Boris Johnson news – live: Time ‘running out’ for PM over Partygate, Sturgeon says

The saga over the numerous lockdown-busting parties held in No 10 is “done and dusted”, defence minister Leo Docherty this afternoon declared.

It comes as a number of senior Conservative MPs have called for Boris Johnson to resign for failing to obey his own Covid rules.

Speaking to the PA news agency at the Invictus Games in The Hague, Mr Docherty said: “It’s pretty much done and dusted in the sense that the prime minister’s apologised for the fixed-penalty notice he received.

“In my opinion I regard that as matter closed. I really want to see him being able to get on with the job.”

He said the “vast majority” of Brits wants to see Boris Johnson get on with representing the UK.

“People I think are sick of it and want us to move on,” he said.

Mr Docherty has previously faced calls of his own to resign. In September 2019, his brother Paddy Docherty wrote an open letter to the Guardian urging the Tory MP to step down in the wake of Mr Johnson’s proroguing of Parliament.

He wrote: “I used to joke that your degree in Swahili and Hindi made you “perfectly qualified to be an army officer – in the 1840s”. As you now serve in a government with alarmingly backward intentions, that no longer seems quite so funny.

“I must therefore beg you, as your brother, to resign your post in the whips’ office and speak out in defence of democracy.”

Conservative MPs have condemned their own party’s new online adverts attacking Labour MPs over immigration, warning they will stoke hatred and put all politicians at greater risk, writes Adam Forrest.

Tory backbenchers have raised fears about personalised ads targetting Yvette Cooper and other frontbench Labour politicians – telling the public they voted “to keep illegal migrants in Britain”.

Some Tories criticised the potentially inflammatory ads in a private WhatsApp group where MPs share graphics on social media, according to Bloomberg.

“These ads lead directly to attacks on MPs and their families and they stoke up hatred of politicians,” Tory MP Miriam Cates wrote – calling the ads “very, very disappointing”.

“Time is running out” for Boris Johnson, his Scottish counterpart has said, calling the referral of the PM to the Privileges Committee “quite a significant turning point”.

First minister Nicola Sturgeon said while Mr Johnson may “try to cling on” to power at Downing Street, the forthcoming investigation could be a pivotal moment.

She said: “I think time is running out for him. It feels to me that the events of yesterday turned things into a question of when and not if.”

“The fact that the Tories had to U-turn at the last minute in terms of their instruction to their own MPs, I think, is very telling and is a sign that support appears at long last – and it’s overdue – to be ebbing away from the Prime Minister within his own ranks.”

The SNP leader continued: “I think the Tories in Westminster have got a big question to ask themselves because every day they allow Boris Johnson to remain in office right now they become complicit in all of the wrongdoing that he stands accused of.”

She insisted: “Yesterday felt to me like quite a significant turning point. He will try to cling on, there is no doubt about it.

“He will try to wriggle off the multiple hooks that I think he is on. He clearly has no shame. He clearly has no respect for parliament, for democracy, for the institutions that our democracy depends on.”

Scotland’s first minister has defended the SNP’s decision to campaign for Scottish independence in tandem with local election campaigning.

When asked if it was appropriate for local councillors to campaign for independence during an election where local issues such as cleansing services and schools should be the priority, Nicola Sturgeon said: “The manifesto is very clear that the priority for SNP councillors will be the cost-of-living crisis and local services.

“But I don’t think it is going to surprise anybody that SNP councillors will support the Scottish Government’s proposals for a referendum in the first half of this parliament.

“And of course, that is a mandate that was won at the election last year and one that therefore democratically I have not just a determination to but arguably a duty to proceed with because that’s what I put to people in the election last year.”

The European Commission has reminded the UK government that the Brexit deal is a “binding” legal obligation, after a senior Conservative minister said there was no need to stand by the agreement.

Jacob Rees-Mogg on Wednesday told a committee of MPs that it was “nonsense” that the UK had to stick to the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol, which the government negotiated and ratified as part of exiting the European Union.

On Friday a a spokesperson for the EU’s executive hit back and told reporters in Brussels on Friday that “the withdrawal agreement, the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland, are legal obligations to which the UK is bound”.

Our policy correspondent Jon Stone reports:

Mr Johnson has insisted he will still be in office by Diwali in October, as he largely sidestepped questions about whether he would quit over Partygate.

The PM has set Diwali as the target date for a post-Brexit free-trade deal with India.

Asked whether he is a “cat with nine lives” following calls from MPs including Steve Baker for him to step down, Mr Johnson replied: “We had a pretty good kick of the cat yesterday.”

Western allies are preparing to offer Ukraine a series of “security guarantees” that should make the country impregnable to a future Russian invasion, Boris Johnson says.

A long-term vision for Ukraine’s place in the future “security architecture” of Europe also needed to be developed, the PM stated.

While he said it will not be the same as the Nato Article 5 guarantee – in which an attack on one member state is considered to an attack on all – he hoped it would offer “deterrence by denial”.

“What the Ukrainians want – and I think are now going to get – is a collection of guarantees from like-minded countries about what we can do to back them up with weaponry, with training and with intelligence-sharing,” he said.

“It will, I hope, enable the Ukrainians to offer deterrence by denial and make sure their territory is so fortified as to be impregnable to further attack from Russia. That is what we need to do.”

President Zelensky has been calling for security guarantees for his country.

Boris Johnson conceded that it was a “realistic possibility” that Russia could win its war in Ukraine by the end of next year, as western officials have briefed.

“The situation is unpredictable at this stage, but we’ve also seen the incredible heroism of the Ukrainian people,” the PM said in India.

“[Putin] will not be able to conquer the spirit of the Ukrainian people.”

He added: “We’ve got to look at what more we can do militarily, we’ve got to keep intensifying the economic sanctions – we want to make sure there is wave after wave of intensifying pressure on Putin.”