Boris Johnson cancels trip after family member’s positive Covid test while Tory leadership crisis grows – UK politics live

A former Conservative MSP has said that Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, was “wrong” to dismisses Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, as “quite a lightweight figure” in an interview last night.

Rees-Mogg made the comment on Newsnight in response to questions about Ross saying that Boris Johnson should resign. Most Conservative MSPs have publicly backed Ross, and Newsnight said in private all 31 of them agree that Johnson should go.

Adam Tomkins, who was a Scottish MSP until the election last year, told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland that Rees-Mogg was rude and wrong. He said:

There’s a ‘Save Boris’ operation going on at the moment, which you would expect Jacob Rees-Mogg to be … at the head of. That explains why Jacob Rees-Mogg was very rude and dismissive about Douglas yesterday.

Jacob’s got this wrong – I don’t agree with anything that Jacob said about this matter.

Douglas is a man of principle and a man of steel, and he will lead the Scottish Conservatives in the direction he thinks he needs to lead them in order to secure that credible fighting voice for centre-right ideas in Scottish politics.

Tomkins also said the episode also illustrated why the Scottish Tories might want to loosen links with the UK party. He explained:

I think there will always be ties but I think that Douglas and his team need to do some deep and serious thinking about exactly what the nature of those ties should be.

All of the bad days the Scottish Tories have in Holyrood are not caused by the Scottish Tories in Holyrood, they are caused by events 400 miles south. And they need to reflect on that …

The Scottish Conservative party have a range of really important, substantive ideas to bring to the table in Scotland about economic policy and about social policy, and they are being drowned out because of the pantomime of the politics of Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson has also paid a tribute to Prof Jonathan Van-Tam too following the news that he is leaving his post as England’s deputy chief medical officer. (See 9.55am.)

Prof Jonathan Van-Tam is leaving his post as England’s deputy chief medical officer, it was announced this morning. He is returning to a post at the University of Nottingham, in what is said to have been a long-planned move.

Van-Tam was probably the most lively and compelling of the many scientific experts who have graced the Downing Street Covid press conferences, and he became famous for his often-elaborate metaphors.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, paid tribute to him this morning.

Matt Hancock, Javid’s predecessor, described Van-Tam this morning as “one of the best public health communicators in history”.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’ss first minister, has paid tribute too.

Here is the story about Van-Tam’s departure.

Here is the full story on Boris Johnson pulling out of a visit today because a family member has tested positive for Covid.

Good morning. Boris Johnson’s position as Conservative party leader and prime minister is more perilous than ever before but, after a wretched and humiliating day – which also saw open warfare break out between the party in Scotland and the UK national leadership – his future is unclear, because the parliamentary party collectively is still making up its mind about what to do next.

We were due to hear from him this morning, because he had a visit planned in Lancashire. But that has been cancelled “due to a family member testing positive for coronavirus”, Downing Street says. A No 10 spokesperson said:

The prime minister will no longer be visiting Lancashire today due to a family member testing positive for coronavirus. He will follow the guidance for vaccinated close contacts, including daily testing and limiting contact with others.

Most Tory MPs who have commented on Johnson’s leadership say they want to wait until they read the findings of Sue Gray’s report into all the partygate allegations. But Gray is a senior civil servant, which means that she probably takes the view that ultimately whether or not the PM stays is a political judgment that ought to be taken by politicians (his colleagues). Last night Nick Macpherson, former permanent secretary at the Treasury, posted this on Twitter.

The Gray report may come next week, but if Macpherson and others are right, it won’t clearly settle the issue of whether or not the PM should go.

Although many Tory MPs are privately saying that Johnson’s position is untenable, but there is little evidence that they are working actively to get rid of him. Last night Kitty Donaldson, Bloomberg’s political editor, said she thought only four of them have written letters to the 1922 Commitee chairman asking for a confidence vote.

And so far only four Tory MPs (Sir Roger Gale, Douglas Ross, William Wragg and Caroline Nokes) have called for Johnson’s resignation. The Spectator is keeping a tally.

MPs will making a judgment about the impact Johnson’s leadership will have on their chances of re-election, and this morning a new YouGov poll gives Labour its biggest lead over the Conservatives since 2013.

But even polling figures like this won’t necessarily settle the issue for the parliamentary party. MPs will remember that being 10-points behind Labour in 2013 did not stop the Conservatives winning the subsequent election, and there is no consensus over who would succeed Johnson if there were a contest, and whether they would definitely do much better.

So the party seems stuck at the moment. But that does not make Johnson’s position safe and his difficulties were illustrated this morning when the cabinet minister doing interviews this morning failed to deny reports that privately Johnson has been telling colleagues he has done nothing wrong.

Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, picked this up yesterday.

And several papers report the same thing today. “MPs were also irritated by the prime minister appearing less contrite in private conversations after his Commons appearance than he had been in public,” the Guardian reports.

The Times (paywall) reports the same thing. It says:

Within minutes of delivering a “heartfelt” apology to the Commons for attending a drinks event in the garden of No 10 during the first lockdown, Boris Johnson had a somewhat different message for Tory MPs in the tearoom.

The prime minister was, according to those present, far from contrite. He told colleagues that “we have taken a lot of hits in politics and this is one of them”, adding: “Sometimes we take the credit for things we don’t deserve and this time we’re taking hits for something we don’t deserve.”

Douglas Ross, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said that Johnson took a similar tone when he spoke to him yesterday afternoon. He said that the prime minister told him that he “believes he didn’t do anything wrong”.

And here is an excerpt from the FT’s story (paywall).

Several MPs said Johnson was still in denial. “He said that sometimes in life you get the credit for things you don’t deserve, while sometimes you get the blame for something you don’t deserve, too,” said one Tory MP. “He goes through his life thinking he doesn’t deserve the blame.”

Asked about these reports on the Today programme, Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, dismissed them as “tittle tattle that may or may not have come out of the [Commons] tea room”. He said he had not heard Johnson himself say that he was not to blame for what happened, and he said Johnson was “very, very sincere” in his apology.

I will be focusing mostly on the fall-out from this crisis today. Johnson is not doing his visit, but we will get a No 10 lobby briefing, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, will be taking questions in the Commons.

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