Markus Andrews

Police are investigating a gathering attended by Sir Keir Starmer and deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner for potential breaches of Covid laws.Durham Constabulary said it initially decided to take no action over a gathering at the constituency office of Labour MP Mary Foy in April 2021.“At that time, it was concluded that no offence had been established and therefore no further action would be taken,” a spokesperson added.“Following the receipt of significant new information over recent days, Durham Constabulary has reviewed that position and now, following the conclusion of the pre-election period, we can confirm that an investigation into potential breaches of Covid-19 regulations relating to this gathering is now being conducted.”The Labour Party has maintained that Covid laws were not broken at the gathering, where Sir Keir was pictured drinking a beer with colleagues during campaigning for the Hartlepool by-election. A spokesperson said: “We’re obviously happy to answer any questions there are and we remain clear that no rules were broken.”At the time of the alleged gathering, non-essential retail and outdoor venues including pub gardens were open but social distancing rules, which included a ban on indoor mixing between households, remained in place.Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper defended the Labour leader and said the Durham incident was “very different from what we saw in government”.She told BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme: “The Labour Party has always been clear that no rules were broken. This was a work event, it was in the middle of a local election campaign and it was eating a meal in an election campaign.“I think that’s very different from what we saw in the government where you had the very people who were making the rules, the very people who were asking people to make great sacrifices across the country – and we’ve seen the evidence of the parties.”Emily Thornberry, Labour’s shadow attorney general, said Durham Constabulary had been “put under a lot of pressure” to investigate by Conservative MPs and right-wing news outlets.“Tere’s lots of people who’ve been campaigning for the police to open this investigation, lots of Conservative MPs have been asking about it, lots of the Conservative-supporting newspapers have been making a big fuss about it,” she told Sky News. More

The Conservatives have lost control of the southern Wokingham council to no overall control, after the Liberal Democrats won seats on the authority.The loss of Wokingham — the home of the Conservative MP John Redwood — comes after Boris Johnson’s party suffered a string of defeats at the local elections.The result in the town of Berkshire, England, will unnerve Tory strategists, with the party previously dominating the council over the last decade.After all 18 seats were declared, the Liberal Democrats gained five councillors, toppling the Tory council into no overall control on Friday afternoon.Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, told The Independent: “This is another hammer blow to Boris Johnson’s Blue Wall which is now crumbling before his eyes.”Lifelong Conservative voters have said enough is enough. This country is gripped by a cost of living crisis for which Boris Johnson’s out of touch Government has no answers. “Conservative MPs like John Redwood in Wokingham need to start listening to their constituents who know the time is up on Boris Johnson as prime minister.”It comes after Mr Johnson admitted the Conservatives had endured a “tough night” following historic defeats in London to Labour, including Wandsworth, a seat held since 1978, and Westminster — a Tory council since its creation in 1964.Speaking to broadcasters, the prime minister referred to the local elections as “mid-term”, adding it was a “mixed-set of results”.As of 1.30pm, the Conservatives had lost 168 council seats, while Labour had gained 41 and the Liberal Democrats had won 77, including town hall seats in David Cameron’s former backyard of West Oxfordshire.In a message to activists earlier on Friday, Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, claimed the results amounted to “an almighty shockwave that will bring this Conservative government tumbling down”.“The tectonic plates of British politics are shifting beneath Boris Johnson’s feet. And now it’s time for Conservative MPs to plunge him into the abyss,” he added.John Curtice, an elections expert, described the Lib Dem improvement as “relatively modest”, saying: “It’s up a couple of points as compared with 2018.”The party had won more seats than Labour largely because of the technicality of gains “in smaller, more rural councils where the wards are smaller, so you get more seats per person”. More

The head of a Conservative HQ unit devoted to defeating the Liberal Democrats has lost his battle for a seat on Somerset Council – to a Liberal Democrat.Hayward Burt has given advice to Tory grassroots organisations on how to see off the “yellow peril” in the Conservative heartland areas known as the Blue Wall which are under assault from Sir Ed Davey’s party.He delivered a “masterclass” to the Conservative Women’s Organisation in November on the subject: “Fighting the Lib Dems – Policies that win”.And he was on a regional party panel for which invitations read: “The Liberal Democrats are slowly working their wayacross the home counties and with May elections fast approaching, do you know the best way to fight off the yellow peril? Join us as we explore the options and listen to expert advice.”But in Thursday’s local elections for the new Somerset unitary authority, he came in third in Blackmoor Vale behind two Lib Dems, who took both of the ward’s seats.Mr Burt represents Blackmoor Vale, alongside fellow-Tory William Wallace, on South Somerset District Council – one of five councils being swallowed up into the new unitary authority from April next year.But both Burt and Wallace failed in their bid to join the new council, taking 1,443 and 1,328 votes respectively against Lib Dems Sarah Dyke on 1,814 and Nicola Clarke on 1,590.Ed Davey’s party went on to win overall control of the new Somerset Council.One Lib Dem source said: “In fairness, even the greatest political strategist couldn’t stop the backlash against Boris Johnson across the Blue Wall.“He is a one-man election-winning unit for the Lib Dems.” More

The Liberal Democrats are finally putting “the disaster” of recent election thrashings behind them with local council gains, a polling expert has suggested.Ed Davey’s party is celebrating making 58 early extra town hall seats after Thursday’s elections, including snatching Hull City Council from Labour, in an embarrassment for Keir Starmer.Perhaps more significantly, the Lib Dems have also taken seats from the Conservatives in places such as Stockport, Wimbledon, in south west London, and in David Cameron’s former backyard of West Oxfordshire.Perversely, only a Lib Dem revival can deliver a Labour victory at the next general election, by winning seats from the Tories in Blue-Yellow battlegrounds.Speaking in Wimbledon, Sir Ed claimed the results amounted to “an almighty shockwave that will bring this Conservative government tumbling down”.Voters have “had enough” of rising living costs, an NHS in crisis and of “a prime minister who breaks the law and lies about it”, he argued.“The tectonic plates of British politics are shifting beneath Boris Johnson’s feet. And now it’s time for Conservative MPs to plunge him into the abyss,” Sir Ed said.John Curtice, an elections expert, described the Lib Dem improvement as “relatively modest”, saying: “It’s up a couple of points as compared with 2018.”The party had won more seats than Labour largely because of the technicality of gains “in smaller, more rural councils where the wards are smaller, so you get more seats per person”.But Sir John told BBC Radio 4: “Even so, I think Liberal Democrats might just be hoping that, on this occasion – against a backdrop that was not particularly propitious for them – perhaps finally beginning to demonstrate some evidence of progress and recovery from the disaster of the 2015 general election.“It’s taken a long time. Maybe, maybe at least the foundations of recovery, or potential recovery at least, have been laid for them.”Sir Ed is also hoping to win control of Somerset County Council, in a result expected later – one that will be seen as a pointer to looming Westminster battles.A by-election is looming in nearby Tiverton and Honiton, where Neil Parish quit over his porn shame, while David Warburton, the Conservative MP in Somerton and Frome, is currently suspended.Labour blamed their loss of control of Hull – after more than a decade in power in the city – on a collapse of the Tory vote, which delivered victories to the Lib Dems.The party gained three seats, leaving it with 29 seats on the 57-seat council, compared with 27 for Labour and one independent. The Conservatives lost their last remaining seat.Daren Hale, the outgoing Labour council leader, told the BBC: “In the seats we held, our majority went up.“It was the collapse of the Tory vote, which, in a sense, the Labour party isn’t responsible for, that led to those seats changing hands.” More

A Conservative MP has raised doubts over Boris Johnson’s future after the party’s heavy local election losses, saying he was must “confront” the Partygate scandal.David Simmonds said public anger about the lawbreaking in No 10 was the “clear message” from voters, after Labour grabbed three flagship London boroughs from the Tories.“It was a pretty clear message on the doorstep. Clearly the prime minister has got some difficult questions to answer,” said the MP for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, on the northern edge of the capital.“Overwhelmingly, the message that I heard on the doorsteps was people were broadly positive about the government’s policies, but they are not happy about what they have been hearing about Partygate.”Mr Simmonds said Mr Johnson had promised to take “full responsibility for these election results”, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think he needs to confront that question now.”The call came as Gavin Barwell, chief of staff to Theresa May, called the loss of Wandsworth and Westminster councils, as well as Barnet, a set of “catastrophic results”.“We held them during the Blair honeymoon. We held them during austerity. We held them under Theresa May. Losing them should be a wake-up call for the Conservative Party,” he tweeted.But Oliver Dowden, the Conservative party chair, played down the talk of major setbacks, as election experts suggested Labour has gone backwards in other parts of England.“We are mid-term and it’s quite a mixed picture because, you look elsewhere, whether that’s in Hartlepool or Nuneaton and Thurrock, we’ve actually made gains,” he argued.“I think, if you take the whole picture of this, it really doesn’t demonstrate that Labour has the momentum to form the next government.”Mr Dowden added: “This isn’t like what Tony Blair got in say ‘95, two years before his election victory – they were making 1,800 gains.“If you look at Ed Miliband [he} managed to make 800 gains in 2011 and still not win the election.”The early results offered little indication of the sort of collapse in Tory support that would trigger a no-confidence vote in Mr Johnson’s leadership.Many Conservative MPs have said they will wait to see if the prime minister receives more fines for lockdown-busting parties and the verdict of Sue Gray’s stalled Cabinet Office inquiry.But some leading Conservative figures in local government went public on their fears for their party’s future.John Mallinson, leader of Carlisle City Council, hit out after Labour took control of the new Cumberland authority which will replace it, said: “I think it is not just Partygate, there is the integrity issue.“Basically I just don’t feel people any longer have the confidence that the prime minister can be relied upon to tell the truth.”And Ravi Govindia, leader of the Wandsworth Tories, said: “Let’s not be coy about it, of course national issues were part of the dilemma people were facing.” More

Local Conservative leaders have turned their fire on Boris Johnson, as the party suffered historic losses in London, with one saying he would be a “poor option” to lead the party into the next general election.As the Tories lost flagship councils in the capital such as Wandsworth — held since 1978 — and Westminster, an authority in the party’s control since its creation in 1964, Theresa May’s former chief-of-staff also suggested the results were “catastrophic” and should be a “wake-up call”.With full results declared from 71 councils at 8am, the Conservatives had overall lost control of six authorities and suffered a net loss of 132 councillors, Labour had a net gain of four councils and 91 seats, the Lib Dems had gained a council and 40 councillors and the Greens had put on 22 councillors.Sir Keir Starmer hailed the results as a “turning point” for Labour, but the polling expert professor Sir John Curtice said the results left Labour with “an awful lot of work” to do outside the capital in “perhaps more Leave-voting England”.But as the blame game began, grassroots Tories cited the on-going Partygate scandal being cited on the doorstep, and the cost-of-living crisis.John Mallinson, the former Tory leader of Carlisle City Council hit out after Labour took control of the new Cumberland authority which will replace it, telling the BBC: “I think it’s not just Partygate, there is the integrity issue.”“Basically I just don’t feel any longer have the confidence that the prime minister can be relied upon to tell the truth,” he said.Mr Mallinson later suggested Mr Johnson would be a “poor option” to lead the Conservatives into the next general election, adding: “He does seem to be attracting a lot of unrest and ill-feeling at the moment”.He also criticised “patronising” comments from the cabinet minister George Eustice, who suggested in a televised interview this week that families struggling in the cost-of-living crisis should use “value brands” to save money.In Portsmouth, where the Tories lost four seats, Simon Bosher, the leader of the Conservative group, said the prime minister should “take a good, strong look in the mirror” because of the voter backlash on the doorstep.Ravi Govindia — the outgoing leader of Wandsworth council, an authority held by the Tories since 1978 — said: “Let’s not be coy about it, of course national issues were part of the dilemma people were facing.”Daniel Thomas, the ex-leader of Barnet council, where Labour clinched victory in the early hours of Friday morning, added the results should be a “warning shot” from his party’s supporters.“Clearly if Labour are to get a majority in Parliament they need to win Barnet,” he said.”They won the council, if they win our parliamentary constituencies as well, then it doesn’t bode well for us to form a Government in future general elections.”Barry Rawlings, the leader of the Barnet Labour group, suggested the result was less a reflection on enthusiasm for his party and more a reflection of disillusionment with Mr Johnson’s Conservatives.He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’ll be honest, it’s not us being wonderful. I think a lot of Conservatives haven’t voted this time, I think they feel alienated from No 10 and that they are, I don’t know, they’ve been disappointed with Boris Johnson and so not voting and I think that’s made a difference as well.”Theresa May’s former chief-of-staff Lord Gavin Barwell also said the local elections results in London were “catastrophic” in London and should be a “wake-up-call” for the Conservative Party.“Wandsworth & Westminster were flagship councils” he said. “We held them during the Blair honeymoon. We held them during austerity. We held them under Theresa May.”Former Tory cabinet minister Justine Greening, who left Parliament in 2019, added: “I think the challenge for the Conservatives is really to understand that levelling up isn’t just for the North. “There are people in this capital, who feel life isn’t fair, opportunities aren’t fair. So Boris Johnson really needs to learn from these results and see that he has to have a national agenda on levelling up not just one for the Midlands and the North.”While admitting the results were “difficult” for the Conservatives, the party chair, Oliver Dowden, put losses at the local elections down to mid-term challenges and insisted Mr Johnson was the right person to lead the party into the next general election.He told Sky News: “I think looking at the picture of the results so far, they demonstrate that whilst there have been difficult results, they are consistent with what you’d expect with us from mid-term.“Labour are certainly not on the path to power and I believe that Boris Johnson does have the leadership skills, in particular the energy and the dynamism that we need during this difficult period of time.“So no, I don’t think we should remove Boris Johnson as our prime minister, I think we should stick with him”. More

Labour has pulled off a historic victory in the Tory council of Westminster — a seat held by the Conservatives since its creation in 1964.It came just hours after Tories lost the “crown jewel” of Wandsworth, which Labour last held 44 years ago in 1978, in a major blow to Boris Johnson.Strengthening its grip on the capital, Labour also clinched victory in Barnet after the Tory council leader conceded defeat, saying the loss was a “warning shot” for the government.He added the result did not “bode well” for the Conservatives at the next general election, as the Partygate scandal and the cost of living crisis impacts on the party’s vote share.Jonathan Carr-West, the chief executive of the Local Government information Unit (LGiU), said with around half of the councils declared the “most dramatic” were in the capital.He said Labour taking control of Barnet, Wandsworth and Westminster council “has huge symbolic value and losing all three of these councils in a single election will be a big blow to the Conservative morale”.Mr Carr-West added: “At the same time, it’s part of a longer term trend in which Labour has tightened its grip on inner London.“Over the last decade, we have seen an increasing polarisation with the Labour vote concentrated in large cities and university towns and Conservative support spread across the rest of the country. In that respect, Conservative losses in Southampton or West Oxfordshire might be more telling indicators.”After full results were declared from 67 councils, the Tories had lost control of four authorities and suffered a net loss of 90 seats, Labour had a net gain of two councils and 57 councillors, the Lib Dems had gained a council and 37 seats while the Greens had put on 20 councillors.As dozens of Tory councillors lost their seats against the backdrop of the cost-of-living crisis and the Partygate scandal, other local Conservative leaders also criticised the prime minister.John Mallinson, leader of Carlisle City Council hit out after Labour took control of the new Cumberland authority which will replace it.He told the BBC: “I think it is not just partygate, there is the integrity issue.“Basically I just don’t feel people any longer have the confidence that the Prime Minister can be relied upon to tell the truth.”In Portsmouth, where the Tories lost four seats, Simon Bosher the leader of the Conservative group said Mr Johnson should “take a good, strong look in the mirror” because “those are people that are actually bearing the brunt on the doorstep of behaviour of what’s been going on in Westminster”.Ravi Govindia, the outgoing leader of the Wandsworth Tories, said: “Let’s not be coy about it, of course national issues were part of the dilemma people were facing.” More

Britain’s governing Conservatives suffered losses in their few London strongholds in local elections, according to results announced Friday that will pile more pressure on Prime Minister Boris Johnson amid ethics scandals and a worsening economic picture.The vote for more than 200 local councils decides who collects garbage and fills potholes across the country, and is also seen as an important barometer of public opinion ahead of the next national election, which must be held by 2024.The main opposition Labour Party, which has been out of power nationally since 2010, won control of Wandsworth, Barnet and Westminster, three London boroughs long held by the Conservatives.With results from about half of England announced Friday morning, Labour had not made big gains outside of the capital, especially in working-class northern England — areas that Johnson successfully wooed in the 2019 general election.Conservative Party chairman Oliver Dowden acknowledged the results in London were “difficult” but said the “more mixed picture” elsewhere showed Labour did not have the momentum to win the next general election.Labour’s national campaign coordinator, Shabana Mahmood, argued that the results showed Labour was building a solid foundation to get back to power.“Labour is making headway … taking over key Conservative councils and winning in vital Parliamentary battlegrounds across the country,” she said.Results are still to come from the rest of England, and all of Scotland and Wales. In Northern Ireland, voters are electing a new 90-seat Assembly, with polls suggesting the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein could win the largest number of seats, and the post of first minister, in what would be a historic first.The election campaign was dominated by increasing prices for food and fuel, which have sent household bills soaring.Opposition parties are demanding the government do more to ease the cost-of-living crunch — driven by the war in Ukraine, COVID-19 pandemic disruption and economic aftershocks from Britain’s exit from the European Union. Both left-of-center Labour and the centrist Liberal Democrats advocate a windfall tax on energy companies, which have reported record profits amid rocketing oil and gas prices.Johnson’s Conservative government argues taxing big firms like Shell and BP would deter much-needed investment in renewable energy that’s key to meeting Britain’s climate commitments.The election also comes after months of turmoil for Johnson, in which he became the first prime minister to be sanctioned for breaking the law in office. He was fined 50 pounds ($62) by police for attending his own surprise birthday party in June 2020 when lockdown rules barred social gatherings.Johnson has apologized, but denies knowingly breaking the rules. He faces the possibility of more fines over other parties — police are investigating a dozen gatherings —and a parliamentary investigation into whether he misled lawmakers about his behavior.The prime minister also faces discontent within his own party. A bad result could lead Conservatives to try to replace Johnson with a less tarnished leader.Dowden, the party chairman, acknowledged there had been “challenging headlines for the past few months.”“But I do think that set against all of that, those sort of challenges that you would expect after 12 years in office, these are challenging results, but we have made progress in lots of places,” he told Sky News.“Labour are certainly not on the path to power and I believe that Boris Johnson does have the leadership skills, in particular the energy and the dynamism that we need during this difficult period of time.” More