in the South China Morning Post. As the "horrors" of the "assault on Gaza's civilian population stuns and numbs onlookers", people around the world are "left wondering why and how Western powers have stood in the way of calls for a ceasefire".

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Think dear Uncle Joe's angelic? Think again

Gerard Baker in The Times 

While media attention is on Donald Trump's fraud trial, Joe Biden is "no stranger to a 'dodgy deal'", writes Gerard Baker in The Times. There is a "rising stench of corruption emanating from the vicinity of Joe Biden", who has been "on the receiving end of a lucrative deal and influence-peddling arrangement on behalf of communist China". The president, however, has "denied any direct involvement in the scheme".

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Boris Johnson's lethal loathing of Rishi Sunak makes a Labour landslide more likely

Paul Waugh in The i Paper

He has "long been his own worst enemy", but Boris Johnson "may now be his party's too", writes Paul Waugh in The i Paper. Allies say that Johnson's "three-stage plan" involves the Tories losing the next election; the "crashing-and-burning of Sunak's replacement"; then "the cry of 'bring back Boris'" from party and public. But Johnson's critics think that he "puts himself first and party unity second", which could boost Labour's chances.

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Hello, Michael Gove? I'd like to report a gang of extremists who are undermining British values

George Monbiot in The Guardian

In "destroying" national morale, "attacking democracy" and "inciting hatred", this government should be "reported to itself", writes George Monbiot in The Guardian. Michael Gove’s levelling up department has "proposed a new definition" of extremism and as a "responsible member of society", Monbiot would like to "report a gang of malcontents whose behaviour clearly fits" the description.

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The Covid Inquiry heard more evidence of Downing Street indecision over lockdown policies this week. 

According to diaries kept by Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientific adviser at the time, Boris Johnson was "all over the place" as to whether to impose a lockdown in October 2020, and Rishi Sunak used "spurious" arguments against one. Separately, Johnson's ex-chief of staff, Edward Udny-Lister, confirmed that the PM wanted to be injected with Covid on live TV to prove the virus wasn't dangerous, and said he'd rather "let the bodies pile high" than lock the country down in September 2020.

Last week, former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara described a "toxic" culture in No. 10, and said that a lack of diversity at a senior level may have led to women's deaths in the pandemic. The Inquiry also heard that Matt Hancock had said that, were the NHS to be overwhelmed, he wanted to decide who should live or die.

'Evidence does matter'

British governments are "addicted to public inquiries", said The Times – and this one is a whopper. Its vast scope ranges from "national resilience" to the impact of the pandemic on business and health inequalities. "Like a latter-day Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce", it's due to "grind on" until 2026. But while it has given the media plenty to chew on, including a stream of "expletive-laden WhatsApps" chronicling the chaos at No. 10 early in the pandemic, it has so far failed to focus on what really matters: "what did and did not work during the pandemic, and how the country can better prepare itself for a similar crisis in future".

Actually, the evidence we have heard thus far does matter, said The Guardian. It matters that Britain was ill-prepared for a pandemic – and that the much-vaunted plan turned out scarcely to exist. It matters that the then-PM "was not on top of the detail" and that those taking vital decisions were consumed by "bitter rivalries". But in any case, this part of the Inquiry is explicitly about political decision-making; subsequent modules will examine other aspects of Britain's pandemic response.

'Focus on political psychodrama is distracting'

The Covid Inquiry has laid bare the rot at the heart of Johnson's government, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. It has heard extensive evidence of Johnson's "ridiculous flip-flopping"; of the then-PM asking whether people with Covid could kill the virus by blasting a hairdryer up their nose; and of then-health secretary Matt Hancock adopting a batsman's stance to indicate that he was "loving the responsibility" of a job in which he was flailing ("They bowl them at me, I knock them away"). So ugly was the culture in No. 10 that Johnson himself described it as a "disgusting orgy of narcissism" – which is "like Caligula moaning that he can't stand the sight of blood". The treatment of MacNamara was especially appalling, said Judith Woods in The Daily Telegraph. This senior civil servant repeatedly warned that the government's Covid policies lacked "humanity", highlighting concerns such as the heightened risk of domestic abuse in lockdown. Yet the macho culture prevailed, with Johnson's ex-aide Dominic Cummings saying he was fed up with "dodging stilettos from that c**t", and wanted to "handcuff" her.

The problem with this Inquiry, said Jonathan Sumption in The Sunday Times, is that it "cannot decide whether it is there to learn lessons for the future or distribute blame for the past". Yes, it has revealed the "nastiness" of Johnson's circle, but the adversarial nature of the process (even some witnesses are lawyered up) is ill-suited to getting to the heart of a complex subject. Worse, it shows no sign of probing the fundamental question of whether the pandemic restrictions were worth the sacrifices they entailed: of the six modules announced so far, none directly addresses "the efficacy of lockdowns, masks, travel bans" and so on. The Inquiry must consider all of the pandemic's victims, said Camilla Cavendish in the FT: from children who missed school to patients who died from other causes because they avoided the NHS. The focus on the political "psychodrama" distracts from the main point of this expensive exercise.

“Even given all that is already known about poor decision-making, avoidable deaths, lockdown-breaking parties and atrocious procurement” during the pandemic, the evidence being heard at the Covid Inquiry still has the power to shock, said The Guardian. 

This week, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, testified, and his testimony was as damning as expected. Cummings said that the Government’s initial plan for dealing with Covid was a “joke”. He described the Cabinet Office, at the heart of No. 10, as a “dumpster fire”. Official data, he said, was inconsistent and communication failures were rife; he called Johnson’s absence on holiday in February 2020, as Covid loomed, “insane”. 

'A toxic culture'

Cummings’ evidence was certainly hair-raising, said The Times. In his WhatsApp messages, he described the then health secretary Matt Hancock as “slippery”, “useless” and a “c***”. He suggested that the cabinet were “useless fuckpigs”. When asked by the Inquiry’s KC, Hugo Keith, whether his language was too “trenchant”, he said no: if anything, he had “understated” the issue.

Certainly, Johnson has come off badly in the Inquiry, said Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. There was a sharp intake of breath when it was reported that the PM said his party believed “Covid is nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them”. But listening to Cummings’ ravings, one did begin to wonder if perhaps “Dom was himself part of the problem”. He helped install a man he called the “shopping trolley” – because he veered around so much – in office. He created a toxic culture, sending foul messages calling ministers and civil servants “c***s”.

'Wrong crisis for this PM's skill set'

Besides, all the back-stabbing rather distracts from the real issues, said an editorial in The Daily Telegraph. Such as: “Were the lockdowns the right way to handle the pandemic or not?” Cummings criticised Johnson for not locking down decisively. “But Johnson was doing what most of us faced with such a crisis would do, which is to ask questions and show a healthy scepticism.” Locking down was, to put it mildly, a big decision. With hindsight, his doubts were well-founded.

But it wasn’t just Cummings who had it in for Johnson, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. “Everyone” in No. 10, it seems, called him “the trolley”. Simon Case, Britain’s top civil servant, said the Covid response was “a terrible, tragic joke” because Johnson “cannot lead”. “The team captain cannot change the call on the big plays every day... IT HAS TO STOP.” Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, noted that Johnson was “weak and indecisive”. Lee Cain, the PM’s spokesman, gave his gently devastating verdict when he testified this week: “It was the wrong crisis for this prime minister’s skill set.” Whatever the Inquiry concludes, it looks likely to be fatal to Johnson’s reputation, which now resembles “one of those neglected statues of forgotten statespeople covered in guano”.

The revelation that one of Boris Johnson's top aides set messages in a key Covid WhatsApp group to "disappear" only weeks after the former PM promised a public inquiry into the pandemic has led to calls for an overhaul of how government works.

Giving evidence to the Covid inquiry on Monday, Martin Reynolds, Johnson's principal private secretary, said he could not "exactly recall why I did so" but stated it was not to prevent the public from seeing the messages.

Following reports that Whitehall's most senior civil servant, Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, also uses a deletion timer, the furore has "reopened big questions about government transparency in the digital age", Politico reported. And "in particular, the increasing use of the 'disappearing messages' function on WhatsApp by senior officials, political advisors and ministers".

'Problematic in terms of transparency and accountability'

It is believed disappearing messages have become more popular since the government lost its legal fight with the Covid inquiry, with "about half the Cabinet" now using a deletion timer, a government official told Politico.

No.10 has confirmed that government officials are "permitted" to disappear their WhatsApp messages "amid concern it has become common practice among ministers and their special advisers", said The Independent.

The Cabinet Office put it more bluntly. "It has never been the case that every phone call, Post-it note or electronic message must be preserved. This would be expensive, excessive and burdensome."

Inside government, said The Times, "the pandemic is identified both as the clearest example of a time when WhatsApp became, by necessity, a crucial part of decision-making and as the moment which entrenched its use beyond the pandemic".

The Covid inquiry has revealed what many in Westminster already knew, that "much of government is now being run on WhatsApp", said Marie Le Conte for i news, which is, "at risk of stating the obvious, a worry".

She went on: "Like frogs in gently warming water, Westminster denizens have come to let the messaging app dominate their lives."

"It's problematic in terms of transparency and accountability, not least when politicians are starting to automatically delete their messages after a certain number of days," said Chris Stokel-Walker, a tech journalist and author.

'A new manifestation of an old problem'

WhatsApp is "undeniably useful", said Tim Durrant, who has examined the role of the app in Westminster for the Institute for Government. "It enables quick communication, [and] can help ministers cut through bureaucracy", but also "risks transparency and scrutiny". Perhaps more importantly it is, he said, "a bad way to make important decisions" that does not allow for detail or nuance.

There is another train of thought that the pervasive use of WhatsApp is merely the logical conclusion of centuries of British politics.

"It's a very new manifestation of an old problem", Alice Lilly, also from the Institute for Government, told Le Conte.

"There's always been informal decision-making and informal chats," she said, but whereas before these may have taken place in a corridor or a tea room, now they take place on the app.

This means that "attempts to ban or heavily curtail its use in Westminster would only appear to fix the problem, instead of actually solving it", concluded Le Conte.

"In short: WhatsApp is probably more symptom than illness."

TV made Boris Johnson, but will it now break him?

Will Lloyd for The Times

Boris Johnson's "charismatic" appearance on "EastEnders" in 2009 was "peak Johnson", says Will Lloyd for The Times. Television was where he "whetted his image, flattered the nation, and won his fame". But as he joins GB News, he "returns to a changed media landscape" and it "might be a tougher gig than he expects", says Lloyd. "In the old days television made him. On GB News it's much more likely to break him."

Read more

Let Matthew Perry's legacy be those he helped with addiction

Adam Bloodworth for The Independent

Matthew Perry's death shocked fans of "Friends", sparking memories of his "pitch-perfect embodiment of the hilarious but skittish and vulnerable" Chandler Bing, writes Adam Bloodworth for The Independent. But it is Perry's ability to "change the narrative" on addiction and "the way we humanise it" for which he should be truly remembered. "Could he have been a more relatable role model for any of us who struggle with anything at all?", Bloodworth adds. "I don't think so."

Read more

Europe's chaotic response to the Israel-Hamas war reveals how weak it is – to its enemies' delight

Nathalie Tocci for The Guardian

Hamas's 7 October attack on Israel is a "turning point in the unravelling of Europe's role in the world", argues Nathalie Tocci for The Guardian. While governments "rose to the challenge" with Ukraine, the Middle East war "brutally exposed Europe's contradictions", as some nations back aid for Palestinians while others support "the need for Israel to defend itself". Although the "crumbling of European unity" may "ultimately be a footnote" in history, Tocci adds, "it should be more". 

Read more

Democrats' all-purpose message for 2024: Defeat MAGA chaos

Jennifer Rubin for The Washington Post

To beat Donald Trump, Joe Biden must stress "that MAGA Republicans bring violence, disorder, chaos and gridlock", says Jennifer Rubin for The Washington Post. Given many are "agents of anarchy, destruction and dysfunction", this should be simple. But it is easy to forget how "exhausting" the Trump presidency was, Rubin adds. If he hopes to win again, Biden must remind Americans that democracies are "far more stable" than governments "in the thrall of a narcissistic cult leader".

Read more

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.

Rishi Sunak is facing a fifth potentially embarrassing by-election defeat after a House of Commons committee said Tory MP Chris Pincher should be suspended following allegations of sexual misconduct.

A report published by the Commons standards committee recommended that the former Tory deputy chief whip should be barred from the Commons for eight weeks.

The length of the suspension would “allow a petition to be arranged for a recall byelection”, The Guardian reported. Pincher “had a majority of 19,634 over Labour in the last election” in his Tamworth constituency, the paper added.

The committee’s findings are likely to cause a “fresh by-election headache” for Rishi Sunak, said The Independent, with the Conservative Party “already gearing up for three difficult contests this month”.

Polls suggest “Labour could take the seat” in Staffordshire despite the size of the Tory majority, the news site added.

Pincher’s conduct had been “deeply inappropriate”, the standards committee report said, and had a “significant impact” on the two men he drunkenly groped at Westminster’s Carlton Club. It was an “egregious case of sexual misconduct”, compounded by “an abuse of power”, the document added.

Today’s report has added to the “growing pessimism” within the Tory party, said the BBC. With a general election expected next year, some were hopeful that Sunak could “turn things around”. But there is “little sign of that positivity now”, the broadcaster added.

Pincher offered his resignation in July 2022 in a letter to the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, admitting he “drank far too much” and “embarrassed myself and other people” at the Carlton Club.

The handling of the resignation, deemed inadequate, ultimately led to Johnson’s own resignation, as it “prompted disgruntled ministers to resign en masse”, Politico reported.

Johnson had given Pincher a senior role as a party whip, “despite being aware of an official complaint about the MP’s behaviour”, The Times added.

Pincher told the commissioner of the report that he was “very sorry” for the events that occurred and “apologised to the parties involved”.

Rishi Sunak is facing three “highly problematic” by-elections in Conservative-held seats this summer after the resignation of Boris Johnson and two of his key allies.

The former prime minister and MP for Uxbridge & South Ruislip resigned on Friday over the findings of an investigation into Downing Street parties held during national lockdowns.

Johnson’s loyal supporter Nadine Dorries quickly followed, announcing her intention to stand down as MP for Mid Bedfordshire with immediate effect – but the former culture secretary has yet to formally resign. Nigel Adams, another long-time ally of the former PM, also announced he was quitting Parliament, triggering a third by-election in his Selby & Ainsty constituency.

To compound Sunak’s problems, Tory MP David Warburton has also quit, this time over allegations of sexual harassment and cocaine use. So there will be a further by-election in Somerton & Frome, a former Liberal Democrat seat won by Warburton in 2019 with a 19,000 majority.

When will the by-elections take place?

The elections to replace Johnson and Adams will take place on 20 July. Sunak had “hoped to limit the political damage” by holding the Mid Bedfordshire by-election on the same day but Dorries appears determined to make the PM “sweat” by refusing to resign until “the moment of her choosing”, said the Financial Times (FT). “She might want to mess up Rishi’s holidays,” suggested one Tory MP.

The PM is facing a “summer crunch”, said the Daily Mail, with “the Tories desperately struggling to cling on in the seats”.

Who might win?

Labour, who were 16 points ahead of the Tories in the latest “poll of polls” on Politico, are “going for the treble” and standing candidates in all three constituencies triggered by Johnson quitting, despite the Lib Dems pushing to be the “main anti-Conservative option” in Mid Bedfordshire, a senior Labour source told The Times.

The party will be “vying with the Liberal Democrats” for Dorries’ seat after it finished a “distant” second in the constituency at the 2019 general election – 25,000 votes behind Dorries. The Lib Dems came an even more distant third.

Projections show that the Tories could retain Mid Bedfordshire, said The Telegraph, but with a “vastly reduced” majority of just 2.5%, down from a 38% margin in 2019.

Uxbridge & South Ruislip is “by far the most marginal” seat, said The Times, with Johnson winning the seat by a majority of 7,210 votes in 2019. Labour has already selected 34-year-old local councillor Danny Beales as its candidate. Polling expert John Curtice told The Telegraph that the seat is a “lost cause” for the Tories, noting Labour would require only a 7% swing to win there.

Labour face a bigger challenge in Selby & Ainsty in North Yorkshire. The Conservatives will be defending a large majority – Adams beat his Labour rival by more than 20,000 votes in 2019. But a Labour win in the Conservative stronghold would be seen as a sign that Keir Starmer “is on course for a similarly dominant electoral performance”.

What does it mean for Sunak?

The prime minister and his party, facing criticism on multiple fronts, face four major electoral tests in the coming weeks. And the nature of Johnson’s exit is “likely to remind voters of the parliamentary chaos that dominated much of last year”, said the Big Issue.

Dorries’ resignation delay will only “sow unrest” in the Conservative parliamentary party, pushing what is likely to be a “difficult” by-election into the autumn and close to the Conservative Party conference, said The Independent. Sunak has criticised the delay, describing it as “unusual” and said that Dorries’ constituents deserve “proper representation”.

But while the “undignified squabble” of the past few days is “mainly a disaster” for the Conservatives, it could provide Sunak with a “glimmer” of an opportunity, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times.

The nature of Johnson’s departure has “removed from the prime minister the obligation of pretending that he and Johnson are in harmony”. While there has long been warfare between the two, “now the warfare is open”, allowing Sunak to “say what he really thinks about his predecessor”.

There is a scenario in which Sunak and the Conservatives could emerge from the by-elections “stronger than ever”, suggested ITV’s political correspondent Harry Horton. Mid Bedfordshire and Selby & Ainsty are “comfortable ground” for the Conservatives, thanks to their large majorities. If the Tories were to pick an anti-Ulez [Ultra Low Emission Zone, which is being extended this summer to cover the whole of London] candidate in Uxbridge & South Ruislip, then it’s “not inconceivable” that the by-election would be seen as a de facto referendum on Ulez, a subject which is “much trickier territory for Labour”.

If the Tories can “cling on” in Johnson’s former seat while keeping Mid Bedfordshire and Selby & Ainsty blue, Sunak is likely to head into the autumn with “renewed confidence” ahead of the general election.

But a win for Labour in Uxbridge & South Ruislip – or significant inroads from Labour or the Lib Dems in the other three seats including Somerton & Frome – will leave Sunak “under yet more pressure” and only “extend the gloomy mood already prevalent among many Tory MPs”.

Rishi Sunak has been urged to draw a line under the Partygate crisis by refreshing his top team.

As MPs prepared to debate a report that found Boris Johnson deliberately misled Parliament over lockdown parties at No. 10, the Conservatives’ Tobias Ellwood led calls for a ministerial reset. “This mini crisis should be turned into a major opportunity,” he told The Independent. Sunak should respond “with an overhaul of his cabinet” that shows he is “less fearful of right wing backlash”, said Ellwood, chair of the defence select committee and MP for Bournemouth East.

In a “weak” move, the prime minister has “dodged questions on whether he would throw his weight behind the Privileges Committee’s bombshell dossier” later today, said the Daily Mirror’s deputy political editor Lizzy Buchan. The debate comes “amid fresh anger over the Partygate scandal after the Mirror obtained footage of Tory aides boozing and dancing at a bash in Conservative HQ in December 2020”, she wrote.

With a YouGov poll showing that just one in five voters think Sunak is in control of his party, “Downing Street will attempt a reset” in the coming weeks, predicted Bloomberg.

‘Younger faces’

“Rishi Sunak is one of life’s optimists,” said Bloomberg. “But the Boris Johnson psychodrama and rising interest rates brought a palpable gloom to his Downing Street operation” last week, the news site said. His team “insist it’s time to move on from the Westminster soap opera” with a “series of new policies and a possible reshuffle promoting younger faces”.

MPs have said No. 10 “makes little secret of which cabinet ministers are out of favour”, wrote Sam Coates at Sky News last month. Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch are apparently on the list of “those who could be axed”.

A “bold reshuffle”, possibly in September, would signal a “reset a year out from the election campaign”, said Coates.

“One of the few saving graces for Sunak is that there is no serious threat to the right of the Tories,” said Katy Balls in The Spectator. But polling expert John Curtice warned that if Nigel Farage was to team up with Johnson as defenders of Brexit it would “probably kill off whatever small chances the Conservatives still have of winning the next election”.

This, said Balls, is “why there is already talk of ways to change the weather”. A reshuffle “could take place as early as July – with a focus on promoting women as part of a refreshed pre-election look”, she predicted.

‘A gradual shift’

Resetting “will be difficult”, said Bloomberg. Johnson is starting a new Daily Mail column that “will be watched closely for criticisms of Sunak” and the Tories face two by-elections in July. A third, in Nadine Dorries’ constituency, could come in the autumn, “just as the Tories look toward their annual conference for a further refresh”.

Robert Hayward, a Conservative peer and elections analyst, told the news site: “The party is trying to move on but Boris is a difficult person to move on from.”

In fact, a quieter overhaul might be taking place, said Christine Jardine at The Scotsman, as Sunak’s cabinet slowly loses its right-wingers. Many of Johnson’s greatest supporters are “either marginalised or set to stand down”, and senior figures “who regard themselves as the moderate centre are confident they will soon regain pre-eminence”.

Although Braverman and Badenoch “are still at the top table”, said Jardine, they are “increasingly powerless through a combination of their own missteps and a Prime Minister who is proving quite adept at manoeuvring difficult characters out of the way”.

Gradually, said Jardine, “the balance of power between Conservative factions is shifting”.

Boris Johnson, Nicola Sturgeon and Jeremy Corbyn – the three populist politicians who led their parties at the last general election now find their careers and legacies in tatters.

A “damning” report by MPs published today found that Johnson deliberately and repeatedly misled Parliament over lockdown parties, said the BBC.

The former PM, who led the Conservative Party to a “landslide election victory” just three years ago, is now in the ignominious position of being the “first former prime minister to have been found to have deliberately misled Parliament”. The report by the Commons Privileges Committee “demolishes Boris Johnson’s character and conduct”, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason.

Its publication followed the arrest on Sunday of Nicola Sturgeon, former leader of the SNP and Scotland’s longest-serving first minister. She was questioned by police investigating allegations of financial misconduct, before later being released without charge.

And Jeremy Corbyn, once Labour leader, has been banned from standing as an MP for the party at the next election over a protracted antisemitism row, with his once influential left-wing allies marginalised in the party.

What did the papers say?

Britain’s style of modern populism has “always been just a bit rubbish”, said Sherelle Jacobs in The Daily Telegraph. It has been dogged by a “distinct lack of leadership vision”, she argued. “Johnsonianism was a greased puddle of incoherent opportunism – all pork barrel promises, green grandstanding and Brexit bluffs,” said Jacobs. Sturgeon’s pro-EU nationalism, meanwhile, was a “contradiction in terms”.

There is an “inauthenticity” to Britain’s brand of populism, said Jacobs. It was always “unclear” whether Johnson “really believed” in Brexit, and SNP politicians “may rail against the remote Westminster elite, but they reside within their own hermetically sealed bubble of NGO professionals, academics and career campaigners”.

The cases of Johnson, Sturgeon and Corbyn may all vary, said Robert Shrimsley in the Financial Times (FT), but there are “common threads” in their stories that offer warnings about the “dangers of populism and political monomania”.

What marks their leadership reigns is “the primacy of a revolutionary zeal that refuses to be tempered by economic and political realities”, alongside “fanatical supporters and the concentration of power in a purist vanguard”.

Neither Johnson nor Corbyn became leaders “because their parties believed they would be good at governing”, but rather “as vehicles for a faction’s goals”. Their personal failings were “ignored or dismissed as smears” as their “flaws mattered less than the cause”.

The troubles facing the SNP are more “complex”, but Sturgeon’s current problems spring, in part, from her “fierce control” of the party: “Sturgeon was no figurehead,” wrote Shrimsley, “but the astute and undisputed chief.”

While Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer may have, to some extent, “restored normal service” in British politics, “what was true before can be true again”, warned Shrimsley. “In Westminster, activists have seen that the most effective way to advance a hardline ideology is to enter and take control of a party.”

What next?

Those who believe in a pluralist democracy should be cheered by the investigation into the SNP’s alleged financial misconduct, as well as the “quiet courage” of the Conservative MPs on the Privileges Committee. “It’s the system, however ill, eventually pushing back,” said Andrew Marr in The New Statesman.

But “politics never stops”, he said, and there will one day be “more populists” in British politics. Starmer, however, could soon have the opportunity to make the 2024 election “not the moment of another, possibly short-lived, Labour interruption in British politics but the beginning of a long, left-liberal hegemony, as long-lasting as the Conservative one has been”. That could be achieved through voting reform, suggested Marr.

The Labour Party has shown support for implementing a proportional voting system, and recent polling indicates that a majority of Labour voters and party members also back this change. But there is a risk that another referendum, this time on PR, “would revive, even energise, the right-wing English populism which has taken such a knock in recent days”, added Marr.

A Conservative ‘divorce’?

British Conservatism has been an “uneasy coalition” for many years, with the 2016 split between Brexiters and Remainers evolving into something more like a split between populists and realists”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian.

With the two factions “barely capable of pulling together in power, it’s hard to imagine them coexisting blissfully amid the bitter acrimony of defeat”, should Labour win the next general election, she added.

Indeed, some Conservatives are now “privately pinning their hopes” that a Labour minority government will introduce a PR-type system, under which “a breakaway party could finally become viable”. But should there be a Conservative “divorce” there is a question over who retains the established Conservative brand name and who is “deemed the splinter party”.

If the Conservative Party is beaten in the next election, will its members interpret that “as a sign that they somehow still hadn’t moved far enough right, or as a warning that the country had had enough of populists?”

Recent political history suggests that it would be “brave to bet on a defeated party in 2024 jumping to the obvious conclusion”, said Hinsliff.

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.”

Rishi Sunak looks to have seen off a potential Tory rebellion – at least for now – after the shock resignation of Boris Johnson threatened a new period of instability and infighting within the party.

In an extraordinary resignation statement, the former prime minister attacked the record of Sunak’s government as well as the motives of the Commons Privileges Committee, which is expected to formally rule that Johnson lied to Parliament over Partygate.

Choosing to walk before he was likely to be forced out, Johnson was joined by two of his staunchest political allies, Nigel Adams and Nadine Dorries. They also announced their intention to immediately stand down as MPs after their elevation to the House of Lords was blocked.

Johnson’s allies told The Times on Monday the former prime minister believed he had been given assurances by Sunak that the MPs would be given their peerages. But firing back, Sunak told reporters at the opening of London Tech Week: “Boris Johnson asked me to do something that I wasn’t prepared to do, because I didn’t think it was right.”

The resignations of Johnson, Dorries and Adams as MPs will trigger simultaneous by-elections and could see Sunak become “the first prime minister to lose three parliamentary seats in a day”, said The Telegraph.

What did the papers say?

Johnson’s resignation “triggered a weekend of vicious blue-on-blue bloodletting”, said Politico’s London Playbook. However, suggestions that more MPs might follow Dorries and Adams by quitting their seats seem to have been “tamped down”.

The Daily Mail’s political editor Jason Groves reported that Tory whips spent the weekend frantically calling potential rebels, telling Sunak on Sunday that the backlash over Johnson’s shock departure was “coming under control amid calls for the party to unite to keep Labour out of Number 10”.

“For the Tories, this is yet another moment of truth” said an editorial in The Sunday Times. “Most of its MPs have given up on Johnson, but many ordinary members cling to him because of his election-winning record, including his welcome defeat of Jeremy Corbyn.” Yet a revival of the “Johnson soap opera only benefits Starmer”.

Yes, agreed The Sun, “Bojo has every reason to feel bitter about the way he was stitched up. And his supporters may justifiably feel aggrieved on his behalf. But to seek revenge in a pyrotechnical fit of rage will only leave all sides of their party burned.

“An eye for an eye will leave the whole party blinded to the real danger and that is an easy ride for Labour at the next election.”

What next?

Sunak now has just weeks to prepare for the three by-elections – “placed like landmines beneath his administration by his indignant predecessor”, said the Financial Times. They will be “the first major test of Sunak’s leadership”, said the paper, “at a time when the mood in the party is already unsettled and Labour enjoys a 15-point lead in the opinion polls”.

Keen to avoid entering the summer recess with multiple by-elections hanging over them, votes are expected to be announced for Thursday 13 July. Constituency level polling by Focaldata and Best for Britain for The Telegraph show straightforward wins for Labour in Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat and Selby and Ainsty, the former constituency of Adams. In Dorries’s Mid Bedfordshire, polling shows the Conservative lead over second-placed Labour falling from 38 percentage points in 2019 to 2.5.

As for Johnson, “some in the party think he is finished”, said BBC political editor Chris Mason. “Others, far from it.”

Speaking to Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Energy Secretary Grant Shapps claimed that “the world has moved on”, but Mason’s view is that Johnson is “not likely to vanish into obscurity”.

Speculation that he may immediately seek a return to Parliament by standing in the seat vacated by Dorries – who won a majority of almost 25,000 in 2019 – has been shot down by senior Conservatives. One “Tory insider” told the i news site that this could cause “world war three between the local association and Tory HQ”.

Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage even hinted on his GB News show on Sunday that he would be open to teaming up with Johnson to form a new political party.

While talk of a Brexit “dream team” may provoke fear within the Conservatives as well as Labour as it looks to woo back red wall voters, the chances are “highly unlikely”, said the Daily Express’s political editor David Maddox. This is because it would require trying to fit “vast egos who cannot stand leadership rivals in the same room”.

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 prime minister has been accused of attempting a “cover-up” as he tries to block the Covid inquiry’s request for Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages and notebooks.

After the Cabinet Office launched an unprecedented High Court bid to avoid handing over the material, opposition politicians accused Rishi Sunak of a “cowardly” attempt to obstruct the inquiry.

The department said it was bringing the legal challenge “with regret”, but insisted that “important issues of principle” were at stake. It claimed that the request by the inquiry amounted to an “unwarranted intrusion” into other aspects of government work, as well as into “expectations of privacy”.

“The public deserve answers, not another cover-up,” said Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner. But which are we most likely to get?

What did the papers say?

“I fear we are witnessing a Covid cover-up,” said Karol Sikora in The Telegraph.

“The person with cancer now incurable because of unjustified delays” and “the families forced to say their final goodbye to loved ones over a mobile phone” are among those who “deserve pandemic answers”, said the physician.

However, he fears “that we are seeing the beginnings of a great Covid cover-up, a disastrous whitewash”, because the inquiry “may not overcome the force of a pro-lockdown establishment closing ranks to protect itself”.

By seeking a judicial review, Sunak “looks as if he has something to hide”, said The Independent. The PM has “constructed an elegant political trap for himself, thereby making the very worst of a delicate situation”, it added.

The former chief prosecutor, Nazir Afzal, tweeted that “if it looks like an attempted cover-up, smells like an attempted cover-up, then guess what…”. Earlier this week, the former head of the civil service joined the chorus. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme, Lord Kerslake said: “There’s some cover-up going on here to save embarrassment of ministers”, HuffPost reported.

The inquiry is not expected to conclude its public hearings until the summer of 2026, noted William Atkinson in The Spectator, with “subjects such as Covid contracts and decisions on care homes not tackled until 2025”.

“This may be good news for Johnson, Hancock, and any other ex-minister worried about having their records publicly scrutinised”, but “it is terrible news for anyone who wants to learn the truth”, he said.

“Voters are expected to go to the polls next year without having heard about the most important decisions the Conservatives made in office,” he added. “How does that enable the public to hold those responsible to account?”

The government argues that handing over some of the Johnson material without redactions “could set a problematic precedent – damaging its ability to have private policy discussions without fear of disclosure”, explained the Institute for Government.

However, countered the think tank, “the more dangerous precedent is that document-holders and potential witnesses get to decide what is relevant to an inquiry, rather than the independent inquiry chair”.

What next?

A legal decision on the contested material is expected soon. The judicial review should be “pretty quick” with a hearing in “a small number of weeks” – even as soon as next week, Jonathan Jones, a former permanent secretary of the government legal department, told Politico.

A ruling would then be expected to be handed down within “weeks or days” but the news site noted that either side “could yet head to the Court of Appeal if the battle over redactions doesn’t go their way”.

The government is likely to lose the case, said science minister George Freeman. But, speaking on the BBC’s “Question Time”, he added that “people’s privacy is really important” and the question of how private correspondence should be handled was a “point worth testing”.

Writing in The New Statesman, former Tory MP David Gauke wondered whether Sunak’s authority may be damaged by his decision to side with Johnson. “When he first became Prime Minister”, Sunak “promised to uphold the values of integrity, professionalism and accountability”, wrote Gauke. But “he has given the impression of seeking to protect Johnson and appease his supporters, looked evasive” and will “sooner or later lose this battle”.

Sunak can “try to keep Johnson onside or he can demonstrate his commitment to integrity, professionalism and accountability”, said Gauke. “He cannot do both.”

It is almost a year since many Tories decided that Boris Johnson would have to go, “yet a whole two prime ministers later, it’s almost as if he never left”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian.

This time last May, Johnson “was trying to bluster his way out of trouble” in the wake of Sue Gray’s report, with its talk of No. 10’s cleaners finding wine stains on the walls after lockdown-busting parties. Twelve months on and here he was again last week, cornered at an airport in the US, where he’d had a meeting with Donald Trump, having to defend himself from reports of new potential infringements of Covid regulations. These were uncovered by his own government-funded lawyers, who were looking at his official diary while preparing his defence for the Covid inquiry. Yet he still insisted it was a “stitch-up”.

‘Blame the blob’

Johnson would be the first to admit that his career has been a roller-coaster, said Andrew Pierce in the Daily Mail. Yet even he was left reeling by the phone call informing him that Alex Chisholm, the Permanent Secretary for the Cabinet Office, had referred the material to Scotland Yard and Thames Valley Police. They’re described as diary entries. But do not picture notes in a desk diary: what is being referred to is a minute-by-minute record of the PM’s working day, compiled by civil servants – and Johnson’s runs to 10,000 pages.

The entries are believed to relate to a dozen or so gatherings, some at No. 10, others at Chequers, most of which were work-related (one “private” lunch was with his mother and sister in the garden at No. 10, which took place when a “rule of six” was in place). Johnson’s supporters maintain that if Cabinet Office officials had come to him, he could have explained that they all fell within the guidelines. Instead, they went straight to the police.

Johnson is said to have been apoplectic when he heard the news, said Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times. And though some of his allies have blamed it on the “blob” – hostile civil servants – others point the finger at ministers. Officials said that Chisholm had been duty-bound to refer the entries to the police, and that ministers had not been involved. But there is a suggestion that two ministers – Jeremy Quin and Oliver Dowden – had approved a separate decision to refer the matter to the MPs in the Privileges Committee investigating whether Johnson lied to the Commons about Partygate. This, say his allies, was a deliberate attempt to smear the former PM, and prolong the committee’s inquiry, which had been expected to report at the end of June. A finding against him could spark a by-election in his constituency.

Johnson is now reportedly considering suing the Government, said Katy Balls in The Guardian, while his supporters have made anonymous threats to “obstruct” Rishi Sunak’s premiership unless he calls a halt to the alleged “witch hunt”, with talk of forcing by-elections and triggering a no-confidence vote. This led to a pile-on on Tory WhatsApp groups last week. Jackie Doyle-Price posed the “question of the day”:“FFS, who on Earth is spouting this bonkersness? Are you determined to turn our party into a skip fire?” Insiders say the threats were the work of a small group of agitators, and don’t reflect the mood in the party. But even if Sunak has nothing to fear from them, the row has reignited a vexing question: after years of infighting, can the party unite behind the PM – or is the “appetite for a grudge match ... larger than the appetite to win?”

‘Skeleton of old, discredited regime still rattling around’

Sunak’s instinct is to deflect and defuse confrontation, said Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday, so that he can keep his “steely focus” on the economy. His efforts in that regard are showing signs of bearing fruit – but all voters see is a party that is pulling itself apart. The PM “is a competent manager”; he needs now to prove that he is also a strong leader, by telling his internal opponents either to get behind him, or expect to have the whip withdrawn. Johnson and his clique “have decided that if he is going down, he may as well take the Tory Party, the Government and the country with him”; the PM cannot “just sit impotently and watch that happen”.

Sunak’s problem, said Andrew Grice in The Independent, is that to avoid defeat in the next election, he must persuade voters that they have a “new” government. But “he can’t do that when the skeleton of the old, discredited regime is still rattling around”.

It doesn’t help that the PM was very much part of the old regime, said The Guardian. He “served loyally as Johnson’s chancellor for the very period he would now prefer to see fade from memory”; even if his opponents let him forget it, the Covid inquiry will keep that fact alive. Only this week, said The Times, the Cabinet Office was trying to block a demand to hand over to the inquiry all the WhatsApp messages Johnson sent and received during the pandemic – a prospect that will surely “send a chill” through any number of people who were in government during the crisis.

Boris Johnson and other senior members of his government are likely to ignore a new legal deadline to hand over unredacted messages sent during the pandemic to the Covid-19 public inquiry.

Last week the inquiry’s chair, Baroness Hallett, threatened legal action against the Cabinet Office unless it handed over diaries and WhatsApp exchanges involving the former prime minister from January 2020 to February 2022 by 4pm today.

Cabinet Office officials asked for an extension to 5 June, saying they do not have access to Johnson’s messages or notebooks, but this request was rejected. Instead they have been given a new deadline of 4pm on Thursday 1 June.

If the government does not abide by the new deadline, Baroness Hallett “has ordered that a statement be sent by a ‘senior civil servant’ confirming the Cabinet Office does not have the requested information, as well as a chronology of the government’s contacts with Johnson about the requests and whether the government has ever had the data”, reported Sky News.

The Cabinet Office has previously insisted that documents and correspondence covering more than two years and from figures such as Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Matt Hancock, Dominic Cummings and Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, do not need to be released in full as parts of the discussions are “unambiguously irrelevant” to the inquiry, would represent a “serious intrusion of privacy” and would stop ministers communicating freely in future.

What did the papers say?

Section 21 of the Inquiries Act 2005 gives the chair of a properly constituted public inquiry the power to compel a witness to testify or produce any relevant documents, with failure to comply punishable with a fine or a prison sentence of up to 51 weeks.

However, the Daily Mail’s deputy political editor Harriet Line has quoted officials as saying they do not believe Hallett has the powers to demand the documents when doing so would set a harmful precedent and could identify junior colleagues.

Ministers will decide on Tuesday whether to launch a judicial review to attempt to circumvent Hallett’s demands, meaning the “standoff now appears to be heading for the extraordinary spectacle of a legal battle between the government and the inquiry”, said Sky News.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, is among those urging the Cabinet Office to stick to its decision not to submit the requested information in full. He accused Hallett in The Daily Telegraph of “trying to be Agatha Christie” by turning the inquiry into a “whodunnit” rather than “whatdunnit”.

This view was countered by the former head of the civil service, Lord Kerslake. He told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme that there was “some cover-up going on here to save embarrassment of ministers” and that it could set a “helpful precedent” if the inquiry won the right to release the material.

Hallett’s demand for fully unredacted messages touch on “one of the live issues for her inquiry which is whether the Prime Minister and his government were potentially distracted by other matters to adequately deal with the pandemic”, said Byline Times.

Given Johnson’s reputation “for having a loose tongue and clumsy attitude towards the normal parameters of diplomatic discourse”, the “potential political ramifications” are “huge”, said the news site. But the reality is that the inquiry “is significantly more important than the sensitivities of Boris Johnson or the Conservative Party, whilst the principle, in general, may also be profound”.

What next?

A spokesperson for Johnson said he had “no objection to disclosing the material to the inquiry”, adding: “The decision to challenge the inquiry’s position on redactions is for the Cabinet Office.”

Sky News has reported that Rishi Sunak and the former PM “are expected to speak this week, for the first time since last year, about their approach to the Covid inquiry”.

Johnson has already instructed new legal representation “after losing faith in the Cabinet Office”, reported The Times. “The move further deepens the rift between the former prime minister and the government, after the Cabinet Office handed over entries from his official diary to the police over fears he may have taken part in further rule-breaking during the pandemic,” said the paper.

The Times’s political correspondent George Grylls said that Johnson has been urged to release the diaries “to back up his claims that about a dozen events he hosted during the pandemic were lawful. But Johnson claims that publishing the diaries would breach government rules on disclosure and has refused to do so, citing national security grounds.”

Sky News said Johnson was “furious” at the pre-emptive move by the Cabinet Office, while “allies are also accusing Oliver Dowden, Cabinet Office minister, deputy prime minister and Sunak’s closest ally, of sanctioning ‘a political stitch-up’ to smear Johnson and prolong the Privileges Committee inquiry”.

The former PM is among those who will give evidence to the inquiry, which is due to start hearings in two weeks. However, the likelihood of a protracted legal battle “raises the prospect that the inquiry could be delayed even further, having already been delayed while names of civil servants are redacted”, said The Telegraph.

The inquiry has already “been criticised for the length of time it is expected to take”, said the paper, “with documents revealing the Government is planning for it to last up to seven years”. By contrast, “the chair of the inquiry into Covid in Sweden… has already completed his final report”.

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.

Boris Johnson was referred to the police last night over more allegations of potentially rule-breaking gatherings during Covid lockdowns.

The cabinet office reportedly handed over the former prime minister’s official diaries after they were uncovered by lawyers working on his submission to the Partygate inquiry, and they allegedly show visits to the grace-and-favour residence, Chequers, and Downing Street, which would constitute a breach in pandemic guidelines.

This assertion “is totally untrue”, said a spokesperson for Johnson. “No contact was made with Mr Johnson before these incorrect allegations were made both to the police and to the privileges committee. This is both bizarre and unacceptable.”

Cabinet office sources reportedly said that no minister was involved. “In line with obligations in the civil service code, this material has been passed to the relevant authorities and it is now a matter for them,” a spokesperson said.

Allies of Johnson have accused Cabinet Office Secretary Oliver Dowden, who replaced Dominic Raab as deputy prime minister and is described as “Rishi Sunak’s right-hand man”, of being behind the move, said Daily Express political correspondent, Christian Calgie. “One ally damningly called the deputy prime minister: ‘a compliant tool of the blob’.”

Johnson is the latest high-profile Conservative to clash with the civil service, after recent scandals involving Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Raab, who resigned as deputy PM earlier this month.

What did the papers say?

Braverman was this week accused of asking civil servants to help her avoid a speeding fine last summer, when she was attorney general, by arranging a private driving awareness course. When they refused, she accepted points on her licence. Sunak has officially declared that she did not break ministerial code.

Braverman “is the latest target of the blob”, said Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph, “that cloud of resistance that descends mysteriously on right-wing ministers and sensible ideas.”

In March, a campaign email sent in her name accused “an activist blob of left-wing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party” of blocking efforts to curb cross-Channel migration. She claimed she did not write or see the email.

The blob “has demonstrated equal opportunity in obstructing the careers of Tories of colour, hitting out at both Priti Patel and Braverman”, said the newspaper. But the “threat” they pose to “the blob” is that they are “instinctual conservatives, proudly British… who can’t be gently persuaded out of their beliefs”.

Use of the term “the blob” to criticise bureacracy dates back to the Reagan era, and references a 1958 sci-fi film “The Blob”, starring a gelatinous space alien that consumes everything.

As education secretary, Michael Gove adopted it “with a slight twist”, wrote columnist Daniel Finkelstein for The Times, to blame bureaucracy for blocking his reforms.

It has since been popularised as a Tory insult against the civil service, by former party svengali Dominic Cummings and, recently, Jacob Rees-Mogg, referring to the government U-turn on the proposed Retained EU Law Bill.

The Blob is now “everywhere to be found in Conservative argument”, he wrote, “eating everything in its path, including common sense”.

Raab, who was forced to stand down over allegations of bullying, also claimed he had faced a coordinated attack by “activist” civil servants. It is “a paranoid strand of socialist thinking”, Finkelstein wrote. Everyone from the civil service to lawyers, the EU and people with degrees are the Blob – “and the Blob is to blame for everything”.

Civil servants are “an obvious target” for “failing ministers” to scapegoat, wrote Patience Wheatcroft, former editor of The Wall Street Journal (Europe), for Prospect. “They cannot engage in the public blame game”, and risk being sacked should they challenge their bosses.

The allegations are “a very carefully choreographed narrative”, wrote one anonymous civil servant for The Guardian. The idea of a civil service agenda is “an archetypal ‘deep state’ trope” that has been “cultivated and amplified by the right-wing media to serve as mood music for this government’s war against the very concept of checks and balances”, they wrote.

And “this absurd, toxic take” overlooks the vaccine roll-out, the cost-of-living support package and the response to the Ukraine crisis as recent examples, they said.

The “underlying motive” for the “repeated attacks on civil servants in recent years seems to point towards encouraging the abandonment of impartiality, particularly where that can help hide the impact of government policies on the poor, the disabled, the young and other demographics less likely to vote Tory.”

What happens next?

Steven Swinford, political editor of The Times, tweeted that Johnson is severing ties with the government-appointed lawyers representing him during the Covid inquiry, as he has “lost confidence” in the cabinet office. He will appoint his own legal team, funded by taxpayers. The cabinet office told the Express that civil servants were simply doing their job in passing information to the police, as required by the Civil Service Code.

Thames Valley Police and the Metropolitan Police said they were assessing potential breaches of the Health Protection Regulations between June 2020 and May 2021 at Chequers, when the UK moved in and out of lockdowns.

While “it may be that the civil service needs reform”, its expertise and experience is “invaluable” when governments change so rapidly, said Wheatcroft for Prospect.

“There is a bigger fightback under way,” she said, with former civil servants speaking up, “most notably Lord Wilson of Dinton, who was cabinet secretary and head of the civil service from 1998 until 2002”, who dismissed Mogg’s criticisms of the civil service as “ill judged and grossly unfair”.

“The Tory party knows it is sinking,” said Tom Peck in The Independent. This much is clear, not only because many Cabinet ministers – such as Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch – obviously have their eye “on the soon-to-be-vacant captain’s job”, but also because of the mood of revolt and ideological frenzy in the party ranks.

The past week has seen not one but two fringe Tory conventions – “mad hatter’s tea parties”, Keir Starmer called them. Last Saturday, “Boris Johnson’s biggest fans”, from Andrea Jenkyns to Priti Patel and Jacob Rees-Mogg, gathered at the inaugural meeting of the Conservative Democratic Organisation in Bournemouth to mourn the death of true conservatism, and to fantasise about bringing Johnson back.

At the second event, the National Conservatism Conference in London, British and American culture warriors were brought together by a US think-tank. Braverman’s speech there “set the tone”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian, at an event designed to champion “the muscular nation state and traditional nuclear family against the dreaded forces of wokery”.

A ‘full-blown identity crisis’?

It’s no wonder that the party is agitating for change, said Camilla Tominey in The Daily Telegraph. Many traditional Tories struggle to think of a good reason to vote for Sunak, except that “Labour would be worse”. A vote for him is a vote for the status quo. And what does that mean? “Continued strikes and backlogs? Continued mass migration and inflation? Continued economic stagnation?” The highest taxes in half a century? The party now seems to have lost sight of what it stands for.

It is suffering a full-blown identity crisis, said Stephen Davies in the same paper. For many decades, British conservatism was defined by a combination of free-market economics and social conservatism. Today, politics has realigned. The big divides now are between economic nationalists and global free-marketeers; and between those who assert traditional identities against the left-liberal ideas often labelled as “woke”. The problem, as we saw in the local elections, is that such issues split the Tory vote: the nationalist and anti-woke message puts off the David Cameron-style liberals.

Sunak stands in ‘no-man’s land’

What seems very odd, though, is the popular view that Rishi Sunak is somehow not a “true Conservative”, said Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail – and that Boris Johnson is. On public spending, on immigration, on crime, on family, the PM is an orthodox Thatcherite, whereas Johnson is an unprincipled opportunist.

But Sunak is little better at managing the party’s underlying tensions, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. “Where Johnson would bluff and bluster, Sunak prefers tactical discretion.” He is giving the Tory right-wing “much of what it wants”, on EU laws and on immigration, for instance, but not enough to keep it happy. Sunak stands awkwardly between the zealots and the pragmatists – stuck “in the churned up bog of a political no-man’s land, sinking”.

Friends of former BBC chairman Richard Sharp have claimed he was told by a senior Downing Street official he had “done nothing wrong” just weeks before he was forced to resign over his involvement with an £800,000 loan given to Boris Johnson.

Sharp quit the top BBC job in late April after a report found he had breached public appointment rules by failing to declare involvement in the loan to Johnson.

Simon Case, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, was approached by Sharp about the matter in a meeting in December 2020, before Sharp was appointed chairman of the BBC. According to allies of Sharp, Case told him that he had not acted improperly and was “was on the side of the angels” in seeking to facilitate the loan, reported The Telegraph.

“A word of advice for anyone who has worked hard to acquire a reputation they cherish,” wrote Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian: “if Boris Johnson approaches… run a mile.” Sharp’s resignation is “the latest proof that, even out of office, Johnson continues to act as reputational napalm, laying waste careers and turning good names bad”.

The former chairman joins a “long list” of once-respected figures who have been “diminished by their contact” with Johnson, wrote Freedland, who dubbed Johnson “the reverse Midas, the man who rots everything he touches”.

As Sharp prepares for some time in the wilderness, The Week takes a look at some of those who have felt the anti-Midas effect of Boris Johnson.

1. Simon Case

Sharp is set to step down in June, but Case may not be far behind after being caught up in the debacle and heavily criticised for his handling of the affair.

The Telegraph reported this week that Case could soon “step aside” now that the coronation of King Charles III is over, and is said to believe his proximity to Boris Johnson has “undermined his reputation”, according to sources close to him.

The 44-year-old, who became the youngest cabinet secretary in over a century when he was was appointed in 2020, is said to be “bitter” over his close association with the former prime minister. Case believes his subsequent involvement with scandals linked to Johnson – such as Partygate and the appointment of Sharp as BBC chairman – has “damaged his career”, said The Telegraph.

But other sources have argued that Case was at least partly responsible for the damage done to his career. “It’s not as though he didn’t know what Boris Johnson was like,” one source told the paper. “He presumably went into it with his eyes wide open.”

Revelations that he sent mocking WhatsApp messages about cabinet ministers during the pandemic have also injured his reputation, added the Telegraph. The paper cited allegations that his messages “compromised the Civil Service’s political neutrality” and seemed to suggest that he had an “inappropriately close relationship with some ministers”.

2. Allegra Stratton

The former top political journalist was “thrust into public consciousness” in December 2021, when ITV obtained a video in which Downing Street staff were joking about an alleged Christmas party that was held in No.10 during the December 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, said Politics.co.uk.

Working as Boris Johnson’s press secretary at the time, Stratton was shown in a mock news conference in which she was responding to questions from colleagues. One question referred to a Christmas gathering in which cheese and wine were involved, joking: “This fictional party was a business meeting and it was not socially distanced.”

Stratton was forced to resign after a public backlash to the video, even though there was “no suggestion that the Prime Minister’s former spokeswoman broke any rules herself”, said Martha Gill in The New Statesman in May last year. Indeed, “she resigned because she had been recorded laughing at the challenge before her: how to defend Boris Johnson should the press get wind of the parties” that took place in Downing Street during national lockdowns.

Fines for attending Downing Street parties – issued after the Metropolitan Police launched an investigation – “fell disproportionately on junior members of staff, in particular women”, noted Gill. She added that the handling of the debacle suggested it was “no coincidence that, in this atmosphere, the only person to have resigned over partygate is a woman”.

3. Christopher Geidt

Stratton was not the only political casualty from Johnson’s involvement in the Partygate scandal.

Christopher Geidt, a former private secretary to the Queen who was serving as Johnson’s ethics adviser, endured a brutal parliamentary grilling from the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee over his stance on Johnson’s pandemic rule-breaking. During the hearing, he was asked by MPs whether he had considered resigning over the saga.

Lord Geidt was said to be clinging on to his role “by a very small margin” at the time, following the Partygate scandal and Johnson’s failure to acknowledge that he had violated the standards required by public office, according to sources who spoke to The Independent.

In the end, however, it was an argument over steel tariffs that led to Geidt stepping down. In a scathing resignation letter, Geidt accused Johnson of risking a “deliberate and purposeful breach of the ministerial code” by asking him to advise on a plan to maintain tariffs on Chinese steel that would have broken World Trade Organization rules, placing him in an “impossible and odious position”.

4. David Cameron

David Cameron’s distaste for Johnson is no secret in political circles, but it seems his frustration towards his fellow Old Etonian had not abated by May 2019, when Johnson’s successful campaign to oust Theresa May was well underway.

According to the memoirs of former Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan, In the Thick of It, Cameron exploded over breakfast with him, claiming that Johnson had “ruined my bloody career”.

The entry reads: “Breakfast with David Cameron. He is so glad not to be in the middle of everything that is going on at the moment.

“He has a very straightforward opinion about Boris – ‘He ruined my bloody career’.”

The incident allegedly took place on 1 May 2019, just weeks before May resigned, following Johnson’s efforts to bring her down. Within two months, Johnson had succeeded her as prime minister.

Duncan’s book suggests that Cameron’s disdain for the Brexit-supporting Johnson stemmed from his own “humiliating” resignation as prime minister after losing the 2016 EU referendum – a victory brought about in part by “a series of wounding attacks” on Cameron by Johnson, said the Daily Mail.

Many people realise that Boris Johnson is a dishonest chancer who lacks any real convictions, said David Gauke in The New Statesman. Less obvious – at least to those outside Whitehall – is “quite how extraordinarily inept he was at performing some of the basic functions of being prime minister”. In their account of Johnson’s time at No. 10, Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell “have done a service to us all in setting out this reality in unsparing detail”. Based on more than 200 interviews, the book exposes “again and again” Johnson’s lack of fitness for high office. He chaired meetings chaotically, had a minuscule attention span, and would say different things to different people, often several times in a single day. Grasping that he could achieve little on his own, he depended heavily on Dominic Cummings – to the extent that his adviser was “able to remove both the chancellor (Sajid Javid) and the cabinet secretary (Mark Sedwill) and choose their successors”. “I am meant to be in control. I am the führer. I’m the king,” the authors report Johnson saying after being sidelined by Cummings.

It was Brexit that “made Johnson as prime minister possible”, said Robert Harris in The Sunday Times – and the “greatest, bitterest joke of all is that he seems never really to have believed in it”. On the morning of the result, he was heard to mutter: “Holy shit, f**k, what have we done?” Thereafter he had no idea what to do with it. Seldon and Newell are “occasionally generous”, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times – “correctly so in describing Johnson’s handling of the Ukraine crisis”. But generally this “excellent book” is “both fair and damning”. It describes an administration beset by strategic and organisational confusion, and characterised by “internal conflict and persistent gridlock”.

While it’s hard to dispute the main argument of this book, it’s a shame it tells us so little that is new, said Alexander Larman in The Daily Telegraph. The big revelations – that Johnson called President Trump “a bit thick”, for instance, and tried to see The Queen while he had Covid – fall rather flat, and in the end the accumulation of detail becomes tedious. On the contrary, the great merit of Seldon and Newell’s account is the sheer weight of evidence they marshal, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. Their “authoritative, gripping and often jaw-dropping” book confirms what many people darkly suspected of Johnson’s premiership: it was “an anarchy” presided over by a “frivolous, frantically floundering and deeply decadent lord of misrule”.

Atlantic 624pp £25; The Week Bookshop £19.99

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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The chair of the BBC may be forced to resign over alleged conflicts of interest after failing to declare his involvement in a loan worth £800,000 to the then prime minister Boris Johnson.

An independent inquiry into Richard Sharp’s appointment as chair of the corporation is expected to be published soon and its “draft findings” are said to make “grim” reading for the former Goldman Sachs banker, according to the Financial Times (FT).

The inquiry was ordered by the Commissioner for Public Appointments following revelations this year that Sharp, who took the post in February 2021 after being recommended by the then prime minister Boris Johnson, helped secure a guarantor for a loan to help finance Johnson’s lifestyle, and failed to divulge his involvement.

In February, the former BBC presenter Jonathan Dimbleby called for Sharp’s resignation. And the FT reports that one person briefed on the inquiry's draft conclusions said that Sharp may “jump before he is pushed”.

What happened?

Sharp, who was Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s boss in their time at Goldman Sachs, was involved in securing a loan of up to £800,000 for Johnson just weeks before the former prime minister recommended him for the role of BBC chairman, The Sunday Times revealed in January this year.

The loan was guaranteed by Sam Blyth, a Canadian businessman and a distant cousin of Johnson’s. Sharp, a friend of Johnson and former donor to the Conservative Party, advised the multimillionaire about acting as the guarantor.

Sharp was in the “final stages” of the recruitment process for the role of BBC chair. Johnson then announced that Sharp was the government’s preferred candidate for the £160,000-a-year role.

Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, wrote to Johnson in December 2020 to warn him about a potential conflict of interest, saying it was “important you no longer ask [Sharp] his advice about your personal financial matters”.

Sharp’s appointment was approved in February 2021, but he did not disclose his involvement in the loan during a pre-appointment hearing in front of the culture select committee the previous month.

Hauled in front of the committee again in February 2023, Sharp insisted he had “acted in good faith” and “didn’t arrange the loan”, said the Evening Standard. He said his relationship with Johnson was “broadly professional” and although he conceded that he acted as a “sort of introduction agency” he said he had “no knowledge of the actual loan”.

“As a go-between I was not between Mr Blyth and Mr Johnson, but I was actually seeking to ensure that due process was followed by ensuring that Mr Blyth had contact with the Cabinet Office before he would do anything to help his cousin,” he added.

A subsequent report by the committee, published days later, said that while Sharp “recognised the need to be open and transparent over facilitating an introduction” of Johnson to Blyth by informing the cabinet secretary, he “failed to apply the same standards of openness and candour” when he did not divulge it during the interview process.

Sharp made “significant errors of judgement”, the report concluded, first in getting involved with the loan, and then by failing to declare his involvement. The errors “constitute a breach of the standards expected of individuals applying for such public appointments”.

Will Sharp resign?

The report is believed to be nearly finished and is likely to be published soon. The draft report by Adam Heppinstall KC, overseeing the investigation, makes for “grim” reading, a source told the FT. The criticisms make it “probable, but not certain” that Sharp would have to resign.

“It may be that Richard decides to jump before he is pushed,” said someone briefed on the draft findings.

“Sharp may be a very honourable man, but there’s no getting away from the fact he helped to organise an £800,000 loan that would get the prime minister out of financial trouble,” said Baroness Wheatcroft, member of the Lords Communications and Digital Committee, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in February. “He did him a favour just when he wanted the prime minister to give him the top job at the BBC.”

Sharp has already been significantly criticised and is still in his role. At present, his resignation seems “an unlikely prospect”, said The Spectator, as the criticisms focus on his appointment rather than his performance since.

However, Sharp has “barely been seen” around Broadcasting House, said The New Statesman. “You could be forgiven for thinking that Richard Sharp had already quietly left the BBC,” it said.

Where does this leave the BBC?

Ministers “are free if they want – with very few checks and balances – to appoint their political allies, friends and donors”, Sir David Normington, a former commissioner for public appointments, told the BBC’s World at One programme on 14 February. Sharp’s is “an extreme case”, but “an example of what happens” when ministers select a political ally.

The situation was “very damaging" to Sharp, the BBC and the government, said Normington, as the chair is responsible for upholding political impartiality at the public broadcaster.

Normington’s arguments “are perhaps a sign that this row is no longer being contained to just the BBC”, said The Spectator, “but is rather seen as a test case for the public appointments system as a whole”.

The BBC does not have the power to remove its own chair. Sharp would either have to resign, or be removed by the prime minister. Sunak has said he will not pre-judge the inquiry into his former boss.

“The question,” wrote James Heale in The Spectator, “is whether there will be further revelations about Sharp’s appointment that might cause him or Rishi Sunak to rethink this ongoing role.”

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.

Boris Johnson is back in a starring role in Parliament today as the former prime minister appears before the privileges committee to answer questions about the Partygate scandal.

Johnson has “already been tried in the court of public opinion”, said The Guardian’s political correspondent Aubrey Allegretti, after being forced to “give up the keys to No. 10” when Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers “mobilised en masse against him”.

And if the committee now decides he “intentionally or recklessly” misled MPs, resulting sanctions could trigger a by-election that scuppers his chance to “rebuild his powerbase as a backbencher and chart a course back to Downing Street”.

‘Serious issues at stake’

“As easy as it is to mock this farcical episode, there are serious issues at stake,” said UnHerd’s political editor Tom McTague.

If Johnson were hit with a sanction in the form of a Commons suspension of longer than ten days, a recall petition would automatically be triggered. And if more than 10% of voters in the former prime minister’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency backed the petition, he would face a by-election that could result in him losing his seat in Parliament.

Insiders briefed on the probe told the Financial Times that Tory MPs on the cross-party committee were reluctant to deploy that “nuclear option”.

But McTague warned that it was “important” to show “there are consequences for MPs – even former prime ministers – when they lie to the House of Commons”. Regardless of whether Johnson realised he was breaking lockdown rules, he “clearly did break them” and “now admits as such” in a 52-page written submission delivered ahead of today’s committee appearance, McTague added.

Johnson’s submission said: “It is now clear that over a number of days, there were gatherings at No. 10 that, however they began, went past the point where they could be said to have been reasonably necessary for work purposes.”

‘A show trial’

Some of Johnson’s supporters have gone to “quite shocking” lengths to “smear” the privileges committee ahead of the hearing, said The Spectator.

Nadine Dorries tweeted that the committee’s chair, Labour MP Harriet Harman, had “stated a strong position of bias and an assumption guilt before even hearing the evidence”. Jacob Rees-Mogg has described the privileges committee as a “political committee against Boris Johnson”.

Johnson has also made some “punchy arguments” about the committee’s processes, the magazine continued, and complained about the “partisan tone and content” of an interim report published by the group earlier this month.

Johnson and his supporters may “have a point”, The Telegraph argued in its leading article today. “Whatever the background to this hearing,” said the paper, “it feels like a show trial designed to impugn Johnson’s premiership and close off any route back to power.”

Yet it is Johnson who has put himself in this predicament, not the committee, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. “Voters once loved his lies”, but he is “a magician whose trick won’t work anymore”.

“The spell has been broken,” Finkelstein concluded. “Hypocrisy has broken it.”

Perhaps, said McTague on UnHerd, but Johnson may try to work fresh political magic if he avoids a by-election. British politics “has calmed down” since Rishi Sunak took over as party leader, but “there is every chance that the Tory party will be looking for a new leader within the next two years”.

“That choice will ultimately fall to party members – most of whom still like Johnson,” McTague continued. “And Johnson will certainly not give up.”

Boris Johnson faces his day of reckoning as he presents his 52-page Partygate inquiry defence to the privileges committee this afternoon.

“One thing is for certain”, said The Spectator’s political correspondent James Heale: “It’s going to be quite the parliamentary spectacle.”

As Johnson prepares for a committee grilling, The Week takes a look at how other UK prime ministers have fared in parliamentary inquiries.

Franks report

In 1982, Lord Franks examined accusations that Margaret Thatcher’s government could have anticipated Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands on 2 April, and that the ensuing two-month war could therefore have been avoided.

The Falkland Islands Review, known as the Franks report, found that “the invasion of the Falkland Islands could not have been foreseen”, and said there was “no reasonable basis for any suggestion” that “the invasion would have been prevented if the Government had acted”.

Despite the report’s criticisms of some of the government’s decisions, its findings “came as a political tonic” for Thatcher, said The New York Times. The war “helped save her political skin” and “cemented” her reputation as the “Iron Lady”, said History.com.

But the six-month inquiry led “to widespread accusations of a whitewash”, said the Daily Mail. The report was “said to have detailed a series of mistakes” and “reached ‘soft conclusions’”. Political commentator Hugo Young described it at the time as “a classic establishment job”.

Hutton

The Hutton Inquiry “was one of the most damning political stories” that came out of the Iraq invasion, said The Independent.

In 2003, weapons specialist Dr Andrew Kelly was outed as the source behind a BBC report which claimed that Tony Blair’s government had “sexed up” a report into Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Journalist Andrew Gilligan suggested that the prime minister had knowingly misled Parliament by claiming that Saddam Hussein’s forces had access to nuclear weapons that would be ready for use within 45 minutes of an order being given. Amid a government backlash in the following days, Kelly killed himself and an inquiry into his death was soon launched.

Blair, BBC chairman Gavyn Davies and BBC Director-General Greg Dyke took the stand during the inquiry’s hearings. Lord Hutton concluded that the wording of the weapons dossier had been altered to present a strong case for the invasion of Iraq by British forces, but remained in line with intelligence.

The “harshest criticism was reserved for the BBC”, rather than the government. Hutton concluded that the broadcaster’s editorial processes had been “defective”, and Davies and Dyke resigned.

Chilcot

The question of whether the Blair government had misled Parliament over the invasion of Iraq would again come under scrutiny in the following years. An inquiry examining the UK’s involvement in the Iraq war was commissioned by Gordon Brown in 2009 and chaired by Sir John Chilcot.

It was assumed the investigation would take between two to three years to complete, “but it soon became apparent it would be much longer”, said the BBC.

Seven years after it began, a “devastating report” was delivered on Blair’s decision to provide the US with military assistance in its invasion of the Middle Eastern country in 2003, said The Guardian. The “far-reaching” findings “eviscerated Blair’s style of government and decision-making”.

The former PM “looked broken” during an “extraordinary” two-hour press conference that left him “close to tears”, said Politico. Blair expressed “sorrow, regret and apology” and defended his actions. He was “left pleading with the public to accept that he took the decision in good faith”, his reputation “in tatters”.

Leveson

The Leveson Inquiry examined standards within the British press following a number of high-profile cases of phone hacking involving celebrities and victims of crime.

Opened by then prime minister David Cameron in 2011, the following year it concluded that newspapers had exercised a “recklessness in prioritising sensational stories, almost irrespective of the harm the stories may cause and the rights of those who would be affected”. Lord Leveson said that the press should no longer be permitted to “mark its own homework”, and called for an independent body to be set up to regulate the media.

The recommendation “sparked a political storm”, said The Mirror, that saw Cameron and then deputy PM Nick Clegg “clashing in the Commons over the need for state control” of the media. The then prime minister said the press should be left “to try to come up with its own beefed-up regulatory system”, the newspaper continued.

During the committee’s hearings, Cameron said that the “relationship between politicians and media needs resetting”, and admitted he had allowed himself to get “too close” to editors. In fact, said Professor of Journalism Brian Cathcart at Byline Times, Cameron and his government were “in bed with the press, and, frankly they were banging away for all they were worth”.

The inquiry was intended to have two parts, the first examining the culture and practices of the press and the second, which was axed in what Deadline described as “an expected but nevertheless controversial move” in 2018 by then culture secretary Matt Hancock, was to examine the conduct of individual newspaper companies, and possible criminal activity.

Boris Johnson is expecting a rough ride from the Privileges Committee this week as he battles to clear his name but the former prime minister will have one of the country’s most “in demand” barristers in his corner.

Lord Pannick will represent Johnson as he faces the prospect of being suspended from the House of Commons if found guilty of deliberately misleading Parliament over the Partygate affair.

The “esteemed” 67-year-old barrister “boasts an illustrious career”, said The Guardian, having represented many high-profile clients including “Queen Elizabeth II, former BBC director-general Mark Thompson, Shamima Begum and an ally of Vladimir Putin”.

During the 1990s, Pannick notably represented gay service personnel who were dismissed from the military on account of their sexuality. In 2005, Pannick defended Thompson against prosecution by a Christian group accusing the BBC of blasphemy for airing Jerry Springer the Opera.

And three years later, he successfully argued on behalf of the British Olympic Association, defending its refusal to allow sprinter Dwain Chambers to compete at the Beijing Olympics because of a prior doping offence.

Pannick then became a “surprise favourite” with Manchester City fans last month, noted the i news site, after being hired to defend the club against allegations of financial misconduct.

Who is Lord Pannick?

David Pannick “caught the legal bug at a young age”, said the BBC. At the age of 16 he “frequently attended the Old Bailey to watch cases”. The budding legal mind went on to study at Hertford College, Oxford University, before being called to the Bar in 1979.

Aged only 36, Pannick became a QC, specialising in public law. After winning several victories for claimants in the field of judicial review, he was soon appointed to defend the government of the day.

However, he was “not interested” in serving as the government’s full-time counsel – “or in the judicial career that would follow”, according to The Jewish Chronicle. After concluding that a career on the bench would “offer him little intellectual stimulation” Pannick applied to become a “people’s peer” and joined the House of Lords in 2008 as a crossbencher, making contributions to debates and legislation.

Reflecting on his early career, Pannick recalled representing a man in Singapore facing the death penalty. “We lost,” he recounted to Sally Penni on the Talking Law podcast. “Our client was hanged. That’s not a good way to start your practice – you can only get better after a start like that. I tell that to clients – some are reassured, some are not.”

As a lawyer Pannick is “not known for doing much pro bono work”, said The Guardian, “but rather for his extremely high legal fees”. He charges in the region of £5,000 an hour for his services. Representing Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, during his divorce, the total lawyers’ fees for both sides “reached more than £70m”, said the paper.

Pannick’s public profile received a significant boost this year following his involvement in Manchester City’s legal dispute with the Premier League. His name was prominently displayed on a banner unfurled on the terraces, reading “Pannick on the streets of London” – a nod to a song by Manchester band The Smiths.

From Johnson’s ‘opponent to advocate’

In 2016, Pannick gained “much merit” in legal circles after successfully leading the case, brought by Gina Miller, to allow Parliament a vote on invoking Article 50 to leave the European Union. Pannick acted for Miller again in 2019, successfully appealing to the Supreme Court against Johnson’s attempt to prorogue Parliament for five weeks amid the deadlock over Brexit. It was a case that marked him out “as one of the most skilled barristers of his generation”, said The Guardian.

But Pannick “has now moved from being Boris Johnson’s opponent in court to his advocate”, said the BBC. In September last year, Pannick was hired by the government to review the Privileges Committee’s approach to the investigation into whether Johnson knowingly misled Parliament over parties during coronavirus lockdowns. He wrote legal advice which concluded that their methods were “fundamentally flawed” and could have a “seriously chilling effect on MPs”. The committee, however, rejected his findings and accused him of a “systematic misunderstanding of the parliamentary process”.

The reaction to his taking on the case therefore “has been, inevitably, divided”, added the broadcaster.

“Those who think that Boris Johnson is a martyr and should never have been removed, think I am a hero; those who are opposed to Boris Johnson think I’m a disgrace,” Pannick told Sally Penni. “I have had a number of emails saying I should resign – I’m not sure from what. I advise people, I represent them. It doesn’t matter if they are Boris Johnson or an asylum seeker, they get my view.”

Nevertheless, Pannick’s legal expertise remains widely respected, particularly his ability to convey complex legal concepts in a comprehensible manner. As The Guardian’s John Crace wrote during the Brexit case: “A Pannick attack is a thing of zen-like beauty… In his hands, a legal submission izs more a cosy bedside story than adversarial confrontation.”

Johnson will appear in front of the committee on Wednesday, accompanied by Pannick – although the former prime minister’s barrister “will not speak himself”. He will, however, “be permitted to pass notes to his client”, said Politico – “so he’ll be the one scribbling furiously”.

Boris Johnson has set out the case for why he did not knowingly mislead Parliament ahead of a long-awaited appearance before the Commons select committee charged with deciding his political fate.

A 50-page dossier released by his legal team and expected to be made public this afternoon is said to include WhatsApp messages suggesting Johnson was acting on the advice of officials when he told the Commons that rules were followed at all times in Downing Street during Covid lockdowns. At the same time the former prime minister will seek to portray the inquiry as biased and politically motivated.

It is all part of what Politico’s London Playbook described as an “audacious preemptive strike ahead of his live televised grilling in front of the privileges committee on Wednesday”.

What did the papers say?

“The stakes could not be higher,” said The Times, with the group of seven MPs on the privileges committee set to determine “whether Boris Johnson’s political career is extinguished – or reborn”.

“Little wonder, then,” claimed the paper, “that some MPs are framing the hearing as Johnson’s ‘January 6’ moment – a reference to the US congressional committee that investigated the Capitol Hill riot and Donald Trump’s role in it”.

Allies and friends quoted in The Telegraph claim the “bombshell defence dossier” will show that “the general assumption of everyone present, including those hostile to Boris, was that rules and guidance were followed.

“That destroys the argument that Boris must have known it was not in the rules,” one of his allies said.

The idea that Johnson cannot get a fair hearing from the committee, despite four of its seven members being Tory MPs, is also “a regular refrain of Johnson’s supporters”, said The Guardian’s political correspondent Peter Walker. Allies have tried to paint the process as a “witch-hunt”, driven by a biased chair in Labour MP Harriet Harman, and that Sue Gray, who led the Whitehall investigation into lockdown breaches in Downing Street, was out to get him from the start. Gray is still hoping to take up the role of Labour leader Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

“Aside from navigating the nitty-gritty of parliamentary procedure, creating a compelling narrative is the real aim for Johnson, who does not seem to have given up hope of a return to high office,” said Rachel Wearmouth in The New Statesman’s Morning Call newsletter. “But the image of a once-mighty politician blaming former staff for his misconduct is not one he’ll want to project.”

What next?

Johnson is due to appear in front of the committee on Wednesday afternoon for a mammoth televised session that could take up to five hours.

If he fails to convince the members and is found guilty, he could be suspended from the Commons, and even face a recall petition, which would trigger a by-election that he would most likely lose.

“Crucially, though,” said the BBC, “MPs would have to approve any sanction on Johnson.”

Adam Boulton, long-time political editor and now commentator at Sky News, said: “However he is treated by the committee, Johnson will be playing to the dwindling band of Boris-loyalist politicians and party members and his champions in the Tory media, who are already claiming that he was brought down unjustly by a partisan left-wing conspiracy.” Despite a “strong circumstantial case” against the former PM, the “chances must be low that the lying inquiry will finally drive the stake through the heart of Johnson’s political career”, he concluded.

Even if it does not come to that, a negative verdict could prove politically fatal. A Savanta poll by the Independent found two-thirds of voters believe Johnson should not wait to be punished and should quit his seat if he is found to have lied.

In the event of a vote being called, Johnson is expected to ask the privileges committee to publish all the evidence it has received and demand that it is unredacted.

“His allies contend sunlight is the best disinfectant,” said The Times. “The problem for Johnson is that many Conservative MPs believe the only way to clean up the mess is to back the committee’s recommendations, regardless of how ruinous they may prove for him personally.”

Like Rishi Sunak, “most Tory MPs fighting to save their seats probably wish the unseemly Johnson saga would go away”, said Wearmouth for The New Statesman. “Whether the former PM is prepared to go quietly is another matter.”

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.

The former head of the Post Office has succumbed to public pressure and handed back her CBE over her part in the Horizon IT scandal. 

Paula Vennells, who was chief executive of the Post Office between 2012 and 2019, and before that a senior executive, oversaw the conviction of hundreds of falsely accused sub-postmasters for fraud and led the defence of the flawed Fujitsu-designed IT system that caused the scandal.

Vennells was awarded a CBE in 2019 for "services to the Post Office and charity", but after an ITV drama "thrust the scandal into the spotlight", a petition demanding she return her honour was signed by 1.2 million people, said The Independent. She "bowed" to the "intense" pressure and said she would return her CBE "with immediate effect".

The petition has turned the spotlight again onto how honours recipients are chosen, a system that has long been controversial. Critics argue that it has become "essentially automated", said The Times, and honours no longer recognise "lifetimes of extraordinary work or individual achievements" but have become "baubles doled out unthinkingly for time served".

Pro: credit for the unsung

The system provides recognition and clout for people who have made a significant contribution in their respective fields, and are "important tools for recognising outstanding achievers and unsung heroes", said the Financial Times. “They are the ones who have selflessly worked to make their communities better,” argued an editorial in the Oxford Mail, and who have “spent their time, energy and enthusiasm for the benefit of others”.

And “the fact that an award has, at some point, been given to an unsuitable person does not justify its total abolishment”, said Matthew Mokhefi-Ashton on The Conversation.

Con: cronyism allegations

Critics have long been suspicious of the criteria used for selection. The political honours system offers peerages, knighthoods and damehoods to MPs and party grandees, including donors, said a leader in The Guardian, and many of these awards are “no more and no less than corrupt patronage”.

“Charges of cronyism” have been levelled at recommendations of prime ministers, agreed Michael Collins, writing for The Critic. “Major party donors do well, as do those that have already received generous remunerations for their role in public office.”

This "severely undermines the system and erodes public goodwill", added the FT, and it seems "obviously best practice" to install a system where honours cannot be handed out to politicians while in office. However, "wholesale reform" of the system is unlikely, given that honours are a "grubby mainstay of political patronage in the UK", the paper said.

Pro: motivation for good

Supporters argue that the honours system can inspire and motivate people to engage in charitable and philanthropic work, which benefits society at large.

“For as long as it recognises the selflessness of people who work to make the world around them a better place, it’s worth treasuring,” wrote The Yorkshire Post columnist Andrew Vine. And “by doing that, the honours can inspire more people to get involved, to volunteer, make donations or offer support in whatever way they can”.

Con: link to Empire

Some feel uncomfortable because the UK honours system has its roots in the British Empire. The first black footballer to play for Liverpool, Howard Gayle, who went on to campaign against racism in the game, turned down an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) because he felt it would be “a betrayal” to Africans who suffered at the hands of the British Empire, reported BBC News.

When the late poet Benjamin Zephaniah rejected an OBE in 2003, he wrote that “it reminds me of slavery, it reminds me of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised”.

Pro: cost effective

Then there is the question of expense. Honours are a “very cost-effective” way to honour people, wrote Henry Hill for UnHerd. “There’s no lump sum, no annual retainer,” he added, “just a bit of metal, perhaps a sash, a few letters after your name, and an opportunity to take part in a fancy ceremony”.

However, BuzzFeed reported in 2016 that the honours system costs the UK more than £1m a year, and the sum “comes out of public funds”.

Con: cancel culture

Sometimes awards are stripped from people and the reasons are not always made public, which has caused concern and suspicion. In 2020, nine people had honours revoked, reported The Times, in a process that was “shrouded in secrecy”.

This means a “clandestine cancel culture” could be “operating behind the scenes” of the honours system, wrote Collins for The Critic.

Sam Power, a senior lecturer and expert in political corruption at the University of Sussex explains how the former prime minister’s attempt to knight his own father is an example of his fading allure and the potential end of his political career.

As an academic specialising in part in why political corruption happens, the tenure of Boris Johnson (and its aftermath) has provided me with much to consider. Indeed, over the past 18 months, it has felt like I’m getting asked the same question over and over again. After the Owen Paterson affair: is this corruption? After the cash for curtains episode: is this corruption? Partygate: is this corruption?

We’ve had a pretty workable and simple definition of what corruption is for about 30 years. It is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.

We can use this definition to answer the question in relation to the latest revelations about the Johnson family. The proposal to give Stanley Johnson, Boris Johnson’s father a knighthood: is it corruption?

We need to work from our above definition. Do we have entrusted power? Do we have an abuse? Do we have private gain? In two out of three instances here, we have an open and shut case.

Boris Johnson was prime minister and his father is reportedly being recommended in his resignation honours. Power doesn’t get much more entrusted than that. Is there private gain? Well, in the British system, there’s much to be gained from having a knighted businessman in the family.

The abuse issue is ever so slightly cloudier. We would have to wait to see the justification given for putting Stanley Johnson forward for a knighthood, but it comes down to: what would his knighthood be in service of?

Even if one can make a pretty good case he is deserving of a knighthood, it will be incredibly hard to shake the not unreasonable perception that he’s only getting one because of who his son is – that it is cronyism and nepotism at its finest.

‘McNulty’ syndrome

One thing that became quite clear during Johnson’s time as prime minister is that he holds a different view to many on what constitutes acceptable and appropriate standards in public life. He has what I call, “McNulty syndrome”.

Like the famous character from The Wire, Johnson thinks of himself as a maverick. He may not play by the rules – but that gets results. He Gets Brexit Done. Just don’t question his methods.

Johnson has, in many ways, based his whole appeal on this approach. Those who like him do, in part, because he’s not like other politicians. He plays fast and loose with the rules. Those who hate him, do so precisely because they think he debases (and debased) the offices which he holds.

He has a unique appeal to a unique subset of voters – and that, some believe, makes him electoral gold dust.

Viewed in this light, Stanley’s reported knighthood is entirely unsurprising. It is a pattern of behaviour established throughout his son’s time in office. It is born, in part, of a basic electoral calculation.

When push comes to shove, the electorate cares far more about outcomes than process. Johnson believes that to voters, economy, health and (back in 2019, getting Brexit done) are far more important than honours lists.

Long-time frenemy Michael Gove was quite up front about this when reflecting on the 2019 campaign. You may remember Johnson took a few hits for refusing to be interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Neil. When asked if this was a mistake, Gove’s answer was: “No. We won.”

The problem with this win-at-all costs approach is that it is based on a fundamental misreading of the terrain. There is good evidence outlined by the political scientist Will Jennings, that his unique political talents and appeal, while not to be dismissed, are often overstated.

And the public, in fact, do care about standards, ethics and honour. UCL’s Constitution Unit, for example, showed a high degree of support for reforming the current standards system.

They found the importance of politicians holding high moral standards to be of a similar importance to climate change. As the unit’s director, Meg Russell, argued: “There could be electoral rewards for politicians who respond” to public concerns about good behaviour.

Running out of road

The maverick schtick can get tired. Jimmy McNulty was interesting and effective in season one of The Wire but by season five he was (spoiler alert), staging murders with the bodies of dead homeless people. And (spoiler alert) that was pretty much that for Jimmy McNulty’s policing career.

Johnson should therefore beware. With more partygate revelations coming out over a year since the first, his behaviour in office continues to be a fly in the ointment for Rishi Sunak’s political project.

On the surface this might seem like misfortune for the current prime minister, who risks being tarred with the same brush. But a tactical advantage is also within his grasp.

The more Boris Johnson neglects widely agreed standards of appropriate behaviour, the more Sunak can put clear blue water between himself and his predecessor. We know that the public do care about ethics, and they do value these traits in leaders. What they don’t have, is unlimited patience with Johnson.

Ultimately, giving Stanley Johnson a knighthood shows that Johnson has learned nothing from his removal as PM. Aside from among a rump of Conservative MPs and party members, he is not as popular as he thinks.

People care much more about ethical behaviour and perceptions of competence than his calculations tell him. All this suggests that the knighthood looks a lot more like a plot line from a political show in its final season rather than its premiere.

Sam Power, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Sussex

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.