Iain Duncan Smith is facing questions over his £25,000-a-year second job advising a multimillion-pound hand sanitiser company after he chaired a government taskforce that recommended new rules benefiting the firm. The MP and former Conservative party leader chaired the Task Force on Innovation, Growth, and Regulatory Reform, which reported back in May after he and two other MPs were asked by...
Boris Johnson “unwisely” embarked on a refurbishment of his official Downing Street flat without knowing how it would be paid for, according to a report that found a “significant failing” by officials. The Tory peer and party donor David Brownlow, and the Conservative party, initially stepped in to settle bills, said the report by the new independent adviser on ministers’ interests, Christopher...
Labour has suffered a humiliating byelection defeat in Hartlepool after the party’s former heartland town elected a Conservative MP for the first time in 62 years. The Tories won 15,529 votes, with Labour recording 8,589, according to official results. Jill Mortimer defeated the Labour candidate, Dr Paul Williams, by 6,940 votes. Mortimer won the byelection with more than half of the votes cast...
Matt Hancock has apologised for breaching social distancing rules but said he would stay on as health secretary after photographs emerged of him kissing a longtime friend who has a job at his department. Labour and the Liberal Democrats called for him to go after the Sun acquired CCTV photos of Hancock in a “clinch” at his office with Gina Coladangelo, who he appointed last year to be a non...
The Liberal Democrats have pulled off an extraordinary victory in the Buckinghamshire constituency of Chesham and Amersham, taking the formerly safe seat from the Tories in a byelection. In a shock result, the Lib Dem Sarah Green secured 21,517 votes, leaving the Conservative Peter Fleet trailing with 13,489, and giving the Lib Dems a majority of 8,028. The contest was called after the death of...
Ministers removed Portugal from the travel “green list” amid increasing worries that coronavirus variants could scupper domestic reopening, with studies indicating the type now dominant in the UK is almost twice as likely to cause serious illness as the one it replaced. The removal of Portugal – the only mainstream tourist destination to which Britons could travel without quarantining on return –...
Boris Johnson and his wife, Carrie, are expecting their second child, as the prime minister’s wife revealed she had a miscarriage at the start of this year. The couple, who married in secret at Westminster Cathedral in May, had their son, Wilfred, in April 2020. Carrie Johnson announced that she is expecting their second child on her Instagram page, saying a miscarriage had left her “heartbroken”...
Boris Johnson denied the NHS would be overwhelmed and said he was not prepared to lock down the country to save people in their 80s, texting his adviser “get Covid and live longer,” according to new WhatsApp messages released by Dominic Cummings. In his first TV interview, the prime minister’s former chief adviser said Johnson held out on reimposing Covid restrictions because “the people who are...
The speaker’s tone is mild but to his audience the words are deeply alarming. It is early this January, and senior Labour officials are finding out exactly what the public thinks of them. It’s not kind. “We lack any form of identity,” says one of them. In voters’ minds, says this longstanding staffer who has devoted punishing days and nights to his cause, the party is defined by “wish-washyness”...
Plans for New Year’s Eve parties in England may have to be scrapped, a minister has admitted, as she said there remained uncertainty over the severity of illness caused by the Omicron variant of Covid-19. Gillian Keegan, the care minister, refused to rule out lockdown measures being introduced in England shortly after Christmas and said 129 people had been hospitalised and 14 had died with...