“The Liberal Democrats have handed Boris Johnson the biggest by-election defeat in British history as the Tories lost a huge majority in Tiverton and Honiton and surrendered Wakefield to Labour on the same night… The last time a government lost two by-elections on the same night was more than 30 years ago when Sir John Major was the Prime Minister. The loss in Tiverton is particularly humiliating for the Prime Minister as it is the biggest ever majority to be overturned in a UK by-election. The record was held by Labour, which toppled a 23,927 Tory majority in Liverpool Wavertree in 1935. On a balmy night in south Devon, Lib Dem candidate Richard Foord, a former army major, wiped out a colossal 24,239 majority to win a seat the Tories had held ever since its creation in 1997. “– The Daily Telegraph
>Today:
“A Cabinet minister has dramatically resigned after Boris Johnson suffered a bruising double by-election defeat this morning. Oliver Dowden quit as Tory Chairman saying the party “cannot carry on with business as usual” following today’s losses in Wakefield and Tiverton… Mr Dowden walked out at 5.35am shortly before he was due to do the morning telly round, lashing out at “a run of very poor results for our party”. In a stinging letter he said: “Our supporters are distressed and disappointed by recent events, and I share their feelings. “We cannot carry on with business as usual.” He did not criticise Mr Johnson directly but also did not promise his continued support from the backbenches… Rebels will be watching to see if other Cabinet Ministers follow Mr Dowden’s resignation.” – The Sun
>Today:
“Johnson implied that the cost of living crisis was to blame for what happened, not his own conduct or leadership. He said: It’s absolutely true we’ve had some tough by-election results. They’ve been, I think, a reflection of a lot of things, but we’ve got to recognise voters are going through a tough time at the moment. I think, as a government, I’ve got to listen to what people are saying, in particular to the difficulties people are facing over the cost of living, which, I think, for most people is the number one issue. We’re now facing pressures on the cost of living, we’re seeing spikes in fuel prices, energy costs, food costs – that’s hitting people. We’ve got to recognise there is more we’ve got to do and we certainly will, we will keep going, addressing the concerns of people until we get through this patch.” Johnson also thanked Oliver Dowden for his work as Conservative co-chair.” – The Guardian
“Boris Johnson has personally reassured President Kagame that sending asylum seekers to Rwanda is popular, The Times has learnt. Amid tensions between the prime minister and Prince Charles about the policy, Johnson told Kagame that it was supported by the British public. He claimed that “the media and certain newspapers hate it, and so they maintain this idea that the policy is wrong and unpopular”, a source said. The prime minister is understood to have told Kagame: “All the evidence suggests that the British people are strongly in favour of what we are doing together.” The meeting was Johnson’s first engagement at the Commonwealth heads of government summit in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. The polling evidence on the popularity of the scheme is mixed. According to a YouGov poll for The Times after the controversial deal was signed in April, 42 per cent of Britons opposed the plan and 38 per cent supported it.” – The Times
“Boris Johnson has slashed his net-zero targets in a bid to tackle the cost of living crunch – by reducing the amount of biofuel produced in the UK. The Prime Minister has hit the brakes in the push for green fuel, citing concerns that the drive may contribute to spiralling inflation. Biofuel requires wheat and maize – land that Mr Johnson believes could be better used for food production to combat soaring prices. Land used globally to grow crops for the UK biofuel market could feed 3.5 million people if it was converted to food production. The PM will call on G7 leaders to review their biofuel use, arguing that it could help mitigate the global food crisis and supply chain issues exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” – The Daily Mail
“Forcing Ukraine to “settle for a bad peace” would be a disaster, according to the PM. Boris Johnson admitted “Ukraine fatigue” is setting in among allies with no end in sight to the war. Issuing a rallying cry to the West, Mr Johnson said caving now would be a victory for Russian despot Vladimir Putin. The PM, at a Commonwealth summit in Rwanda’s capital Kigali said: “There is no question that there is a lot of Ukraine fatigue now in the world. “But I think they are going to win. I know they are going to win. It is their country. They are fighting for it desperately hard. “But they need to be properly supported. Now is not the time to settle and encourage the Ukrainians to settle for a bad peace, for which they are invited to give up chunks of their territory in return for a ceasefire. I think that would be a disaster. It would be a trigger for further escalation by Putin whenever he wanted.” – The Sun
“Boris Johnson is preparing to back down in a stand-off with Unionist politicians and proceed with legislation to overrule the Northern Ireland protocol. This month the prime minister told the Democratic Unionist Party that it needed to make a pledge to go back into government with Sinn Fein before he would allow the legislation to be debated in parliament. But the DUP has defied the prime minister’s call, with senior figures telling The Times that his demands were unacceptable. They have made clear that the party wants to see the bill implemented before making a binding commitment to get the Stormont executive up and running again. They added that after reneging on previous pledges made to the party on Brexit, Johnson could not be trusted to keep his word to implement the bill rather than agree to a watered-down set of reforms negotiated with the European Union.” – The Times
“The Commonwealth must become a “bulwark” against China, Liz Truss will say today. In a speech to fellow foreign ministers from the 54 Commonwealth countries, Truss will argue that the bloc — the largest grouping of nations which does not contain either China or Russia — should act as a “robust counterweight to authoritarian regimes”. She is expected to say: “In an increasingly geopolitical world, where sovereignty is being challenged, the Commonwealth is a vital and growing bulwark for self-determination and a network of prospering free nations.” The foreign secretary says that “in a generation where we face new threats, the Commonwealth’s time has come. We are a network of countries united by a belief in democracy and sovereignty, and together we can be an increasingly powerful force in defending fundamental freedoms around the world.”” – The Times
“Mick Lynch has said that strikers will ‘take a pause next week and consider everything’ as the rail union boss predicted that managers and drivers will be joining the walkouts soon. ‘We’re going to take a pause next week and consider everything. There are other people that are balloting in this industry, the TSSA, the managers’ union, which shows you where the situation is, if the managers are going to go on strike and then we might have more drivers coming into the dispute through separate ballots. So, that is going to escalate,’ the general-secretary of RMT told Sky News. It comes as more than 90% of office workers in London were forced to WFH on the first day of rail strikes, as the RMT unleashed more travel chaos across Britain today.” – The Daily Mail
>Today:
“Cabinet secretary Simon Case has admitted discussing “opportunities” for the prime minister’s wife, Carrie Johnson, with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s Earthshot prize, but denied recommending her for any paid role. Case’s account followed reports that he had sought to secure a job for Carrie Johnson at their charity, the Royal Foundation, which offers the prize for environmental innovation. In a robust letter released on Thursday evening, after Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, challenged him to account for the reports, Case insisted: “I did not recommend Mrs Johnson for any role.”However, he admitted raising the possibility of Carrie Johnson working with the charity. “In autumn 2020 a former member of the No 10 team asked about opportunities for Mrs Johnson with environmental charities.” – The Guardian
“Buy-to-lets are a big part of the UK mortgage market: 1.7 million were issued between 1999 and 2015. The total value of these was around £200 billion. Gove is keen to improve the quality of the private rented sector. He is proposing new legislation to oblige landlords to keep homes in a good state of repair, prevent them from ending tenancies without a reason and bar them from banning pets. (Jeremy Corbyn wanted to give renters a default right to keep a pet: this doesn’t go quite so far). Gove regards improving the quality of these rented homes as a key part of levelling up… Many Tory MPs are worried that Gove’s changes place too great a burden on landlords. The former cabinet minister David Frost, the tribune of the free-market wing of the party, has lambasted them as “another step on the road to socialism”.” – The Times
“Fracking could restart in weeks as a crunch report into reopening drill sites is due in days. A British Geological Survey paper examining the safety of drilling for energy is expected on Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng’s desk. He said he would “consider the next steps” — but insisted he would only give it the go-ahead if locals backed it. In a speech yesterday he vowed Britain should “use all the tools at our disposal to ensure our energy security”. And he said that when Russian tanks rolled into Eastern Ukraine it focused minds on to generating “the fossil fuels we need here at home”.Mr Kwarteng said: “It’s an imperative, it’s not a mere option. We have always been clear that shale gas could be part of our future energy mix. “But we need to be led by the science and above all we need to have the ongoing support of local communities.”” – The Sun
“Removing Philip Larkin and Wilfred Owen from GCSE English literature is “cultural vandalism”, Nadhim Zahawi has said. OCR, one of the three main exam boards, is refreshing its poetry anthology to include new writers, but is also dropping its only works by Larkin, Owen, Seamus Heaney and Gerard Manley Hopkins. One poem by John Keats and two by Thomas Hardy are also being removed, to make way for poets from more diverse ethnic backgrounds. Reacting to the changes revealed in The Times, the education secretary said: “Larkin and Owen are two of our finest poets. Removing their work from the curriculum is cultural vandalism. “Their work must be passed on to future generations — as it was to me. I will be speaking to the exam board to make this clear.”… Zahawi cannot dictate specific content to exam boards if it falls within the national curriculum, which was last overhauled by Michael Gove in 2014 when he was education secretary.” – The Times
“Brexit is working and naysayers talking it down just have axes to grind, Lord Frost said last night. On the sixth anniversary of Britain’s vote to leave the EU, our exit deal’s architect said it had delivered democracy. The ex-minister insisted Brexiteers had “no cause for regrets” and the nation had a prosperous future ahead as “our destiny is in our hands”. He told a UK in a Changing Europe event: “The view that Brexit is hitting us from an economic and trade perspective is generated by those with an axe to grind. “The UK has grown at much the same pace as other G7 countries and our goods exports to the EU are at the highest level ever.” The solutions to any trade niggles would be found by going forward not backwards towards rejoining the bloc, he said.” – The Sun
>Today:
“Labour has broken its long silence on Brexit, laying out detailed plans to improve, not scrap, the deal Boris Johnson struck with the EU, in a move it concedes will enrage remain supporters. On the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, confirmed the party would seek only limited changes and would not seek to rejoin the single market which would bring the return of free trade and free movement of people. “We are not going into the next election saying that we will enter the single market or the EU. “You might not like it but Labour is determined to govern the entire country,” he said adding “there cannot be a rehash of arguments” made in remainer constituencies like his in London. “The British people have made a decision and we have to honour it,” he told the UK in a Changing Europe’s annual conference.” – The Guardian
“Nicola Sturgeon has condemned the behaviour of her own MPs as “utterly unacceptable” after a leaked audio recording appeared to show some of the SNP’s Westminster group rallying behind a colleague who had been suspended for making an unwanted sexual advance to a teenage staff member. The party’s former Commons chief whip Patrick Grady was suspended from parliament for two days last week after an independent panel found he had behaved inappropriately towards the 19-year-old man at a social event in October 2016. At a bruising first minister’s questions (FMQs) session on Thursday, Sturgeon was repeatedly challenged over her party’s treatment of the victim.” – The Guardian