Boris Johnson ‘grateful to Met’ for Partygate inquiry and says he hopes Sue Gray report will be published soon – UK politics live

Towards the end of what has turned out to be a fairly short address, he uses a recent new attack line against Labour, seeking to draw links between the current leadership of the opposition and Jeremy Corbyn.

The current Labour Party, Johnson tells the conference, is led by “semi repentant Corbynista loons, to put it mildly.”

He adds that eight of its front bench, including the shadow foreign secretary, voted to scrap the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent. He asks if that is “what is good for Britain.. Is it good for Ukraine?”

And that’s it. There are some fairly loud cheers from Tory activists.

This government takes the “big decisions” and never shirks, Johnson tells the conference, adding that it should be allowed to get on with its “levelling up” agenda.

With an eye on voters in Wales in particular perhaps, he’s eager to emphasise, in particular, investment in infrastructure that will help rural communities, through improving broadband and taking other services.

There’s a lightness, elation almost, of tone to Johnson who has already come back a few times in this speech to lockdown-themed jibes at his opponents.

“Didn’t Mark Drakeford [The Labour first Minister of Wales] actually criminalise going in to the office,” Johnson told the Welsh Tories, to some subdued cheers.

It’s perhaps hard to see Johnson being quite so eager to venture into this territory but for the fact that he is somewhat in the clear as a result of the end of the Met investigation into criminal breaches of lockdown restrictions, though Sue Gray’s report still looms.

The UK and the world will “get through” the current economic crunch and rising food prices but it will require the government to draw on its “fiscal firepower” and put its arms around the British people, Johnson has told the party faithful.

“The markets will adjust and prices will come down,” he said, zeroing in the current Russian blockade of wheat coming out of Ukraine.

The UK Government would support the public through the cost-of-living crisis in much the same way it did through the coronavirus pandemic.

Just as we got the most difficult challenges of Covid right, we got the big calls right, we will get this country through the big challenges now of the post-Covid aftershocks, the pressures caused in particular by the rise in the cost of living.

Everyone can see what’s happening, the cost of fuel pumps, the price of food, the cost of energy, we all know how tough it is and how tough it can be.

Boris Johnson has taken the stage at the Welsh Conservative conference.

After kicking off his speech by telling a lockdown joke about god “working from home” in Wales during the pandemic (You may have had to be there) he’s on to familiar territory by talking about the government’s success with the vaccine roll-out, and emphasising UK military assistance to Ukraine.

Boris Johnson was asked during a visit to Powys in Wales about a protest outside of Downing Street by Jamie Oliver, who is critical of what he regards as a failure by the government to follow through on pledges to tackle obesity.

The cheft has been staging an “Eton Mess” protest over the Government’s U-turn on its anti-obesity strategy, which Oliver has written about in the Guardian recently.

Oliver wrote:

The spurious reasons the government has given to justify these screeching policy U-turns are that they will help with the cost of living crisis and they will also help businesses. The government knows full well that neither of those things are true.

The Oliver protest appeared to be news to Johnson, who asked his interviewer initially: “Is he protesting against me?”

After the nature of the protest was clarified, the prime minister said:

Ok we understand the vital importance of tackling obesity. It costs the NHS huge, huge sums of money. People feel healthier and happier and their quality of life is much better if they lose weight, speaking personally.

There are lots of things you need to focus on, eating less. But we think there are some things we think make very little difference to obesity and can affect people’s budgets. If people can save on their offers then we just have to be flexible.

Ireland’s taoiseach has said it is unacceptable for one party in Northern Ireland to block others from taking power, as he visits Belfast to try to break the deadlock over the Brexit protocol and power-sharing at Stormont.

“It is unheard of in a democratic world that that parliament would not convene in the aftermath of an election. We can’t have a situation where one political party determines that the other political parties can’t convene in a parliament,” Micheál Martin told the BBC before meetings on Friday with leaders of parties including the Democratic Unionist party, which has refused to re-enter power-sharing until “decisive action” is taken to scrap elements of the Northern Ireland protocol.

He said he understood there were “legitimate issues” to be discussed with the DUP but that the only answer to the problem was collaboration, not confrontation.

Martin accused Boris Johnson of moving “too far in a unilateral way” over the UK’s approach to Northern Ireland after the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, announced plans to introduce domestic laws to override the protocol if the EU did not meet the government’s demands.

Johnson a ‘drag’ on Conservative party – Theresa May pollster

Johnson: ‘I am very grateful to the Met for their work’

Sadiq Khan said “there is no other street in the country where more people have broken the law than Downing Street”, as he was asked about the so-called Partygate investigation.

Speaking to the PA news agency at City Hall, the mayor of London said:

I’ve said that from the beginning, it’s really important that politicians aren’t involved in operational management when it comes to the police. They’ve got to investigate and go wherever the evidence goes. That’s why I’m going to wait and see what Sue Gray’s report reveals next week …

But when you just reflect for a second, there is no other street in the country where more people have broken the law than Downing Street, there is no other street in the country where more fines have been issued.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has said it would be a mistake for Sir Keir Starmer to resign as Labour leader if he is fined over Beergate.

It was put to him on Sky News that, unlike Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Labour leader has said that he will resign if fined over any breaches of coronavirus restrictions.

“Well, that’s a matter for him,” Rees-Mogg said.

I think that is a mistake. I don’t actually think that these are resigning matters, I think people make mistakes.

Downing Street has suggested it has not ruled out introducing a criminal offence of street harassment after comments from the UK government’s independent adviser on tackling violence against women and girls, Nimco Ali.

A No 10 spokesperson said: “I would point to a tweet from Nimco this morning where she addresses that and says I did not blame him, referring to the prime minister.”

Pressed on whether an offence of street harassment was still being considered, he said: “We will continue to look at where there may be gaps and how a specific offence could address those.”

Ali has suggested her calls for street harassment to be made a crime are being blocked.

Ali, a close friend of Boris and Carrie Johnson, told the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson that her proposal had experienced “pushback” and hinted the prime minister had not fully supported it.

The murder of Sarah Everard, who was abducted while walking home in south London last year, triggered nationwide scrutiny of women’s safety and attitudes towards women.

Ali said: “For me, I would specifically love public sexual harassment to become a crime.”

Before his address at 1.40pm to the Conservative party’s Welsh conference, Boris Johnson has been on a visit to Powys.

Some images have come through of a visit to Hilltop Honey in Newtown, which happens to be one of the places where the Tories lost out in the local elections to Liberal Democrat gains.

The Lib Dems became the largest party in Powys, where it claimed that Johnson’s behaviour during lockdown and the subsequent Partygate scandal had come up on doorsteps quite a lot.

Decision on naming lockdown partygoers rest with Sue Gray – No 10

Ireland’s Foreign Affairs Minister said he has “made clear” to Foreign Secretary Liz Truss that the Irish Government opposes the UK breaching international law.

Simon Coveney made the comment following his meeting with Ms Truss on Friday about ongoing concerns around the Northern Ireland Protocol.
He tweeted: “I made clear Ireland’s opposition to the U.K. breaching international law.

“The UK needs to get back to talks with the EU.”
He earlier said he urged the British Government to “move away” from threats of unilaterally breaching international law and “damaging international relations”.

“EU remains ready to negotiate pragmatic solutions to outstanding Protocol issues through partnership,” Coveney said.

Truss this month reiterated her threat to scrap parts of the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol, telling the EU’s Brexit negotiator it was a matter of “internal peace and security”

The attorney general for England and Wales, Suella Braverman, wants the Conservative party to replace its tree logo with the torch of liberty which was used under Margaret Thatcher and then ditched during the cuddly sofa-rule era of David Cameron.

In an interview with Conservative Home she also opposes a windfall profits tax and says she would be happy to have her friend Lord Frost – formerly Britain’s chief negotiator during Brexit talks with the EU, as “a colleague in the Commons”.

There’s also a lot more red meat for the Tory faithful, with Braverman saying that the Conservative party of the 21st century was still trying to “stamp” out the “long tail of Blairism”.

That includes dealing with New Labour “creations like the Human Rights Act and the equalities agenda, which has built up a whole industry of people who make their living from rights-based claims”, and has led to “a feeble approach to common sense, decency, British values”.