Boris Johnson

UK ex-PM Johnson showers praise on 'changemaker' PM Modi in new memoir

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson is all praise for change-maker Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a new memoir that reflects upon his eventful political career and recalls a curious astral energy that he felt on his very first meeting with the Indian leader. 'Unleashed', which hit the shelves in the UK this week, devotes a whole chapter to Britain's relationship with India as a relationship as good as it has ever been. Repeatedly stressing the strong India-UK friendship in the context of the Indo-Pacific, the former prime minister credits himself for setting the course for a proper free-trade deal with India thanks to finding "exactly the partner and friend" needed with Modi. For some reason, we went down to stand in the dark in the plaza by Tower Bridge, in front of a crowd of his supporters, shares Johnson in the chapter entitled Britain and India', referencing his first meeting with Modi during a visit to his City Hall office by the river Thames when he was Mayor of ...

Boris Johnson alleges Israel's Netanyahu spied on UK during his 2017 visit

Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson said that his security team discovered a 'bug' in his personal bathroom after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used it during a 2017 meeting

Rishi Sunak struggles with missteps while trying to lift Conservatives

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has portrayed himself as thorough and evidence-led throughout his relatively brief political career, but there's always been a nagging question over the keenness of his political antenna. The general election campaign over the past five weeks has clearly shown that he hasn't got the instinctive touch of some of his predecessors, such as Tony Blair or even Boris Johnson. Sunak's campaign has seen several missteps since he announced the July 4 election date in the pouring rain in late May, including his suspension of candidates mired in a scandal over betting on the date of the election a week after Labour Party leader Keir Starmer pressed him to do so. The biggest blunder one that prompted him to apologize was his decision to leave the 80-year D-day commemorations in northern France on June 6 early. Critics said the decision to skip the international event that closed the commemorations showed disrespect to the veterans and diminished the U.K.'s

Boris Johnson rejects notion he wanted to let Covid rip through population

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in sometimes angry testimony to Britain's inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic, on Thursday defended himself against suggestions that his indifference and failure to heed the advice of scientists led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. In a second day of sworn testimony, Johnson rejected claims that he was prepared to let older people die to protect the economy and that he was too slow to order a second national lockdown as infection rates began to rise in the autumn of 2020. Johnson, who left parliament after he was found to have misled lawmakers about lockdown-breaking parties during his premiership, said he learned about the horrors of COVID-19 firsthand when he was hospitalised with the disease in March 2020. In the intensive care unit, Johnson said he was surrounded not by elderly people but by middle-aged men like himself. I knew from that experience what an appalling disease this is. I had absolutely no personal doubt about that from March .

Ex-UK PM Boris Johnson admits mistakes but defends Covid record at inquiry

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended his handling of COVID-19 on Wednesday at a public inquiry into the pandemic, saying the government got some things wrong but did its best. Johnson began two days of being grilled under oath by lawyers for the judge-led inquiry about his initial reluctance to impose a national lockdown in early 2020 and other fateful decisions. Johnson opened his testimony with an apology for the pain and the loss and the suffering of the COVID victims, though not for any of his own actions. Four people stood up in court as he spoke, holding signs saying: The Dead can't hear your apologies," before being escorted out by security staff. Inevitably, in the course of trying to handle a very, very difficult pandemic in which we had to balance appalling harms on either side of the decision, we may have made mistakes, Johnson said. Inevitably, we got some things wrong. I think we were doing our best at the time. Johnson had arrived at the inquiry venue

Rishi Sunak's current polling worse than Truss with key UK voters

Just 59% of voters who backed the Conservatives under Boris Johnson at the 2019 election are sticking with the party under Sunak, the report found

Ex-UK PM Boris Johnson 'bamboozled' by science, ex-adviser tells inquiry

Boris Johnson, the former British prime minister, struggled to come to grips with much of the science during the coronavirus pandemic, his chief scientific advisor said Monday. In keenly awaited testimony to the country's public inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic, Patrick Vallance said he and others faced repeated problems getting Johnson to understand the science. I think I'm right in saying that the prime minister gave up science at 15," he said. I think he'd be the first to admit it wasn't his forte and that he struggled with the concepts and we did need to repeat them often. In extracts from his diary that were relayed to the inquiry, Vallance said Johnson was bamboozled by the graphs and data and that watching him get his head round stats is awful." Vallance said Johnson's struggles were not unique and said many leaders around Europe had problems in understanding the scientific evidence and advice, especially in the first stages of the pandemic in early 2020. I would also sa

Sunak under pressure over taxes ahead of first Tory conference as UK PM

Rishi Sunak will be leading his first Conservative Party conference as British Prime Minister this weekend and goes into the annual event starting on Sunday amid pressure from his backbenches over cutting taxes as the governing party prepares for a general election, expected in 2024. His predecessor, Liz Truss, who had a historically brief run at 10 Downing Street last year after her attempt at slashing taxes in a controversial mini-budget and former Indian-origin home secretary Priti Patel are among the Tory MPs openly voicing their discontent. It came after the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank issued a forecast this week that tax levels in the UK are at their highest since records began 70 years ago. This unprecedentedly high tax burden is one of the reasons our economy is stagnating and why we need to cut taxes to help make Britain grow again, tweeted Truss. We should always seek to reduce the tax burden, especially when there's so much pressure on family budgets, s

Boris Johnson alleges Putin 'must have killed' Wagner boss Prigozhin

Johnson wrote in an op-ed, speculating about Prigozhin's last moments, a few days after a plane carrying the Wagner boss crashed in a field northwest of Moscow

UK Conservatives suffer big defeats but avoid wipeout in special elections

Britain's governing Conservative Party avoided a drubbing Friday in a trio of special elections, managing to hold onto former premier Boris Johnson's seat in suburban London. Though the main opposition Labour Party and the smaller centrist Liberal Democrats overturned massive Conservative majorities to win a seat apiece, the Conservatives found some crumbs of comfort in their narrow success in Uxbridge and South Ruislip in west London. Labour won the seat of Selby and Ainsty in northern England while the Liberal Democrats took Somerton and Frome in southwest England, with voters from both parties clearly backing the party most likely to beat the Conservative candidate. Facing this level of tactical voting by voters, the defeats will leave many Conservative lawmakers rattled ahead of the likely national vote next year. The defeats don't mean a change of government, since the Conservatives still have a big majority in the House of Commons. Opinion polls have been giving Labour a ...

UK govt loses legal bid to keep Boris Johnson's messages from Covid inquiry

A UK court on Thursday rejected the British government's request to keep former Prime Minister Boris Johnson's unredacted WhatsApp messages and diaries from being made public at an official COVID-19 inquiry. The Cabinet Office took the unusual step of bringing a legal challenge after the retired judge chairing the inquiry into Britain's handling of the coronavirus pandemic ordered the Conservative government to release full copies of Johnson's documents. Government officials argued the inquiry did not have the legal power to force them to release documents and messages that they said were unambiguously irrelevant to how the government handled COVID-19. But lawyers for the inquiry said the idea that civil servants could decide what material was relevant would undermine public confidence in the process. The judges who ruled in the Cabinet Office's case said Johnson's diaries and notebooks were very likely to contain information about decision-making relating to the pandemic. A ...

Boris ally quits UK govt, accuses Sunak of apathy toward climate issues

A British environment minister who is close to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson quit on Friday, accusing the current government of apathy toward climate issues. Zac Goldsmith said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was simply uninterested in the environment. This government's apathy in the face of the greatest challenge we have faced makes continuing in my current role untenable, he wrote in a resignation letter released on social media. He said Britain has visibly stepped off the world stage and withdrawn our leadership on climate and nature. Goldsmith, Sunak and Johnson are all members of the governing Conservative Party. Goldsmith, 48, is a long-time conservationist who was appointed to Parliament's unelected House of Lords by Johnson before Johnson resigned almost a year ago amid ethics scandals. Goldsmith's resignation comes the day after he was among eight allies of the former prime minister criticised by lawmakers for trying to undermine a committee investigating whether Johnso

MPs to vote on report saying Boris Johnson misled British Parliament

The report recommended that the former Prime Minister should have been suspended from the Commons for 90 days if he had remained an MP

How Trump, Johnson, divisive populists with similarities, took diff paths

At first blush, they seem so alike two pugnacious, ideologically flexible politicians who latched onto the 2016 global explosion of populism to lead their respective countries before falling from power. But Boris Johnson and Donald Trump appear headed down different paths this week as they navigate the fallout from their conduct now that they've left higher office a reflection of the varying political cultures and systems in the nations they once led. On Thursday, a committee of the House of Commons released a scathing report about how Johnson lied to Parliament and intimidated those investigating lockdown-flouting parties in his administration during the pandemic. The committee said Johnson's conduct was so flagrant that it warranted a 90-day suspension from Parliament, although that recommendation was largely symbolic because he resigned from the House of Commons last week. He was ousted as prime minister almost a year ago, partly due to the partygate scandal. Two days earlier

Boris Johnson deliberately misled Parliament over Covid lockdown breaches

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson deliberately and repeatedly misled Parliament when he denied knowledge of Covid-19 law-breaching parties in Downing Street, a cross-party parliamentary panel said on Thursday in its damning report into the Partygate scandal. The Commons Privileges Committee released its final report into the Partygate scandal days after Johnson, 58, resigned from Parliament as a MP, accusing the members of the committee of a "witch hunt" against him. Finding him in breach of the Commons rules, the committee was also highly critical of his attacks on its integrity and recommended a suspension of 90 days from Parliament had he not resigned. We have concluded above that in deliberately misleading the House Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt. The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the Prime Minister, the most senior member of the government, the Privileges Committee report said, in a historic admonishment of a former ...

Johnson deliberately misled Parliament over Covid lockdown breaches: Report

An inquiry report by a UK Parliamentary committee revealed on Thursday that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson deliberately misled the House of Commons over breaches during the Covid-19 lockdown

Boris Johnson resigns as UK MP with immediate effect over partygate report

In a statement, the former prime minister said he has received the findings from the privileges committee report into whether he misled MPs over party gate

Boris Johnson offers unredacted WhatsApp messages to UK Covid inquiry

Boris Johnson, who was the British prime minister during the height of COVID, on Friday offered to hand over all his unredacted WhatsApp messages to the public inquiry set up to investigate the government's handling of the pandemic. The latest move further complicates matters as it bypasses the Rishi Sunak-led government's decision to seek a judicial review into inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett's order for all such messages to be handed over. After missing a deadline on Thursday for the handover of the documents which include Johnson's messages, the UK Cabinet Office said in a statement that government officials should not be required to provide material that is irrelevant. "While I understand the government's position, I am not willing to let my material become a test case for others when I am perfectly content for the inquiry to see it," said Johnson in a letter addressed to Baroness Hallett. The 58-year-old former prime minister said he was handing over "all unredacted ...

Boris Johnson faces new police probe over Covid-19 lockdown visits

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was fined for breaking his own government's pandemic lockdown rules, has been reported to police again over more potential breaches. The Times of London said Tuesday that Johnson was reported by civil servants over alleged visits to Chequers, the prime minister's official country retreat, as well as potential breaches in the leader's Downing Street residence. The Metropolitan Police force and Thames Valley Police said they were assessing details relating to incidents between June 2020 and May 2021. The Times said the potential breaches came to light while Johnson was preparing his testimony to Britain's upcoming inquiry into how the country handled the COVID-19 pandemic. The Cabinet Office, a government department which supports the work of the prime minister, said that information came to light during the process of preparing evidence for submission to the COVID inquiry. In line with obligations in the Civil Service Code, this mate

BBC chairman quits amid furore over role in Boris Johnson loan in 2021

The chairman of the BBC quit Friday after a report found he breached government rules governing public appointments. The publicly funded national broadcaster has been under pressure after it was revealed that Sharp, a Conservative Party donor, helped arrange a loan for then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2021, weeks before he was appointed to the BBC post on the government's recommendation. Sharp said he was quitting to prioritize the interests of the BBC after making an inadvertent breach of the rules. A report on the incident by senior lawyer Adam Heppinstall is due to be published on Friday.