Boris Johnson has chaired the first meeting of his new cabinet after a dramatic reshuffle saw Sajid Javid quit as chancellor in protest at a power grab giving No 10 greater control over the Treasury. Labour said it showed a government “in chaos”.
Mr Javid has wished the PM a “happy Valentine’s” and returned to his duties as MP by opening a pensioners’ fair. Sacked Northern Ireland secretary Julian Smith told a group of school children his last meeting with the PM was “great”, and said his plans involved “going to the pub”.
Elsewhere, Labour leadership candidate Emily Thornberry has until the end of Friday to secure backing from 33 local parties to get on the ballot. And Labour has asked the parliamentary watchdog to get to the bottom of who paid for the PM’s £15,000 holiday in Mustique.
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Javid wishes Johnson ‘happy Valentine’s Day’
The new cabinet will meet for the first time today – minus one former chancellor who triggered Boris Johnson’s first real crisis since the election by quitting rather than be neutered by the PM’s closest adviser Dominic Cummings.
Sajid Javid has wished Johnson a “happy Valentine’s Day” following his stunning resignation on Thursday after he refused to accept an order to fire his closest aides and replace them with advisers chosen by No 10.
Leaving his south-west London home on Friday morning, Javid was asked by reporters if he had a message for Johnson. As he walked towards his ministerial car, he answered: “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Dominic Cummings, meanwhile, declined to answer questions about the reshuffle as he left his home, saying “Sorry everyone I’ve got to go” as he climbed into a waiting taxi.
Cummings did chuckle when asked if he was the Thomas Cromwell of British politics.
Chancellor Sajid Javid quits Boris Johnson’s cabinet
Chancellor dramatically walks out after a bust-up with Dominic CummingsPM faces parliamentary investigation into £15,000 holiday on Mustique
The Commons sleaze watchdog has been urged to investigate Boris Johnson’s luxury Caribbean holiday, as it emerged that he may have taken advantage of a timeshare-style arrangement.
Labour has now formally asked the parliamentary commissioner for standards to get to the bottom of who paid for the prime minister’s £15,000 break on the island of Mustique.
A spokesperson for David Ross – declared on the register of members’ interests as having covered the £15,000 cost – initially denied the wealthy businessman had paid for it. But the spokesperson later said Ross had “facilitated accommodation” and “therefore ... Mr Johnson’s declaration to the House of Commons is correct.”
A government source suggested that the businessman had been due to occupy the villa on the island of Mustique but then agreed to make it available for their 10-day stay.
An investigation is expected to begin in the coming days.
Sleaze watchdog urged to investigate Boris Johnson's luxury Caribbean new year holiday
PM accused of having taken advantage of a timeshare arrangement – thanks to Tory donorLabour candidate calls for leadership contests to be suspended
A candidate is calling for the contests to be Labour’s new leader and deputy to be suspended in yet another controversy about the party’s use of data.
Rosena Allin-Khan, who is running to be deputy, urged fellow candidates to adopt her stand – after Labour suddenly refused access to full membership lists from Friday, as promised.
She protested it would leave some members voting without having been contacted directly by the candidates, when the ballot finally opens in a week’s time – penalising those lesser-known.
“It is my belief that the ballot should be postponed until all the data is processed and each campaign has had a decent amount of time to access it,” Allin-Khan said. “Otherwise, the most well-known candidates will have an unfair advantage.”
Labour candidate calls for leadership contests to be suspended over fresh data controversy
Labour bosses under fire after suddenly refusing access to full membership lists from Friday, as promisedLabour can win with Corbyn manifesto policies, says Long-Bailey
Labour leadership Rebecca Long-Bailey will tell supporters in Salford the party cannot win the next election if it veers away from the left-wing path set by current leader Jeremy Corbyn. “Retreating from popular policies … is no route to victory,” she is expected to say.
Labour’s shadow business secretary believes the party must not row back from the “popular” policies found in its manifesto but instead learn to explain them better.
In a speech on Friday plotting Labour's path back to power, she is expected to say: “I wouldn’t blame you for looking for an easy option to win next time.
“Give up on something here, be less forthright there and we can win, you might hope. But believe me, the path of despair is also the path to defeat.
“Retreating from popular policies that provide answers to the crises facing our country is no route to victory.”
Sajid Javid’s exit an ‘accident’, thinks former special adviser
Salma Shah, former special adviser to Sajid Javid, has been talking about how Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings probably expected the departing chancellor to stay.
“It feels more like an accident rather than by design,” Salma Shah told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “Nothing in the run-up suggested the chancellor would be at risk … it does feel like this has unsettled the whole reshuffle plan.”
She added: “I think Sajid rightly understood that not having his own political advisers would be incredibly detrimental to his decision-making power.
“You cannot have a minister that does not appoint their own special advisers because they cannot appoint anyone else. They are the only people in a government department that are the minister’s responsibility and chosen by them.”
She said Javid was not a politician who wanted to “rock the boat”. She said: “I think the thing you have to remember about him as a person is he is non-confrontational. He is not someone who is going to rock the boat for the sake of his own ego.”
Mel Stride, chairman of the Commons Treasury Committee, said Javid had little choice but to leave following the special adviser row with No 10. The former Treasury minister told Today: “I think he, probably more by accident than design, was put into a position where it was extremely difficult for him to swallow that and move on.”
DUP asks new NI secretary to ‘revisit’ Troubles investigation
Arlene Foster said she wanted new Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis to “revisit” the scope of the historical investigation unit that was proposed in the powersharing deal negotiated by his sacked predecessor.
Some Tories have been uneasy over the suggestion its set-up could see British Army veterans investigated for actions carried out in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
The DUP leader and Northern Ireland’s first minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “(What was) originally mooted in the Stormont agreement does need to be revisited because a lot of matters have changed since then, not least the fact that the chief constable put all of the so-called state killings into the historical investigation unit.
“So there are great difficulties in that - not least that 90% of those who lost their lives in Northern Ireland were killed by paramilitaries, terrorists if you will.
Asked if she would be asking Lewis to review the terms, Foster said: “I had already written to the secretary of state Julian Smith a number of weeks ago saying to him it is very important that the victims take the lead in all of these issues … It is very important that the victims are at the fore.
“I hope Brandon Lewis will listen to the voices of the victims. That is something I will certainly be saying to him.”
Julian Smith planning on his spending more time with a pint
The sacked former Northern Ireland secretary has been asked about his “future plans”. Smith told Sky News his plans would involve “things like going to the pub”.
New chancellor is no ‘puppet’, claims minister
Walking into Downing Street for today’s first meeting of the new cabinet, chief whip Mark Spencer was asked by reporters if Sajid Javid had been forced out.
He replied “No”, before adding: “It’s new a government.”
Earlier, the communities secretary Robert Jenrick denied that newly-appointed chancellor Rishi Sunak would be the PM’s “puppet” after accepting terms of office that his predecessor rejected.
The minister told the BBC: “That’s completely untrue. I know Rishi Sunak well and he is one of the most talented people in politics today.
“He is going to be a fantastic chancellor. He brings with him a great deal of experience from the private sector, he's been an excellent minister in my department, and now at the Treasury.
“He has been heavily involved in the preparations for the Budget in March and I think he is going to hit the ground running.”
New attorney general struggled over ‘secret list’ in disastrous first TV interview
Suella Braverman – a former chair of the European Research Group (ERG) of hardline Brexiteers – endured a very difficult interview on Channel 4 News. It resurfaced after she was made attorney general.
After admitting the ERG was funded by public money, she was asked by host Krishnan Guru-Murthy how many government ministers were in the group. “I’m not going to say how many government ministers are in it,” she said.
“It’s a secret a society is it?” asked Guru-Murthy.
“It’s not a secret society,” she replied, before claiming: “It’s all on the public record, and people are able to disclose their names…”
“Where can we see the list of members?”
“The list of members is kept by the European Research Group … it’s available if necessary.”
“We’ll I’m asking, so it’s necessary – where can I see this list?”
No clear answer came forth.
Car crash Suella Braverman interview resurfaces after she was made attorney general
Brexiteer Braverman appointed to Boris Johnson's cabinet after his unprecedented reshuffleScottish Tories settle on Ruth Davidson’s replacement
Jackson Carlaw has been elected as leader of the Scottish Conservatives. The party has been without a leader north of the border since Ruth Davison quit last August.
Carlaw, who served as interim leader during the recent general election campaign, defeated Scottish Tory social security spokeswoman Michelle Ballantyne by 4,917 votes to 1,581.
‘Please come along!’ Sajid Javid opens pensioners’ fair
The ex-chancellor sounds excited to be back doing vital constituency MP work – opening a fair for pensioners’ in Bromsgrove.
“I’m delighted to be at my 4th annual Bromsgrove Pensioners Fair, and I’m here to celebrate the huge contribution elderly residents make to our community. Please come along!”
PM increases proportion of privately-educated cabinet members
As Boris Johnson assembles his new cabinet at Downing Street this morning, it has emerged almost two-thirds of his top team attended a fee-paying school.
Of the 26 ministers now attending cabinet, 17 received a private education – 65 per cent.
According to the educational charity Sutton Trust, the proportion of alumni of independent schools in Johnson’s last cabinet stood at 64 per cent – more than twice that of Theresa May’s team in 2016.
Read more details here:
Boris Johnson cabinet now two-thirds privately educated after reshuffle
The IndependentCabinet also has one fewer woman and Bame minister after PM's drastic reshuffleBrexiteer complains about airport queue: ‘This isn’t the Brexit I voted for’
A Brexit backer forced to wait in an immigration queue in Amsterdam has complained that “this isn’t the Brexit I voted for”.
Colin Browning, who described himself as one of the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit, said he was forced to wait for nearly an hour before his passport was checked.
“Absolutely disgusting service at Schiphol airport. 55 minutes we have been stood in the immigration queue. This isn’t the Brexit I voted for,” he wrote on Twitter.
More details here:
Brexiteer complains he has to wait in queue at EU airport
‘I didn’t vote to stand in a queue for over an hour [while] some jobsworth checks our passports’NI Executive demands answers on PM’s ‘waste of money’ bridge plan
Stormont’s infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon has expressed “surprise and disappointment” after she was not consulted about proposals for a bridge linking Scotland and Northern Ireland.
She said: “I am requesting clarity on exactly what is proposed by British government ministers and I would also welcome an explanation as to why ministers and officials here have not been contacted or consulted in advance of the announcement.
“I also want to make clear that significant investment is needed in our infrastructure and the New Decade: New Approach document makes several key commitments on behalf of the British government, which I also expect to see honoured.
“Furthermore, I am extremely concerned that pursuit of this project, costing £20 billion, will be a waste of significant money and resource that could be put to better use by addressing pressures and deliverable projects here in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.”
Labour must speak ‘everyday language’, says Long-Bailey– and promises to call out media smears
Leadership candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey has given her big speech in Salford. She set out her vision for a “green industrial revolution” and defended the policies in Labour’s 2019 election manifesto.
“Retreating from popular policies that provide answers to the crises facing our country is no route to victory,” she said.
Long-Bailey believes she can build a “socialism of the majority” and claimed the party had to start changing the way it communicates, saying “our path to power requires us to speak an everyday language to people simply going about their normal lives”.
She threatened to be “more robust” in dealing with the media. “I’ll ridicule the most absurd smears and lies. We won’t just rebut factual errors in stories, but provide a counter-narrative about deliberate media efforts to hold back aspirational socialism.”
She also said the 2016 film The Big Short, about the build-up to financial crisis in 2007-08, showed why the current economic model is broken.
Lisa Nandy wins Jewish Labour Movement endorsement
The Jewish Labour Movement has nominated Lisa Nandy for the party leadership and Ian Murray for the deputy leadership role. Nandy won just over 50 per cent of the votes, with Keir Starmer taking most of the rest. Emily Thornberry and Rebecca Long-Bailey both got under 2 per cent of the votes each.
New Scottish Tory leader claims he will kick ‘morally and politically bankrupt’ SNP out of power
The Scottish Conservatives will be a clear alternative to Nicola Sturgeon and her “morally and politically bankrupt” government, new leader Jackson Carlaw has vowed.
He said he is determined the Tories will oust the SNP from power in the 2021 Scottish parliament election, insisting the nationalists are “failing” Scotland after 13 years in office.
After being elected as the new Tory leader in Scotland, Carlaw said the SNP are “there to be replaced”.
He added: “This is not about asking the people of Scotland to re-elect us as a strong opposition, this is about offering the people of Scotland a clear alternative to the SNP and then fighting all the way to polling day next year to provide them with an alternative government.”
He won the backing of 4,917 Tory party members in Scotland in the leadership contest – comfortably ahead of Michelle Ballantyne’s 1,581 votes.
“I have a bigger share of the vote than Boris Johnson achieved in his leadership election,” he boasted. “I have a bigger share of the vote than Ruth Davidson achieved, a bigger share of the vote than David Cameron achieved in any of the previous Conservative Party leadership elections.”
Boris Johnson's new-look cabinet holds first meeting
Cabinet attendees have left Downing Street following their first meeting since Thursday's dramatic reshuffle.
When asked if the Conservative Party was still united, Matt Hancock appeared to nod at reporters as he left No 10.
Sacked cabinet minister tells school pupils about 'great' meeting with Boris Johnson
Julian Smith, who was relieved of his post as Northern Ireland secretary during the cabinet reshuffle, has taken his sacking in good humour.
On a visit to a school today, he told how the children asked him about meeting Boris Johnson - and how great his last meeting was.
