British Politics

A group of Conservative MPs have launched a group to resist calls for an extended national lockdown, in a bid to prevent Nigel Farage’s new party gaining influence. Some 32 Conservatives rebelled against the government when the Commons approved the second lockdown for England which lasts until December 2. The prime minister said he expects […]

Tate and Lyle Sugars, a company that has backed both the Tories and Brexit, have issued a warning to customers that it could be hit by significant disruption at the end of the transition period later this year. The company, which supplies major supermarkets including Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Marks and Spencers has warned the […]

President-elect Joe Biden has started to reach out to world leaders, with Boris Johnson finally speaking with the Democrat. The American politician had been expected to prioritise calls with top European leaders, with French president Emmanuel Macron high on the list. But Downing Street has insisted they were near the top of the calls list, […]

Boris Johnson’s Internal Market Bill – which attempts to override international law – is to be tested in Northern Ireland’s High Court. An anonymous litigant is challenging the prime minister for acting in bad faith over the Withdrawal Agreement with the European Union, and signing it “without ever intending he should be bound by it”. […]

The director of a public relations firm paid £670,000 to advise the government’s coronavirus vaccine tsar is a longstanding business associate of Dominic Cummings’ father-in-law. It was reported that the vaccine tsar, Kate Bingham, was step down at the end of the year following controversy over the PR contract given to Admiral Public Relations. Bingham […]

Boris Johnson’s tweet congratulating Joe Biden on his US election victory was originally designed for Donald Trump, it has been revealed. The message sent by Boris Johnson on Saturday evening showed the word “Trump” faintly in the background. This led to online speculation that Number 10 had originally prepared a message to herald a Trump win, […]

Testing and trace on its own is not a “silver bullet” to tackling coronavirus, the person in charge of the scheme has claimed. Baroness Dido Harding, chair of Test and Trace, told a committee of MP that the evidence in the UK and across Europe was that it was just one of a range of […]

Boris Johnson ignored the advice of four former prime ministers over his coronavirus strategy, it has been revealed. Former Tory chancellor George Osborne revealed that Conservatives David Cameron and John Major joined forces with Labour politicians Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to write a private letter to Downing Street back in July. They urged Johnson […]

Former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said the UK could “struggle for relevance” under Joe Biden’s presidency. The Remain campaigner also warned that the Democrat election winner would view Brexit developments in a “completely different way” from beaten incumbent Donald Trump, given his strong Irish roots. Clegg, who was David Cameron’s deputy in Downing Street […]

Brexiteer Kate Hoey has claimed that opponents of Boris Johnson’s Internal Market bill – which would override international law – are stabbing “in the back of the people of Northern Ireland”. The former Labour MP urged peers to ignore the comments of president-elect Joe Biden, claiming the original Brexit deal has “sold out” the people […]

Iain Duncan Smith has become the latest Brexiteer to worsen relations between Boris Johnson and Joe Biden’s administration, by telling the president-elect that Brexit “has nothing to do with him”. Over the weekend fellow European Research Group member John Redwood was criticised for sending a “warning letter” to Biden over Brexit, claiming they have a […]

Health secretary Matt Hancock has run away from a Good Morning Britain reporter as ministers continue to boycott the programme. The government has boycotted the programme for 196 days, with a reporter opting to instead shout his questions at the MP as he spoke to other interviewers on other networks over the vaccine. As Hancock’s […]

Ken Clarke has attacked the government for behaving like a “third-world dictatorship” with the Internal Market Bill, claiming what it was asking politicians to do was “ridiculous and deeply damaging to the reputation of the country”. The former Tory minister said that Boris Johnson’s Brexit bill was “inferior” in comparison to the three attempts Theresa […]

Former Brexit Party MEP Claire Fox has delivered a speech in the House of Lords attacking opponents of Boris Johnson’s law-breaking Brexit bill, before voting against it herself. By a significant margin, peers voted against the legislation which has powers to enable ministers to override international law. And the Baroness of Buckley was one of […]

Key parts of Boris Johnson’s controversial Brexit legislation have been defeated by the Lords by a huge margin. Peers moved to strip controversial clauses from the UK Internal Market Bill that would enable ministers to break international laws. The Lords voted 433 to 165, a government defeat of 268, to reject law-breaking powers after fierce criticism […]

Former Conservative prime minister John Major has savaged the Brexit project warning that Britain is “no longer a great power” and “will never be so again”. In a pre-recorded lecture at Middle Temple the former MP claimed “even more brutal than expected” due to the UK’s negotiating “failures” and warned of its impact on Britain’s standing […]

A former Tory leader has led the calls for the government to “think again” over its controversial Brexit legislation as the peers plan to strip out powers that enable ministers to break international law. Brexiteer Lord Howard of Lympne is one of the rebels planning to remove the contentious parts of the UK Internal Market Bill, […]

The MP husband of NHS Test and Trace chief Baroness Harding has been told to self-isolate over coronavirus, sparking concerns the chief could have to do so too. Tory MP John Penrose was alerted by the NHS Covid-19 app, part of the operation overseen by his wife. The Weston-super-Mare MP said on Twitter: “It never […]

Opposition peers have accepted government assurances over post-Brexit food standards after MPs continued to overturn their amendments to the Agriculture Bill. Ministers have pledged to offer increased parliamentary scrutiny of free trade agreements to ensure consistency of standards on human health, animal welfare and the environment. The Trade and Agriculture Commission, which represents UK farmers, retailers and consumers, […]

Donald Trump is “vulnerable to prosecution” after he leaves the White House, when his presidential “cloak of immunity” will go away. Legal experts have warned that a number of lawsuits and investigations face Trump once he returns to private life. At present, the American justice department has a policy that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted […]

Lord Kilclooney has been criticised for describing US vice president-elect Kamala Harris solely as “the Indian”. The former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) deputy leader was ordered to apologise and retract his tweet about Harris, who is the first black and Asian-American person to be elected to the role. The crossbench peer, who previously deleted a tweet […]

Brexiteer Tory MPs are hatching a plan to topple Boris Johnson if he does not resign in the spring before local elections. Opponents of Johnson, including Iain Duncan Smith, John Redwood and Esther McVey, have created a Whatsapp group entitled “Lockdown Loons” and are plotting against the government, the Mirror reports. At least one is […]

Under-fire vaccines tsar Kate Bingham is expected to leave her post at the end of the year after amassing a £670,000 bill over a contract for public relations support. Downing Street insisted Boris Johnson had full confidence in Bingham, a venture capitalist married to the Conservative minister Jesse Norman, and praised her work in securing […]

A Brexiteer MP has penned what pro-Brexit newspapers have described as a ‘warning letter’ to president-elect Joe Biden over Brexit. John Redwood said he accepted that Biden now has a “clear mandate” in America, but he also claimed there was a “larger percentage mandate” for the EU referendum result, despite both equating to around 52% of […]

Boris Johnson is to hold a press conference at Downing Street this evening, following news on a successful coronavirus vaccine. Pharmaceutical company Pfizer has revealed its coronavirus vaccine is more than 90% effective in preventing the disease. But with Johnson looking to seize upon the news, it is likely that the prime minister will face […]

Joe Biden could force Boris Johnson to sign up to a Brexit deal with the EU in his first contact with the British prime minister. British diplomats have conceded that the PM is likely to be far down the list on people the president-elect telephones after his election win, but when he does the dialogue […]

Former Conservative minister Anna Soubry has backed Keir Starmer to be the next prime minister over Boris Johnson. Soubry, who quit the party to lead Change UK in 2019, was comparing two tweets between the Labour and Tory leaders over Joe Biden’s win. While Johnson went for an impersonal approach commenting on the “special relationship” […]

Joe Biden is expected to call European leaders Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron early on as he speaks with politicians across the world in the coming days. Johnson is hoping to build bridges with Biden after a Democratic source claimed that there was “no special relationship with Boris Johnson” following the election win. But sources close […]