Markus Andrews

Boris Johnson gave the public a bizarre two-minute monologue on the wonders of Shakespeare as the Covid threat loomed last year – fuelling claims that he was focused on writing a book.Dominic Cummings is expected to make the accusation – strongly denied by No 10 – that the prime minister skipped crucial meetings because of a money-spinning deadline with a publisher, when he speaks to MPs on Wednesday.Mr Johnson spent 12 days at the Chevening grace-and-favour estate, in February 2020, having received an advance of close to £100,000 to write ‘The Riddle of Genius’.Now a recording of his ‘People’s PMQs’ session, on 5 February, has revealed how he mused at length on the bard’s work – despite not having been asked any questions about it.“What an incredible thing it is to have pictures, contemporaneous pictures, of William Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth,” the prime minister told the public.“Just imagine he performed in front of her. I mean, we didn’t know this for certain, but it’s almost certain that William Shakespeare will have performed in front of Queen Elizabeth.“And they say, of course, that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was staged particularly for her.“I think, you remember, that she liked the character of Falstaff so much, in Henry IV part one and two – where he dies – she said, Shakespeare, give us another Falstaff, give us another Falstaff!”The prime minister concluded: “Anyway, nobody asked me that question tonight on People’s PMQs – but I’m giving you that information, absolutely free gratis, nonetheless.”A week later, Mr Johnson left Downing Street for a “working” holiday at Chevening with his partner Carrie Symonds, and would not be seen in public for 12 days.At the time, medical experts were warning that the coronavirus threat emerging from China could be comparable to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, but he missed 5 emergency Cobr meetings.He was also wrestling with his divorce from Marina Wheeler, after the family court approved a financial settlement with his wife of 27 years.On Monday, the prime minister’s spokesman denied he was working on his Shakespeare book in January and February 2020, when the Cobr meetings took place.“No, the prime minister has been leading the response to this pandemic throughout. That has been his focus,” he insisted.However, asked whether Mr Johnson has spent any of his time in No 10 writing the book, he replied only: “Not that I am aware of.”The book was originally due to be published by Hodder & Stoughton in October 2016, close to the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.It was delayed when Mr Johnson was made foreign secretary in July 2016, “in light of his new responsibilities”, the publisher said.It was reported that he was left facing having to repay the advance – having, in 2015, declared two payments worth a total of £98,000 “for book as yet unwritten”. More

Health chiefs in eight Covid hotspots hit by “local lockdowns by stealth” have said they were kept in the dark about shock new advice to people not to enter or leave.The government guidance also says people in the areas – Bolton, Blackburn, Kirklees, Bedford, Burnley, Leicester, North Tyneside and Hounslow – should not meet indoors and should stay 2 metres apart.But there was no announcement of the move, which is being seen as a form of local lockdown in places with the highest rates of the Indian variant of coronavirus.Cabinet minister Thérèse Coffey insisted the advice was simply “formalising the need to be extra cautious” in the 8 areas, saying: “I think it’s a sensible approach.”But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the failure to alert local leaders was “utterly shameful” and branded local lockdowns the “wrong approach”.Dominic Harrison, Blackburn with Darwen’s public health director, said: “Areas involved were not consulted with, warned of, notified about, or alerted to this guidance.“I have asked to see the national risk assessment which supports this action – it has not been provided to us yet.”Likewise, North Tyneside Council said there was “no communication” from the government before the advice for people to avoid the borough was quietly changed four days ago.Extraordinarily, on Monday, its public health director Wendy Burke told local people: “It’s certainly okay to visit the area and obviously we’ve got some fantastic things for people to come and see.”Yasmin Qureshi, a Bolton MP, told the Bolton News: “I was not told about this new guidance and I don’t think anybody was. It just shows the incompetence of the government in dealing with this.“I am very angry and upset on behalf of my constituents who may have booked to go away to see family, paid for rail tickets, made arrangements.“Had they known about this guidance I am sure the majority would not have made plans. It leaves them in a very difficult situation because these new guidelines are advisory.”At Westminster, Layla Moran, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, said: “This is a major change to policy that will have a huge impact on people’s lives.“Simply updating the government website without an official announcement is a recipe for confusion and uncertainty. Local people and public health leaders in these areas need urgent clarity.”At 5.26pm last Friday, the Cabinet Office website was changed to say people in Bedford, Blackburn, Bolton, Kirklees, Leicester, Hounslow and North Tyneside should “avoid travelling in and out….unless it is essential”.The same advice for Bolton and Blackburn was issued a week earlier – on the day Boris Johnson staged a press conference – but the change was never mentioned.Publicly, ministers have backed away from threats of official local lockdowns where the Indian variant is on the rise, as they seek to lift all remaining Covid restrictions on 21 June.Ms Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, said the 21 June final step on the roadmap, is “still very much under consideration”, pending further Covid data. More

Prime Minister Boris Johnson helped create an impression that his Conservative Party is “insensitive” to Muslims with a newspaper column comparing veil-wearing women to “letter boxes,” a report into prejudice in Britain’s governing party said Tuesday.The inquiry, set up by the party in 2019 to investigate all forms of discrimination, said “anti-Muslim sentiment remains a problem” within the Conservative Party at local and individual levels. But it didn’t conclude that the party was institutionally racist or failed to take complaints seriously.“While the party leadership claims a ‘zero tolerance approach’ to all forms of discrimination, our findings show that discriminatory behaviors occur, especially in relation to people of Islamic faith,” said the committee, led by Srawan Singh, an academic and former member of Britain’s equalities commission.But it said it didn’t find evidence of a party which “systematically discriminated against any particular group.” Johnson has a long history of making provocative and offensive comments in a career that has combined politics and journalism. He has called Papua New Guineans cannibals, claimed that “part-Kenyan” Barack Obama had an ancestral dislike of Britain and, in a 2018 newspaper column, compared Muslim women who wear face-covering veils to “letter boxes” and “bank robbers.”The committee cleared Johnson of breaking the party’s code of conduct, but said Conservative leaders “ought to set a good example for appropriate behaviors and language.”Johnson has previously apologized for any offense given by his language, but not for writing the words. He has dismissed such comments as jokes or plain-speaking, or accused journalists of distorting his words. He told the commission that he wouldn’t use “some of the offending language from my past writings” now that he is prime minister. More

Jeremy Corbyn should not have the Labour whip reinstated until he apologises to the Jewish community “for the hurt that he caused”, the senior frontbencher Lisa Nandy has said.The shadow foreign secretary said Sir Keir Starmer was “right” to the withdraw the whip from the former Labour leader last year after he was suspended over over his response to the 2020 report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into the party’s handling of antisemitism allegations.Mr Corbyn has since been readmitted to the party — following a meeting of Labour’s governing body — but his successor, Sir Keir, has so far refused to restore the parliamentary whip, meaning he can not sit as a Labour MP.At the time, Sir Keir said the decision would be kept under review and that his predecessor had “undermined and set back out work in restoring the trust and confidence in the Labour Party’s ability to tackle antisemitism”.The campaigning group Momentum — set up to support Corbyn’s policy agenda — has previously accused Sir Keir of engaging in a “blatant act of political interference, creating a precedent whereby the leader of the Labour Party can in effect pass additional and contradictory rulings and dole out punishment to go with it”.Pressed on why Mr Corbyn was still in the party, Ms Nandy told LBC on Monday: “There was a process that was followed where he was suspended from the Labour Party and then readmitted in accordance with the rules.“It’s not for me as a senior politician to interfere with those rules — that’s how we got into this mess in the first place,” she said.“The Equality and Human Rights Commission said it was not acceptable for friends or those close to the leadership to try and influence the outcome of decisions, but I have to say I think Keir Starmer was right to withdraw the whip.“As far as I’m aware, Jeremy hasn’t apologised for the hurt that he caused to the Jewish community and until he does I don’t think he should sit as a Labour MP.”In a letter to Mr Corbyn in 2020, Labour’s former chief whip, Nick Brown, said his response to the EHRC report had caused “distress and pain” to the Jewish community .Speaking earlier this month, Diane Abbott, a close ally of Mr Corbyn who served as his shadow Home Secretary said restoring the whip could be “unifying measure” for the party.Ms Nandy’s comments also came as a critic of the former leader, the Bermondsey and Old Southwark MP Neil Coyle, wrote to the Parliamentary Commissioner on Standards over allegations Mr Corbyn has not declared financial support given to him for legal disputes involving antisemitism.In his letter, Mr Coyle claimed that he had – “from multiple sources” – come to understand that Mr Corbyn, who now sits as an independent MP, had “received financial support for legal cases involving him in various legal disputes, principally surrounding antisemitism”, but that he said had not been properly declared.Speaking to Sky News, Mr Corbyn said: “I will be liaising with the commissioner in response to Neil Coyle’s correspondence.” More

The Italians who won Eurovision have issued an outraged denial after video footage showed the band’s singer hovering a nostril over a table in the green room. “Please, guys – don’t say that,” the band said on drug claims. “We’re really shocked about what people are saying.” Boris Johnson’s government is outraged denial mode – ministers are really shocked about what Dominic Cummings is saying. The renegade’s allies say he’s ready to “napalm” No 10 this week with his claims on herd immunity and high-level incompetence. But does Cummings have anything really shocking to tell MPs?Inside the bubblePolicy correspondent Jon Stone on what to look out for today: More

Priti Patel is the sort of determined no-nonsense figure who tends to ruffle feathers, to say the least. As with recent accusations of bullying and perceptions of her behaviour, for which she apologised (sort of), her statements on immigration are usually controversial if not divisive, and if not deliberately provocative. Sometimes, she says, her own outlook and the attacks she attracts are influenced by her own background as the daughter of an Asian family expelled like so many by President Amin of Uganda in 1972. She gives no quarter. She takes great comfort from the 2016 Brexit referendum and the 2019 general election as her mandate to implement what she takes to be the people’s attitude towards migration. That doesn’t mean that everything that emanates from her Home Office is automatically wrong-headed or impractical. Brexit, the loss of security for Hong Kong citizens, and the flow of migrants making their way across the English Channel in flimsy dinghies mean that immigration policy has to change. The New Plan for Immigration she has unveiled seems enough to keep even her substantial tram of civil servants occupied for some years. She has radical proposals, but almost concealed beneath the hardline rhetoric about life sentences for people smugglers, Patel has summarily scrapped the cornerstone of Conservative immigration policy for the past decade – the target, perhaps casually arrived at, to limit migration to the UK to the “tens of thousands”. She has buried it. More

The UK government is asking airlines to avoid Belarus airspace after a Ryanair jet was forced to land in capital Minsk and a journalist travelling on board was arrested.Foreign secretaryDominic Raab told the House of Commons he had also asked the Civil Aviation Authority to suspend the operating permit of the Belarusian airline Belavia.The announcement came ahead of a summit in Brussels where the European Union is expected to impose sanctions on the regime of president Alexander Lukashenko.European Council president Charles Michel said that the 27-nation bloc was convinced a “firm” response was needed to what he described as an “international scandal” which had put international security, civil aviation and the lives of European citizens at risk., More

Priti Patel has refused to say whether the government’s new immigration reforms are forecast to cause a rise or fall in net migration.The Conservatives have abandoned their former target to reduce the figure to below 100,000 a year, which was never met after first being proposed by David Cameron in 2010.The New Plan for Immigration makes no direct mention of net migration or any reduction, instead it focusses on deterring “illegal entry” to the UK and increasing the deportation of people “with no right to be here”.In a speech on Monday, the home secretary repeated that the government was fixing a “broken immigration system” but would not be drawn on projected numbers.Asked whether its plans would cause an increase or decrease in net migration, she replied: “I’m not going to get into the language of old around immigration.“I’m fixing a system and making it much more effective for the world that we live in and the needs of our country and our economy.”Ms Patel said that the changes would lead to “greater accuracy” on migration numbers, adding: “We don’t have to work around the hypotheticals around net migration targets, or numbers, or things of that nature, and speculate about whether or not numbers will go up and down.”The home secretary also declined to give details of a new US-style Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system, which will require visitors to the UK to obtain an online permit before travelling.The Home Office said it would make the border more secure, with automated checks to prevent foreign criminals travelling to the country, while enabling the government to count who is coming in and going out.ETAs will be required by anyone without a visa or immigration status – although they will not be needed by Irish citizens – with ministers promising the system will be operational by the end of 2025.Asked how much the ETAs would cost, the home secretary said the scheme would “require legislation” and that the government would publish more information in due course.Protesters block van removing Muslim immigrants in GlasgowMs Patel said the government was also looking at the possibility of requiring proof of coronavirus vaccines for EU citizens entering the UK, but that a decision had not been reached.Her speech, to a conference organised by the Bright Blue and British Future think tanks, came after the number of migrants crossing the English Channel more than doubled year-on-year to over 3,000 so far in 2021.Ms Patel insisted that the government had a “fair but firm plan” to stop small boat crossings.She said the proposals would enable authorities to “speed up the removal of people with no legal right to be here” and “reduce incentives for people to come here illegally”.Moves to deny refugee status to asylum seekers who passed through a safe third country before reaching the UK have been condemned by the United Nations and charities.On Saturday, The Independent revealed that no asylum seekers have been returned to EU countries this year because a mechanism lost during Brexit has not been replaced.The government has said it will strike bilateral agreements to enable the deportation of asylum seekers to countries deemed responsible for their applications, but several nations including France have said they will not sign them.Ms Patel said the government would be creating safe and legal routes for refugees to reach the UK and “break the model” of people smuggling.The shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said the Conservatives have had 11 years to fix a system they “broke”.“Clearly people who have no right to be in this country shouldn’t be here, but what we have seen from the Home Office is utter incompetence on this,” he told Sky News.“What we don’t want to see is the government deflecting blame for their own failure when it’s their incompetence, their management and mismanagement of the Home Office that has been the problem.” More