Boris Johnson’s criticism of sexist smear against Angela Rayner inadequate, says Labour – UK politics live
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves says action is needed, ‘not just warm words’
- Tories behind misogynistic claims ‘may be disciplined’
- Priti Patel’s refugee pushback policy withdrawn
- Dorries criticises Rees-Mogg’s ‘Dickensian’ wfh approach
- Tories could lose 1.3m voters if net zero target ditched, says poll
- Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates
And here is a summary of the main points from the Downing Street lobby briefing.
- Boris Johnson has not yet received a fine over the garden party in Downing Street on 20 May 2020, the prime minister’s spokesperson revealed. (See 12.10pm.)
- The spokesperson said Downing Street has not yet received the full report from Sue Gray into Partygate. The spokesperson also said that he did not recognise the quotes in The Times today (see 10.50am) attributed to an official who is said to be familiar with what it will say. And the spokesperson reitereated No 10’s intention to publish the report in full. Asked if the report would include photographs, the spokesperson said that he did not know what form it would take. But he suggested some material obtained by Gray might not be released on data protection grounds. (Previously the government has indicated that the report may not identify junior officials involved in Partygate incidents.)
- Johnson has backed Jacob Rees-Mogg over Nadine Dorries on getting civil servants back into the office. Dorries, the culture secretary, has criticised Rees-Mogg’s decision to leave notes on the desks of absent officials as a way of incentivising them to stop working from home. (See 9.47am.) Asked about Dorries’s comments, the spokesperson said Johnson “certainly supports initiatives to get people to return back to pre-pandemic [levels of attendance in the office]”. He rejected claims that the Rees-Mogg approach amounted to bullying. And he stressed that Rees-Mogg was not trying to end all hybrid working; he was simply trying to get civil service attendance in the office back to pre-pandemic levels, the spokesperson said.
- The spokesperson said the comments about Angela Rayner in the Mail on Sunday yesterday were “unacceptable”. He said:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Those comments are unacceptable. [Johnson] contacted Angela Rayner direct. The prime minster deplores the misogyny directed at her. There is no place for those kinds of attitudes. We recognise that there is more work to do and the prime minister would support that. There is no place for misogyny in parliament.
The prime minister wants to do everything possible not just to support women already working in politics but to encourage more.
Asked if there would be an inquiry into who briefed the Mail on Sunday, the spokesperson said as a civil servant he would not comment on party management.
- The spokesperson effectively admitted that the UK, like other western countries, had underestimated the threat from Russia in recent years. Asked about a Sunday Times investigation saying the government for many years resisted Ukraine requests to supply it with lethal weapons, because ministers did not want to antagonise Moscow, the spokesperson said:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}[Johnson] has said for some time now that the international community made mistakes in responding to Russia’s aggression in the region previously. We’ve acknowledged that. The UK is one of the few international partners to have offered the full range of military, security, economic, fiscal and government support, and we have worked closely with Ukraine for a long time prior to this conflict.
The Downing Street lobby briefing has just ended. And we’ve learned that Boris Johnson has not received a fine over the party in the Downing Street garden on 20 May 2020 – or at least not yet.
There has been speculation that he will be fined for this because at the end of last week it emerged that other people who attended the event in response to an invitation from Johnson’s then principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds, are being fined. The invitation told people to BYOB (bring your own bottle).
No 10 has said it will tell reporters if Johnson receives further fines (he has already been fined for attending a surprise birthday gathering for him in the cabinet room), and this morning the PM’s spokesperson said there were no further updates.
I’ll post more from the briefing shortly.
This afternoon Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the national security adviser, will give evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee about Afghanistan. He will be asked about the evidence that Boris Johnson was involved in the decision to approve the evacuation of staff and animals from the Nowzad animal charity from Kabul. No 10 has repeatedly insisted that Johnson was not involved in this operational decision.
Ahead of the hearing the committeee has released a statement from Lovegrove covering this issue. In it Lovegrove says:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I, and others in Whitehall, have been clear that the prime minister himself had no direct involvement in decisions around Nowzad.
In the statement Lovegrove also confirms evidence given to the committee in March by senior Foreign Office officials who said that, after Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, posted a message on Twitter last August saying Nowzad staff had been cleared for evactuation, they spoke to Lovegrove for confirmation.
“Following this [the Wallace tweet] I confirmed to a senior FCDO official later that morning that they should proceed to call forward the Nowzad group,” Lovegrove says.
But the statement issued this morning does not explain who authorised Lovegrove to issue this confirmation.
A minister has this morning rejected claims that the elections bill is a threat to democracy.
One provision in the bill, which is due to complete its passage through the House of Lords today, would give the government a new power to issue directions to the Electoral Commission, the body that regulates elections, in the form of a “strategy and policy statement”. Last week the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee (which has a Conservative majority) said this posed “an unacceptable risk to the functioning of our democracy”. And Lord Evans, chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said in an open letter to ministers that his committee was very worried about this proposal. He said:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We remain deeply troubled by the long-term risk to our democratic system that is inherent in provisions which give the government of the day, whatever its political complexion, the opportunity to exert influence on the way the commission operates.
This morning Lord True, a Cabinet Office minister, has released the text of his reply to Evans, rejecting these concerns about the bill and saying the commission will remain “operationally independent”. He says:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The provisions of the bill providing for a strategy and policy statement are necessary and represent a proportionate approach to reforming the accountability of the Electoral Commission to the UK parliament. The statement will provide the commission with a clear articulation of principles and policy priorities, approved by parliament, to have regard to when going about its work.
I disagree with the concerns in your letter about the risk to the independence of the Electoral Commission. As a result of the provisions in the bill, the commission will be required to have regard to the strategy and policy statement. To be clear, the new duty to have regard to the statement will not replace the commission’s other statutory duties or give the government new powers to direct the Electoral Commission’s decision-making. The commission will remain operationally independent and governed by the commissioners.
Keir Starmer told ITV’s This Morning today that the Mail on Sunday story about Angela Rayner was “rank sexism, rank misogyny”. He told the programme:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It is rank sexism, rank misogyny. [Rayner] was really disgusted that all of her political attributes were put aside for this ridiculous, offensive story.
She shouldn’t have to put up with it but all women in politics shouldn’t have to put up with it. Almost every woman in politics has had an element of this in some shape or form.
We have got to change the culture. The culture in parliament, it is sexist, it is misogynist. We need to change it. That is what Angela said to me. She used this expression, she said ‘It triggered something in me about the way women are seen in politics’.
Starmer also said that there should be “zero tolerance” of sexism in politics and that he would address the issue in the Labour party too.
According to a report by Steven Swinford in The Times (paywall), the Sue Gray report into Partygate will be so damning that Boris Johnson may feel obliged to resign. Swinford attributes this to an unnamed “senior official” familiar with the Gray report’s contents. He quotes the official as saying:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Sue’s report is excoriating. It will make things incredibly difficult for the prime minister.
There’s an immense amount of pressure on her — her report could be enough to end him. No official has ever been in a position like this before.
The “could be enough to end him” comment provides Swinford with the line in his intro saying the report “could leave Boris Johnson with no choice but to resign” – although students of Johnson’s career will suspect that nothing could ever persuade Johnson to voluntarily resign as prime minister.
Alastair Campbell, who is no stranger to the dark arts of No 10 spin, suspects Downing Street may have had a hand in the story.
Kezia Dugdale, the former Scottish Labour leader, told BBC Radio Scotland this morning that the sexism directed at Angela Rayner in the Mail on Sunday article was an extreme example of what women in politics have to put up with all the time. She said:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I think this is definitely a particularly egregious example, and the idea that Angela Rayner is defeating Boris Johnson’s Oxford-based debating skills with the power of her legs alone is just a nonsense, and it’s laughable, but it’s an example of the extreme misogyny that women face in politics every single day.
You’re just hearing about this particular example because Angela Rayner is senior enough to have power and agency to call it out and demand that there are consequences for what has happened.
But for a lot of women, they just have to quietly put up with comments like this on a day-by-day basis.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is at the centre of a Cabinet row over his drive to get civil servants back at their desks, PA Media reports. Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, has compared him to Scrooge, saying his approach to civil servants working from home is “Dickensian”. PA says:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Dorries accused Rees-Mogg, the minister responsible for government efficiency, of a “Dickensian” approach to the issue.
Rees-Mogg has written to cabinet ministers calling on them to issue a clear message to staff about a “rapid return to the office” and has been leaving notes in empty Whitehall workspaces with the message: “I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.”
PA goes on:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The Times reported that Dorries’ response was highly critical of Rees-Mogg’s approach.
Rees-Mogg presented figures to cabinet last week showing that some government departments were using as little as 25% of office capacity in early April – the figure for Dorries’ Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was 43%.
Dorries told him his letter to government departments brought to mind “images of burning tallow, rheumy eyes and Marley’s ghost” – a reference to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
She said: “There’s a whiff of something Dickensian about it. Why are we measuring bodies behind desks? Why aren’t we measuring productivity?”
The two ministers have long disagreed about the need to return to places of work following the lifting of coronavirus restrictions. But the dispute between the two was “good natured”, one government source told the PA news agency.
Rees-Mogg used a Mail on Sunday article to warn that officials may lose the London weighting on their pay or see their jobs moved elsewhere if they were not at their desks.
“Essentially, if people are not back in their office it will be fair to assume that the job does not need to be in London,” he said.
Chris Philp, the technology minister, was on interview duty for No 10 this morning. As my colleague Rachel Hall reports, Philp said that if the government whips found who was responsible for the anti-Rayner briefing to the Mail on Sunday (see 9.27am), they could be disciplined.
Good morning. The local elections are less than a fortnight away, the war in Ukraine continues, and the Labour party is announcing a new tax policy. And yet Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, who has been touring the studios to explain the non-dom tax plan, has spent much of the morning responding to a sexist report about her colleague, Angela Rayner, that first appeared in the Mail on Sunday more than 24 hours ago.
In some respects it is surprising that a “story” that appears to be based on little more than a glib comment from a Tory MP (perhaps over a drink?) has attracted so much attention. The Mail on Sunday is one of the most pro-Tory papers around, but if anyone there was assuming that this report was going to damage Labour, they miscalculated massively. (Newspaper executives often have a poor grasp of political strategy, but ultimately they prioritise selling newspapers over helping the political parties they support.)
But, despite its apparent ridiculousness, or perhaps because of its apparent ridiculousness, the story struck a chord because it illuminated the pervasive sexism that almost all women in public life still encounter – despite the enormous progress made over recent decades. One MP has said Glen Owen, the Mail on Sunday political editor, who wrote the article, should have his parliamentary press pass removed. Only last week there were calls in parliament for another journalist, the Times sketchwriter Quentin Letts, to have his pass revoked for “disgraceful” misogyny in his reporting.
If you want, you can read the original Mail on Sunday article here. Here is my colleague Heather Stewart’s overnight story about the row.
Yesterday Boris Johnson joined those attacking the Mail on Sunday report, saying he deplored the misogyny directed at Rayner. It has now been reported that he texted her saying the comments were “not in his name”. It is almost certainly true that No 10 had nothing to do with the briefing, although increasingly, as he tries to refute claims that he has made outrageous comments, Johnson is in the position of the boy who cried wolf; having published so much sexist material in his career as a journalist, it is easy to see why people might not believe him when he says that this time he’s in the clear. A similar thing happened last week when he denied smearing the Church of England as pro-Putin.
This morning, in an interview with Sky News, Reeves asked asked about the official Tory response to the Mail on Sunday article, and about the fact that Johnson and Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, criticised it with identical tweets.
Reeves replied:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This shouldn’t just be a line to take. This should be actually what you feel and what you believe, and also you need some action, not just warm words.
Reeves said that the Conservatives needed to make it clear to the MPs who were briefing this story that this was “totally unacceptable”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Keir Starmer appears on ITV’s This Morning.
10am: Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister for Brexit opportunities, speaks at a a Centre for Policy Studies event on UK competitiveness.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Priti Patel, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
2.30pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, speaks at the Scottish TUC conference.
After 3.30pm: MPs debate Lords amendments to the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill.
4pm: Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the national security adviser, gives evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee.
4pm: Matthew Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Home Office, gives evidence to the public accounts committee on police recruitment.
Also, Johnson and Starmer are due to take part in local election campaign events today.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com.
- Politics
- Politics live with Andrew Sparrow
- Boris Johnson
- Conservatives
- Keir Starmer
- Labour
- Angela Rayner
- Nadine Dorries