UK Politics

Boris Johnson has insisted that he is an “honest” person who does his best to tell the truth, despite admitting he was “inadvertently” wrong to say all Covid rules had been followed in Downing Street.The prime minister also said he had “no idea” whether he would receive more fines from the Metropolitan Police over rule-breaking government parties in the weeks ahead.Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Mr Johnson said the best way to judge his honesty is to “look at what this government says it’s going to do and what it does”.Are if he was honest, Mr Johnson said: “Yes. I do my best to represent faithfully and accurately what I believe. Sometimes it’s controversial and sometimes it offends people but that’s what I do.”When host Susanna Reid referred to the importance of honesty and telling the truth, Mr Johnson said: “It matters very much to me.”He added: “If you’re talking about the statements I made to the House of Commons, I was inadvertently wrong, and I’ve apologised for that … I’ve apologised for the things we got wrong during the pandemic, and I repeat those apologises.”Mr Johnson is facing an investigation over misleading parliament over Partygate after he told the Commons that no laws were broken in Downing Street.This comes despite ongoing calls for his resignation from opposition MPs as well as some of his own backbenches after police handed him a fixed penalty notice (FPN) for attending a celebration for his birthday in No 10.Mr Johnson then insisted that any news of a further FPN will “not remain secret”, but pleaded for the public to wait until the police investigation and top civil servant Sue Gray has offered her full report on the scandal.He added: “I will make sure that as soon as I’m able to say something on the conclusion of the investigation, you will have a lot more on it.”Asked why he should not resign, as Matt Hancock did as health secretary and Allegra Stratton did as press secretary, the PM said: “I’m getting on with the job that I was elected to do … and I’m proud of what we have been doing.”The PM also admitted the UK could have reacted faster in helping Ukrainian refugees, but said “large numbers” of those fleeing the war are now coming to Britain.“So far 86,000 visas have been issued and 27,000 are already here and I want to say ‘Thank you’ – 27,000 is a lot and it’s growing fast and I want to pay tribute to all those who are helping to look after Ukrainians. Could we have done it faster? Yes, perhaps we could.”Lorraine says the reaction to the PM not knowing who she is has made her morningMr Johnson also asked GMB host “Who’s Lorraine?” as he appeared on the programme for the first time in nearly five years.“Who’s Lorraine? Lorraine is a legend!” Ms Reid fired back on her colleague Lorraine Kelly.Mr Johnson appeared to have misunderstood the situation, thinking he was being passed over to Ms Kelly for another interview. “Fantastic, well I didn’t think I was talking to Lorraine, OK…” he muttered.When the daytime “legend” appeared on the screen, she simply said: “Wow. Thank you, Susanna. A masterclass in a political interview.” More

Local elections are again being held in the UK on Thursday 5 May, with 4,000 council seats in England being contested across 146 local authorities against a backdrop of outrage over the “Partygate” scandal, fresh allegations of sleaze and sexism in Westminster and with the cost of living crisis a growing concern.In both Scotland and Wales, 1,200 seats are up for grabs across 32 and 22 councils respectively as citizens cast their vote on who should run the public services they rely on every day, from waste collection to library and park maintenance.Meanwhile, all 90 seats of the Northern Ireland Assembly are in contention, with five members being elected in each of the country’s 18 constituencies.Thursday’s events will also see four new councils involved for the first time – unitary authorities in North Yorkshire, Somerset and two in Cumbria – and seven mayoral positions up for consideration.The public is widely expected to cast its ballots as a verdict on Boris Johnson’s scandal-ridden leadership, the prime minister’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and the prospect of change represented by Sir Keir Starmer – or in reaction to other issues of particular regional significance, from immigration to infrastructure.To find exactly what is happening in your constituency this week, visit the Electoral Commission website and enter your postcode.From there, you will be invited to confirm your postal address, after which you will be presented with all the information you need about the candidates in contention and the location and opening hours of your nearest polling station.The Independent meanwhile has all you need to know about voting, more information on the national picture by region as well as a guide on when the results will be announced.We will be covering the local elections in depth this week and liveblogging both voting day itself and the aftermath on Friday once the results have been counted and compiled. More

Boris Johnson has admitted that the financial support offered by his government is not enough to “help cover everybody” through the cost of living crisis in the months ahead.The prime minister again rejected the idea of a windfall tax on the oil and gas giants despite BP recorded record £5bn profits – insisting that fossil firms “have to invest”.Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Mr Johnson pointed to the £200 “rebate” loan set out by the chancellor Rishi Sunak ealier this year to help with soaring gas and electricity bills.“I accept that those contributions from the taxpayer – because that’s what it is, taxpayers’ money – isn’t going to be enough immediately to help cover everybody,” the PM told host Susanna Reid.Mr Johnson added: “So of course that isn’t going to work enough in the short term.”Grilled by the host about the lack of help for hard-pressed families hit by inflation, Mr Johnson largely blamed the Ukraine war for the impact on food and fuel costs – citing the “crazy” price of chickens.“We’re doing everything we can to help with pressure on family budgets. I totally understand and get that what people are going through,” he said.He added: “It is important to set the global context, this is a spike in energy prices. The cost of chickens is crazy …. That has been greatly exacerbated by what’s going on in Ukraine.”Mr Johnson took credit for introducing free bus passes for pensioners after being told some desperate elderly people are using them simply to keep warm.In response to the case of 77-year-old viewer called Elsie – who has cut down to a meal a day and travels on buses all day to reduce her bills – the PM told GMB: “I don’t want Elsie to cut back on anything.”He added: “The 24-hour freedom bus pass was actually something that I actually introduced.”The PM did concede that “there is more that we can do”, and suggested that the government was looking at providing support to families who need to use high levels of energy due to their medical needs.Asked why welfare benefits would not rise in line with inflation, Mr Johnson said the government had to be “prudent” and wary of driving up inflation even further – having hit a 30-year-high of 7 per cent in March.“Although you’re quite right to point out that there is an inflationary risk and it’s very severe, it could get worse and that knocks on to interest rates, and that knocks on to the cost of borrowing for everybody,” he said. “I’m sorry to say this, but we have to be prudent in our approach.”BP announced on Tuesday that its underlying replacement cost profits more than doubled from £5bn from £2.1bn a year ago thanks to the rocketing cost of crude.Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said BP’s profits demonstrate that a windfall tax is the “right approach”, telling BBC Breakfast: “Have a windfall tax on that and use that to help people with their energy bills, up to £600 for those who need it most.”Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said: “The Conservative government’s refusal to introduce a windfall tax on the super profits of oil companies is becoming impossible to justify.” More

Boris Johnson has taken credit for introducing free bus passes for pensioners after being told elderly people are using them to keep warm.In an interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain the prime minister was told of a 77-year-old pensioner who rode the bus because she could not afford heating.”To cut down on spending, Elsie has resorted to eating one meal a day. She’s losing weight, she’s 77,” host Susanna Reid said.”She goes to the supermarket at the end of the day to buy yellow sticker discounted items. “She gets up early in the morning to use her Freedom bus pass to stay on buses all day to avoid using energy at home. What else should Elise cut back on?”The prime minister replied: “Just to remind you that the 24 hour freedom bus pass was something that I introduced.”The programme’s host replied: “Marvellous, so Elsie should be grateful to you for her bus pass!”As mayor in 2012 Mr Johnson restored free travel for Londoners aged 60 years and older. Qualification with the benefit had previously been rising in line with the retirement age.As a 77-year-old the pensioner cited on Good Morning Britain would have qualified for the bus pass with or without Mr Johnson’s intervention. The prime minister’s comments come after chancellor Rishi Sunak said it would be “silly” to offer more help with bills despite the mounting cost of living crisis.Desperate Britons are facing an average £700 increase in their gas and electricity bills after April’s energy price cap rise – with another 50 per cent spike expected in October.But Mr Sunak said action should not be rolled out now “when we don’t know exactly what the situation in the autumn will be”. More

Boris Johnson today evoke Britain’s struggle with Nazi Germany as he tells Ukraine’s parliament that their country’s resistance of Russian invasion is its “finest hour”.The prime minister will be the first western leader to address the Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv by video link, almost two months after president Volodymyr Zelensky gave his own message to the House of Commons.Mr Johnson will say that the UK is “proud to be among Ukraine’s friends” and will announce a new £300m package of defensive military aid, including electronic warfare kit, a counter-battery radar system, GPS jamming equipment and thousands of night-vision devices.In his live address on Tuesday, Mr Johnson will quote the words of Winston Churchill in 1940, when Britain faced the threat of invasion by Germany and he called on the nation to resist in such a way that in 1,000 years, “men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour’.”Speaking from Downing Street on the 69th day of the war, Mr Johnson will tell Ukrainian MPs: “When my country faced the threat of invasion during the Second World War, our parliament – like yours – continued to meet throughout the conflict, and the British people showed such unity and resolve that we remember our time of greatest peril as our finest hour.“This is Ukraine’s finest hour, an epic chapter in your national story that will be remembered and recounted for generations to come.“Your children and grandchildren will say that Ukrainians taught the world that the brute force of an aggressor counts for nothing against the moral force of a people determined to be free.”Ministers last week confirmed plans to send Brimstone missiles and Stormer air defence vehicles to Ukraine.At the request of the Kyiv government, the UK is also due to supply heavy-lift drones to provide logistical support to isolated forces as well as a dozen Toyota Land Cruisers to help protect officials in eastern Ukraine and evacuate civilians from frontline areas.A report by the Tony Blair Institute today called for the establishment of a joint coordination group so that western allies can help Ukraine close the “weapons gap” between the equipment they have and what they need to deploy as Russia continues its assault on the east of the country.An emergency response and assessment team, taking in the US, UK, France, Germany and Ukraine, could streamline the process of identifying and delivering the arms needed, rather than have President Zelensky go from country to country with a list of requests, said the report.Working closely with allies such as Poland, Turkey, the Czech Republic and Slovakia the team would provide a single port of call for Ukrainian needs to be quickly and coherently filled, not only for supply but also training and maintenance of weapons.In a foreword to the report, Justin Bronk, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said: “The Russian army has taken catastrophic losses during the first two months of its invasion and has limited regular forces which it can still draw on for reserves.“If Ukraine can be supplied with enough of the necessary equipment, it can exhaust the Russian army’s capacity for offensive operations and start to take back territory. However, it will have to be a sustained effort, and the best time to start was yesterday.” More

Labour has written to Rishi Sunak demanding to know whether he or his family benefit from the continued presence of a company in Russia in which his wife holds a £400m stake.Reports on Monday suggested that Indian-based IT giant Infosys – founded by the father of Mr Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty – is still operating in Moscow despite promising a month ago it was leaving.Shadow economic secretary Tulip Siddiq called on the chancellor to clarify when the company’s Russian office will be shut down and whether he or any of his immediate family are benefiting from its continued operation.Ms Murty – who last month gave up her non-dom tax status after it was revealed by The Independent – retains a 0.93 per cent share in Infosys, meaning she could gain from any profits made in Russia.In her letter, Ms Siddiq said Mr Sunak would be aware that most professional services companies left Russia immediately after the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.But she said that, despite the chancellor’s call for companies to “inflict maximum economic pain” on Vladimir Putin’s regime and its own announcement that it would leave, there is evidence it has not yet done so.“The Labour Party agrees that British and other multinational businesses should not be operating in Russia,” wrote Ms Siddiq. “The situation with Infosys is all the more urgent because members of your immediate family retain a stake in the firm. This means they could be profiting through companies operating in Putin’s terrible regime.”She called on Mr Sunak to confirm whether he had sought to clarify when Infosys would pull out of Moscow, whether any of his family members were benefiting from its presence – including via the blind trust which oversees his financial affairs – and whether they would divest themselves of their stakes if this was the case.“It is really important that the chancellor clarifies what is happening here and whether his immediate family is benefitting from Infosys’s continued presence in Russia,” said Ms Siddiq. “We can’t have a situation where a UK chancellor and his family maintain economic interests in the Putin regime.”In a statement, Infosys said: “During the quarterly results, Infosys announced its decision to transition services from Russia to its global delivery centres. “While the company does not have any active relationships with local Russian enterprises, we have a small team of fewer than 100 employees in Russia, which services some of our global clients. We are currently working closely with those clients that are being impacted to enable a smooth transition.” More

Neil Parish resigns after admitting to watching pornography in the CommonsGovernment proposals to sell off housing association properties have been branded “hare-brained” amid warnings they will worsen the shortage of homes for more than a million Britons on waiting lists for affordable accommodation.Boris Johnson is reported to want to grant 2.5m housing association tenants in England the right to purchase their homes at a massive discount, in an echo of Margaret Thatcher’s popular “right to buy” policy of the 1980s which saw a huge proportion of the nation’s stock of council homes sold.Labour branded the plan “desperate”, pointing out that it repeats a policy from David Cameron’s 2015 Conservative manifesto which failed to deliver any sales.And the chief executive of homelessness charity Shelter said the “hare-brained idea” was “the opposite of what the country needs”.Earlier, a minister has rejected calls for an all-women shortlist to find a replacement for disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish. Universities minister Michelle Donelan said that female-only shortlists for parliamentary candidates are “demeaning” to women.Show latest update

1651503053Boris Johnson to be interviewed by Good Morning Britain for first time in nearly five yearsBoris Johnson is due to hold an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain show tomorrow for the first time in nearly five years.“Susanna Reid is going to Downing Street and their interview will be live,” said presenter Kate Garraway, adding that it has been “1,790 days, nearly five years, since he last spoke to this show”.The prime minister infamously was accused of hiding in a fridge in a bid to escape live questioning on the programme during an election campaign visit to the West Yorkshire dairy firm Modern Milkman in December 2019.Ministers were also accused of boycotting the show for more than 200 days during the Covid pandemic, after frequent on-air bust-ups with former presenter Piers Morgan, who earlier tweeted:Andy Gregory2 May 2022 15:501651501409Charities say government’s Rwanda plans failing to deter Channel crossingsThe government’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda has done little to deter people from making the perilous journey to the UK, refugee charities have said – as 254 people in small boats were detected yesterday following an 11-day pause in such trips, with another 100 reportedly brought ashore today.The government’s Nationality and Borders Bill – which makes it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK illegally and includes powers to process asylum seekers overseas – became law on Thursday.The resumption of crossings at the weekend showed that “draconian policies enshrined in the Nationality and Borders Bill and their Rwanda deal are doing little to deter desperate people jumping on boats because they do nothing to address the reasons people come”, said Enver Solomon, chief executive of Refugee Council.He called on the UK to have a “grown-up conversation with France and the EU about sharing responsibility”, adding: “We need a fair and humane asylum system, with means well thought-out, long-term solutions that address why people are forced from their homes, and provides them with safe routes to the UK.”Care4Calais said that of the 64 people it surveyed, 87 per cent had heard of the plan and 75 per cent said “it won’t put them off crossing to the UK”, calling the plan “just another in a long line of deterrence policies announced by this government”.Such sentiments were echoed by Pierre-Henri Dumont, French National Assembly member for Calais, who told the BBC: “When you leave your country because of flood, because of starvation, because you are not afraid of being hauled and sent back to another country, at least if you have a chance you will try.”You can read more details here:Andy Gregory2 May 2022 15:231651499559Family feel ‘completely abandoned’ by Foreign Office as Briton faces death penalty in IraqThe family of a British man facing the death penalty in Iraq have said they feel “completely abandoned” by the Foreign Office as sentencing approaches.Jim Fitton’s son-in-law told The Independent it was a “cautionary tale” for British citizens abroad to not expect the department “to save you if you get into trouble outside of your control”.My colleague Zoe Tidman has the story: Matt Mathers2 May 2022 14:521651498505 Tory MP: Too early to know if Rwanda policy is workingIt is too early to know if the government’s Rwanda migrant policy is working, a Tory MP has said.Tim Loughton, a member of the Commons home affairs committee, was speaking after 254 people were detected in small boats crossing the Channel to the UK on Sunday after an 11-day pause in such journeys.”They are depressing scenes and they are going to get worse,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One programme.”It may seem a very robust, extreme scheme, but it is the first thing that has actually been put forward that would actually practically do something about this problem.”People in the south and up and down the country are just sick and tired of these people smugglers making a fortune out of human trafficking, this misery coming across the Channel.”The Rwanda scheme is an attempt to do something practical about it. But is very early days – it was only announced three weeks ago and it hasn’t started yet.”Matt Mathers2 May 2022 14:351651497044Asda chief warns food prices could remain high for ‘some time’Food prices will remain high for “some time” and the government should intervene to help struggling families, one of Britain’s most experienced retailers has said.Lord Rose, Asda chairman, also accused the Bank of England and ministers of being too “slow” to react to rampant inflation.He said: “We saw the signs last year that inflation was coming. I think the actions that have been taken to curb it have been a bit slow in coming.”Matt Mathers2 May 2022 14:101651495805‘Misogynistic dinosaurs’ dragging down parliament’s reputationIt is a small minority of “misogynistic dinosaurs” who are responsible for sexual misconduct at Westminster, a minister has said.Universities minister Michelle Donelan spoke to Sky News earlier about the wave of misogyny claims to hit parliament in recent days.“These are misogynistic dinosaurs,” she said. “They do not represent the majority of members of parliament.More comments below: Matt Mathers2 May 2022 13:501651493820Boris Johnson slammed over ‘hare-brained’ Thatcher-style plan to sell off housing association homesGovernment proposals to sell off housing association properties have been branded “hare-brained” amid warnings they will worsen the shortage of homes for more than a million Britons on waiting lists for affordable accommodation.Our politics editor Andrew Woodcock reports: Matt Mathers2 May 2022 13:171651493156ICYMI: Tensions over cost of living surface, as Kwarteng sets face against ‘arbitrary’ windfall tax on energy firmsCabinet divisions over the cost of living crisis have been exposed, as business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng argued firmly against an “arbitrary” windfall tax on energy firms just days after Rishi Sunak indicated he was ready to consider the move.Our politics editor Andrew Woodcock has the story: Matt Mathers2 May 2022 13:051651491956ICYMI: Tory MP in row over colleague’s sex assault conviction to quit parliamentA Tory MP who sparked fury by coming to the defence of a colleague found guilty of child sex assault has announced he will stand down from parliament at the next election.Crispin Blunt was forced to apologise and resign as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on global LGBT+ rights after condemning the conviction of Imran Ahmad Khan as an “international scandal”.Our politics editor Andrew Woodcock reports: Matt Mathers2 May 2022 12:451651490156Starmer: Cooperation with France needed to tackle Channel crossingsThe UK needs to work closer with France to solve the migrant crisis, the Labour leader has said while on the campaign trail in Worthing.Sir Keir Starmer said: “Nobody wants to see anybody making that perilous journey across the Channel and everybody wants to crack down on the criminal gangs that are driving this.”The best way to do that is to have an international co-ordinated criminal response.”I have worked on international criminal organisations before when I was director of public prosecutions.”I know what can be done if you’ve got teams working together across Europe all the way along those routes absolutely bearing down on these criminal gangs and working very closely with the French authorities as well.”Matt Mathers2 May 2022 12:15 More