Covid live: Boris Johnson broke the law, says Keir Starmer; Novak Djokovic boards plane after Australian visa loss

Labour leader Keir Starmer is now up.

He opens by saying that the prime minister broke the law by attending at least one of the parties.

“I think he broke the law. He’s as good as admitted he broke the law. Downing Street has now apologised to the Queen for some of the parties that have gone on.

“I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on. There was industrial scale partying going on, not much of it is being denied. The facts speak for themselves. The prime minister broke the law and then he lied about it.”

He added: “When I first challenged the prime minister about it, he said ‘I’ve been assured there were no parties.’

“Then the Allegra Stratton video came out, I challenged him again and he said ‘I’m furious. I’ve just found out about these parties. I’m furious.

“Then it comes out last week he was at one of the parties and his third defence is ‘I was there but I didn’t realise it was a party.’”

Novak Djokovic has now left Australia hours after the full federal court dismissed the world No 1’s bid to restore his visa.

The Serbian tennis player was seen boarding an Emirates flight from Melbourne to Dubai after the court rejected his challenge to the decision of Australian immigration minister, Alex Hawke, to cancel the visa. The flight left shortly after 10.30pm local time (11.30am GMT).

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Restrictions in England could be lifted by the end of January, according to a government minister.

Oliver Dowden told Trevor Phillips on Sunday that current indications are “encouraging”, ahead of Plan B rules being reviewed in 10 days.

“I’m under no doubt the kind of burdens this puts hospitality, wider business, schools and so on under, and I want us to get rid of those if we possibly can,” he said.

“The signs are encouraging but, clearly, we will wait to see the data ahead of that final decision.”

Amnesty International has urged Italy to change its strict anti Covid-19 restrictions to avoid discriminating against unvaccinated people.

A recent decree by Italian prime minister Mario Draghi made vaccination compulsory for people over 50, and for anyone to be able to use public transport and some other services.

The human rights charity asked for alternatives to be considered, including mask wearing and Covid testing to allow unvaccinated people to go to work and use public transport.

Current rules are in place until 15 June.

“The government must continue to ensure that the entire population can enjoy its fundamental rights, such as the right to education, work and medial treatment, with particular regard to non-Covid patients who need urgent surgery,” it said, according to Reuters.

World tennis No 1 Novak Djokovic has boarded a plane to leave Australia after a court cancelled his visa on Sunday.

The player got on to an Emirates flight from Melbourne heading for Dubai, hours after the Australian federal court upheld the government’s cancellation of his visa over his decision not to be vaccinated against Covid-19 – bringing an end to a saga that has run on since 5 January.

Authorities in Thailand have reported the country’s first death from the Omicron variant.

An 86-year-old woman from the southern province of Songkhla died a month after the government brought in travel restrictions for foreign visitors as Omicron spread.

“The woman is a bed-ridden, Alzheimer patient,” health ministry spokesman Rungrueng Kitphati told Reuters.

The country reported 8,077 new infections and nine deaths on Sunday, bringing the total to more than 2.3 million cases. Nearly 22,000 people have died from Covid since the start of the pandemic.

Another sign of unhappiness in the Conservative party ranks in parliament was on display this morning on one of the regional politics shows on BBC One.

Speaking to Politics Midlands, Mark Garnier, MP for Wyre Forest in Worcestershire, said “[The apology] was a start. I think one of the things for someone like me is that this is not the first apology we’ve had. We’ve had an apology for the Owen Paterson stuff, we are still waiting to hear more potentially about ‘wallpapergate’. It is frustrating as a Conservative MP finding yourself having to be put on the defensive all the time.”

The chair of Garnier’s local Conservative association is the latest local official in a safe seat who has called for Johnson to resign. “Whether you interpret the events of May 2020 as a work event or as a party, there are too many people there, it was against the rules, Boris Johnson knew he had broken the rules,” they said.

Garnier, a minister in Theresa May’s government, said that he has not sent in a vote of no confidence letter, but adds that he thinks Johnson’s departure is likely: “We’re on a bit of a glide slope towards that.”

Finally, Starmer is asked whether his poll lead is because of Johnson’s crisis rather than Labour’s turnaround in fortunes.

“It’s a combination. Every time we are behind in polls, everyone says that’s the fault of the Labour party. Now we’re ahead in the polls, I’m not going to deny the prime minister is in a mess of his own making.

“We’ve got a new team in place, we’ve been out there with strong policies. Yesterday, I was announcing our plan for the NHS on mental health; while the prime minister is dithering we are out there with strong proposals for the country. I hope now we’ve got the chance to be heard, and we’re going to take it.”

That’s the end of the Sunday morning national politics shows in the UK.

The Labour leader is then asked if he has broken any Covid rules, Raworth referencing a photograph on the front page of the Daily Mail over the weekend showing him drinking and eating with others in a building during Covid lockdowns in April 2021.

Starmer replies that he hasn’t. “I was in a constituency office days before an election. We were working in the office and we stopped for something for food then we carried on working. There was no party, no breach of the rules. There is absolutely no comparison with the prime minister.

“We had stopped to eat a takeaway while we were working in the office. This was a few days before the May elections. We were really busy, we’d been at it all day on Zoom calls, members calls in the office.”

He adds: “It shows just how far the Conservatives are sinking that they’re trying to pretend there’s some comparison between industrial scale partying and this.

“People will look at the photos and make their own minds up.”

Raworth asks him what he’ll do if Johnson doesn’t resign.

Starmer says: “I have always resisted calling for him to resign. But the prime minister has degraded the office of prime minister and lost all authority, not only in his own party but in the country.

“When he tries to persuade the public how to behave in the rest of the pandemic, he won’t be taken seriously.”

Starmer says that Sue Gray’s report is a fact-finding mission and will not rule on whether Johnson broke Covid restrictions nor say he broke the law.

Raworth asks that if she finds he didn’t break rules, would he retract comments asking him to resign.

“I am clear in my own mind that the has broken the rules, broken the law. He has apologised, and apologised to the Queen. I’m not doing Sue Gray down, I know her, she’s a woman of great integrity and respect.

“If you look at her remit, it is to establish the facts. She will say ‘this is what happened, this is when it happened, this is who was there.’ I think it is extremely unlikely to say that the prime minister committed a criminal offence.”

The BBC has just reported that Novak Djokovic is on his way to the airport to take a plane back to Dubai.

And Australian journalist Paul Sakkal says the tennis player will leave at 10.30pm local time:

Labour leader Keir Starmer is now up.

He opens by saying that the prime minister broke the law by attending at least one of the parties.

“I think he broke the law. He’s as good as admitted he broke the law. Downing Street has now apologised to the Queen for some of the parties that have gone on.

“I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on. There was industrial scale partying going on, not much of it is being denied. The facts speak for themselves. The prime minister broke the law and then he lied about it.”

He added: “When I first challenged the prime minister about it, he said ‘I’ve been assured there were no parties.’

“Then the Allegra Stratton video came out, I challenged him again and he said ‘I’m furious. I’ve just found out about these parties. I’m furious.

“Then it comes out last week he was at one of the parties and his third defence is ‘I was there but I didn’t realise it was a party.’”

Dowden is asked whether there will be any further revelations to come out about other parties.

“To the best of mine and the government’s knowledge, this is the full extent of it.

“This is why we set up this Sue Gray process, because if further allegations to come out, all of them have to be brought to the fore, he is allowing everyone to bring any further concerns that they have, Sue Gray will get to the bottom of these concerns.”

He said that Johnson is responsible for the culture in Downing Street.

“The prime minister is responsible for it, and you saw in his statement to parliament he was taking responsibility for it. You see it again in his response to the Sue Gray report, he will take responsibility for it.”

Oliver Dowden says the culture in Downing Street needs to be changed, and understands the anger felt by people.

He’s repeats the process under way with Sue Gray’s investigation, and that Boris Johnson will make a statement to parliament afterwards.

He said: “We were dealing with this unprecedented pandemic, working on plans for the vaccine rollout, which meant we had the most rapid vaccine rollout in Europe, twice.

“It allowed us to have one of the most open economies in Europe, and get the economy back to where it was before the pandemic. That is where our focus was.”

Oliver Dowden is being interviewed by Sophie Raworth on BBC One’s Sunday Morning programme.

Dowden said he didn’t notice a party atmosphere on 20 May, moments after giving a press conference to the nation on Covid restrictions. People must have been arriving as he left, Raworth adds.

“I didn’t see people coming in or going out. This is why it’s important there’s a full investigation, and that’s why it has been set up.

“This event was totally wrong. It shouldn’t have happened. The prime minister has rightly apologised. People feel angry about what’s been going on in Downing Street.”