Boris Johnson ‘grateful to Met’ for Partygate inquiry and says he hopes Sue Gray report will be published soon – UK politics live

Read More

Ireland’s taoiseach has said it is unacceptable for one party in Northern Ireland to block others from taking power, as he visits Belfast to try to break the deadlock over the Brexit protocol and power-sharing at Stormont.

“It is unheard of in a democratic world that that parliament would not convene in the aftermath of an election. We can’t have a situation where one political party determines that the other political parties can’t convene in a parliament,” Miche?l Martin told the BBC before meetings on Friday with party leaders including the Democratic Unionist party, which has refused to re-enter power-sharing until “decisive action” is taken to scrap elements of the Northern Ireland protocol.

He said he understood there were “legitimate issues” to be discussed with the DUP but that the only answer to the problem was collaboration, not confrontation.

Martin accused Boris Johnson of moving “too far in a unilateral way” over the UK’s approach to Northern Ireland after the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, announced plans to introduce domestic laws to override the protocol if the EU did not meet the government’s demands.

James Johnson, a former Downing Street pollster who worked under Theresa May, has been telling the BBC’s World at One programme that Boris Johnson was now facing his toughest challenge yet despite what might be seen by others as a good week for him as it emerged that he would not face any further fines for breaking lockdown restrictions.

Johnson said that some voters would move on in terms of their priorities and that partygate would fade in some minds.

But he concluded:

We are now seeing Boris Johnson as a drag on the Conservative party brand, rather than an asset that me may have been in the past.

Boris Johnson has been speaking for the first time since the Metropolitan Police concluded their probe into Downing Street parties

I am very grateful to the met for their work. I am very grateful for the work they have done. I just think that we need to wait for Sue Gray to report and then.. fingers crossed.. that will be very soon.

Johnson, speaking on a visit to Powys, Wales, ahead of an address to the Welsh Conservative Conference, was asked if Downing Street would block Gray, the senior civil servant compiling a report into Partygate. He said it would be a matter that was entirely up to Gray.

Sadiq Khan said “there is no other street in the country where more people have broken the law than Downing Street,” as he was asked about the so-called partygate investigation.

Speaking to the PA news agency at City Hall, the Mayor of London said:

I’ve said that from the beginning, it’s really important that politicians aren’t involved in operational management when it comes to the police. They’ve got to investigate and go wherever the evidence goes. That’s why I’m going to wait and see what Sue Gray’s report reveals next week…

But when you just reflect for a second, there is no other street in the country where more people have broken the law than Downing Street, there is no other street in the country where more fines have been issued.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has said it would be a mistake for Sir Keir Starmer to resign as Labour leader if he is fined over “beergate”.

It was put to him on Sky News that, unlike Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Labour leader has said that he will resign if fined over any breaches of coronavirus restrictions.

“Well, that’s a matter for him,” Rees-Mogg said.

I think that is a mistake. I don’t actually think that these are resigning matters, I think people make mistakes.

Downing Street has suggested it has not rule out introducing a criminal offence of street harassment after comments from the UK government’s independent adviser on tackling violence against women and girls, Nimco Ali.

A No 10 spokesman said: “I would point to a tweet from Nimco this morning where she addresses that and says I did not blame him, referring to the Prime Minister.”

Pressed whether an offence of street harassment is still being considered, he said: “We will continue to look at where there may be gaps and how a specific offence could address those.

Ali has suggested her calls for street harassment to be made a crime are being blocked.

Ali, a close friend of Boris and Carrie Johnson, told the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson that her proposal had experienced “pushback” and hinted the prime minister had not fully supported it.

The murder of Sarah Everard, who was abducted while walking home in south London last year, triggered nationwide scrutiny of women’s safety and attitudes towards women.

Ali said: “For me, I would specifically love (for) public sexual harassment to become a crime.”

Ahead of his address at 1340 to the Conservative Party’s Welsh conference, Boris Johnson has been on a visit to Powys, Wales.

Some images have come through of a visit to Hilltop Honey in Newtown, Powys, which happens to be one of the places where the Tories lost out in the local elections to Liberal Democrat gains.

The LibDems became the largest party in Powys, where it claimed that Johnson’s behaviour during lockdown and the subsquent Partygate scandal had come up on doorsteps quite a lot.

The decision on whether to name people involved in Downing Street and Whitehall lockdown parties will rest solely with senior civil servant Sue Gray, No 10 said, with her report into so-called “partygate” due next week.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister, asked about suggestions of a dispute about Gray naming senior officials in her document, told reporters:

I’ve seen the reports overnight and this morning but it remains the case that it is for Sue Gray to decide what information she includes in her report.I can’t pre-empt her content or presentation.

As with the interim report, it is purely a matter for Sue Gray how she wants to present the report and what it includes.

Asked whether Downing Street was negotiating over who is named in Ms Gray’s report, the spokesman added:

Sue Gray is compiling the report independently and how she does that, and the contents of it, and what is presented is entirely a matter for her.

Ireland’s Foreign Affairs Minister said he has “made clear” to Foreign Secretary Liz Truss that the Irish Government opposes the UK breaching international law.

Simon Coveney made the comment following his meeting with Ms Truss on Friday about ongoing concerns around the Northern Ireland Protocol.
He tweeted: “I made clear Ireland’s opposition to the U.K. breaching international law.

“The UK needs to get back to talks with the EU.”
He earlier said he urged the British Government to “move away” from threats of unilaterally breaching international law and “damaging international relations”.

“EU remains ready to negotiate pragmatic solutions to outstanding Protocol issues through partnership,” Coveney said.

Truss this month reiterated her threat to scrap parts of the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol, telling the EU’s Brexit negotiator it was a matter of “internal peace and security”

The attorney general for England and Wales, Suella Braverman, wants the Conservative party to replace its tree logo with the torch of liberty which was used under Margaret Thatcher and then ditched during the cuddly sofa-rule era of David Cameron.

In an interview with Conservative Home she also opposes a windfall profits tax and says she would be happy to have her friend Lord Frost – formerly Britain’s chief negotiator during Brexit talks with the EU, as “a colleague in the Commons”.

There’s also a lot more red meat for the Tory faithful, with Braverman saying that the Conservative party of the 21st century was still trying to “stamp” out the “long tail of Blairism”.

That includes dealing with New Labour “creations like the Human Rights Act and the equalities agenda, which has built up a whole industry of people who make their living from rights-based claims”, and has led to “a feeble approach to common sense, decency, British values”.