Afternoon summary
- Boris Johnson has used a major TV interview to signal that he is opposed to bringing forward benefit rises to help people with the cost of living because it could be inflationary. (See 10.26am.) He conceded that the government had not yet done enough to provide people with the help they needed, but, although he said “there is more that we can do”, he said nothing to indicate what this might involve, or when further support might be provided. Labour said that in the interview Johnson came across as narcissistic and out of touch. (See 11.36am.)
That’s it from us for today. For the latest live news, follow our Ukraine war live blog:
Updated
Boris Johnson is now being interviewed on BBC Radio Solent.
Q: Will you help councils down here? I was told by a councillor recently they cannot look for money down the back of the sofa, because they have sold the sofa.
Johnson says that Conservative councils provide better value for money.
Q: Conservative councillors are worried they will lose their seats because of what is happening nationally.
Johnson says voters should think of the hard work put in by Conservative councillors.
Q: But people are mad on the doorsteps. Councillors say, when they knock on doors, people are talking about what is happening nationally.
Johnson says the government is delivering “a relentless focus on ensuring that we come strongly through the pandemic”.
The Daily Mail has been aggressively running stories about the Tory attempts to bounce the police into reopening an investigation into claims that Keir Starmer drinking beer with Labour staff while campaigning in Durham in April last year amounted to a breach of lockdown rules. The police have already decided that it didn’t, but the Tories are keen to imply some sort of equivalence with Partygate, and the Mail has been pushing this agenda too. After several days splashing on the story, the paper has today found another lead news item, but the story still gets a splash on the cover.
Tuesday's Mail: Where HAVE Our GPs Gone? #TomorrowsPapersToday #DailyMail #Mail pic.twitter.com/vNcxyIQP3Z
— Tomorrows Papers Today (@TmorrowsPapers) May 2, 2022
Robert Hayward, a Conservative peer and elections expert, told the paper that the story could have an impact. He said:
Beergate is dissipating the impact of Partygate. Two or three days ago, not many people knew about it but now there’s no question that they do. Keir Starmer has had a tough time from the broadcasters and was unable to say whether it was an error after bashing Boris for making errors. There is no question that southern England’s Waitrose Radio 4 Tories have been more angry about Partygate. But the existence of Beergate will have an impact to the extent that the anger will be aimed across all parties.
But new polling from YouGov today suggests the coverage of this story has not had a significant impact on public opinion. In January only 28% of people said they thought Starmer generally did not follow lockdown rules, while almost three-quarters of people said Boris Johnson generally did not follow the rules.
Looking back over the lockdown periods, do you think [X] generally did or did not follow lockdown rules?
— YouGov (@YouGov) January 17, 2022
Boris Johnson
Did - 17%
Did not - 73%
Keir Starmer
Did - 40%
Did not - 28%https://t.co/vPSGZoypothttps://t.co/woy3FXc90H pic.twitter.com/zYWCtPlpaY
YouGov has repeated the polling, and the proportion of people saying Starmer generally did not obey the rules has not changed: it is still 28%.
Johnson’s numbers have improved, but only marginally. Now 70% of people say he generally did not follow the rules, down from 73% in January.
Updated
Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, has written an interesting blog about Boris Johnson’s claims in his Good Morning Britain interview this morning about the risk of benefit increases pushing up inflation. (See 10.26am.) Peston says it is unlikely that, if the government were to increase benefits, that would push the country into an “inflationary spiral”. And if the government does favour an incomes policy, it should apply to private sector wages, which are pushing up inflation, Peston argues.
He goes on:
Boris Johnson was explicit that if benefits were raised in line with inflation, that would lead directly to high mortgage payments.
As I said, that is questionable. But even if Johnson is on to something, those higher mortgage payments are neither here nor there for millions of people on benefits and universal credit - because they don’t own their own homes.
So he is in essence saying that the incomes of those who are poorest need to be suppressed to protect the disposable incomes of homeowners.Which seems a slightly eccentric policy for a prime minister who calls himself a One Nation Tory - and it is precisely the opposite of his beloved “levelling up”.
Johnson claims economy 'bursting with high-wage jobs' and levelling up could make UK 'most prosperous' place in Europe'
Boris Johnson is now being interviewed by BBC Radio Wiltshire. Graham Rogers is presenting.
Q: People are having problems with the cost of living. Why should they trust you to deal with it?
Johnson says Conservative councils deliver better value for money.
Q: But you have cut funding to our local councils during your time as PM.
That is all the more reason to have councils that spend money wisely, Johnson says.
He says he knows it is tough for people. The government needs to help people in the short term. It has done that, with £150 off council tax and £200 off bills.
Q: That has to be paid back (the £200).
Yes, says Johnson. But he says the money is helpful anyway.
He claims the economy is “absolutely bursting with high-wage, high-skill jobs”. That is different from the past, he claims.
Q: We have long waiting times in Wiltshire for ambulances. What will you do about it?
Johnson says the government is investing in the NHS.
He says hospitals not being able to discharge patients is a problem.
Q: That is because of lack of care beds. What are you doing about that?
Johnson says he is glad Rogers asked. The government has a plan for care. People won’t face catastrophic bills for care. This is a government that delivers big things, he says.
Q: Why do you want to carry on as PM?
“Because I have a massive mandate to deliver,” says Johnson. He says if he can get on with his agenda, in investing in infrastructure, skills and technology, that will deliver growth and prosperity for people, he says.
He says he wants to level up. If he can do that, “we will have the most prosperous economy in Europe”, he claims.
(As a quick glance at the statistics will show, to achieve that within the next half century - let alone within the lifetime of the government - would take nothing short of a miracle.)
Updated
Q: You want to level up. But the money coming to the Manchester area won’t compensate for what was cut during austerity?
Johnson says he does not accept this. He rattles off some investment decisions affecting Manchester.
He claims four new hospitals are being built in the north-west. And more diagnostic centres are being built.
Q: HS2 is being cut back.
Johnson does not accept that. Journey times from London to Manchester are being cut.
Levelling up is about unleashing the potential of the whole country, he says.
If it were levelled up like other countries, like France or Germany, which are more balanced, the economy would be stronger, he implies.
And that’s it.
Boris Johnson is being interviewed now on BBC Radio Manchester.
Stacey Copeland is presenting. She asks Johnson if his behaviour is going to cost the Tories votes.
Johnson says he hopes people will vote on the issues that matter to people.
Q: Are you doing enough to help people with the cost of living?
Johnson says Tory councils deliver better value for money than Labour ones.
On bills, he says the government is helping people with £150 off their council tax, and the rebate (a repayable loan) on bills.
Q: Will you allow the clean air zone in Manchester?
Johnson says this is for local people to decide.
In London they had a similar proposal. But it was badly thought out, and coming in too fast.
Q: What decisions will the government take to help people?
Johnson says the current plan is not the right one. The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, should deal with it, he says.
Updated
A Conservative police and crime commissioner who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught breaking a 30mph limit five times within a 12-week period, PA Media reports. PA says:
The PCC for Nottinghamshire police, Caroline Henry, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham magistrates court.
Magistrates were told Henry, who is the wife of Broxtowe MP Darren Henry, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
Speed cameras clocked the PCC’s speed as high as 40mph in a 30mph zone, with other excess speeds recorded at 35mph and 38mph.
The case was adjourned until 19 July, where Henry is expected to argue two of the five offences were due to “emergencies”, with one being when she was “very concerned for one of her children”.
Henry did not respond to questions over whether she would resign from her position.
Updated
Imran Ahmad Khan finally resigns as MP after child sexual assault conviction
Imran Ahmad Khan, who was expelled from the Conservative party after being convicted of child sexual assault, has finally resigned as an MP - almost three weeks after he first announced that he would quit parliament. The announcement came from the Treasury, which announced that he had been appointed be steward and bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern.
This procedure is used because MPs theoretically cannot resign, and so the only way they can cease being an MP is by accepting a so-called “office of profit” under the crown. The Chiltern Hundreds is one; the other is the Manor of Northstead.
These offices do not involve any profit (there is no pay), and there are no duties at all of any kind - which is why someone convicted of child sexual assault can qualify.
But Khan will have profited from delaying his resignation by more than a fortnight, enabling him to collect a salary until the end of April.
He said when he first announced his resignation that he would appeal against his conviction, but that was because this would take months he would quit parliament, so that his constituents could get proper representation in the meantime.
Updated
Starmer refuses to rule out disciplinary action against anti-Nato Labour MPs
Under Keir Starmer, the Labour party has removed the whip from Jeremy Corbyn and, because the Ukraine war has drawn attention to Corbyn’s opposition to Nato, it seems increasingly unlikely that the whip will be restored in time for Corbyn to stand for the party as a candidate at the next election.
According to an article by Henry Zeffman in the Times today, some of Starmer’s supporters think that the Labour leader should go further, and purge Corbyn’s leftwing allies in the parties. Zeffman reports:
A fear among Labour strategists is that at the next election Boris Johnson will argue that the parliamentary arithmetic means a Starmer government would be beholden to a small number of left-wing MPs. “At the next election the Tories won’t make it about Ed Miliband in Alex Salmond’s pocket, it’ll be Keir Starmer in Richard Burgon’s pocket. We can’t run that risk,” a source said.
A shadow cabinet minister separately made the same case — except with McDonnell’s name in Burgon’s place — adding: “There’s no chance of even a minority government if the Tories make that argument. We know what the public thinks about the prospect of these people being in charge of our security because they told us in 2019.”
Zeffman also quotes one source claiming Starmer “intellectually accepts” the case for expelling prominent supporters of Stop the War, but other sources told him Starmer was reluctant to pick a fight with the left at the moment.
In an interview with Times Radio this morning, when asked about this story, Starmer certainly did not rule out further action against the left. Instead of dismissing the story, he stressed (not for the first time) that he has been “very clear” about Labour’s “unshakeable support for Nato”. He said he had been firm to MPs about that. He also said that he objected in particular to the “false equivalence” between Russian aggression and the conduct of Nato (Starmer’s characterisation of Stop the War’s thinking).
When asked again if he was prepared to act against anti-Nato MPs, Starmer said yes - but also hinted that voters might see that as a distraction. He replied:
Yes, these are principles that are absolutely the root of the Labour party, the centre of the Labour party, and I’m determined that the Labour party will face the electorate and not the sort of internal machinations and arguments that we have had too much of in the past.
Momentum, the group set up to promote Corbyn and his agenda when Corbyn was leader, says a purge of leftwingers would mark “the end of the Labour party as we know it”.
.@mish_rahman responds from Momentum:
— Momentum 🌹 (@PeoplesMomentum) May 3, 2022
"Keir ran on a platform to end factionalism, unite the Labour Party and defeat the Tories. But after months of attacks on the Left, this anti-democratic move would spell the end of the Labour Party as we know it." 🧵https://t.co/Bkc5QucEBC
Mish, who sits on Labour's NEC, continues:
— Momentum 🌹 (@PeoplesMomentum) May 3, 2022
"A broad church which has held together for over a century would be torn down, wrecking Labour's prospects with young people and minority communities represented by a new generation of left-wing Labour MPs of colour." >>
"There is absolutely no mandate within Labour for such divisive, authoritarian action in the Party, and we would fight it all the way."
— Momentum 🌹 (@PeoplesMomentum) May 3, 2022
We call on all wings of the labour movement to stand up for democracy & fairness.https://t.co/Bkc5QucEBC
Updated
The Foreign Office has released more details of the armoured vehicles being supplied by the UK to Ukraine to protect officials. Boris Johnson mentioned them in his speech to the Ukrainian parliament. The Foreign Office says:
The steel-plated vehicles will be sent following a direct request from the Ukraine government for safe and resilient transport for civilians. They will also be used to transport officials from Ukrainian ministries to temporary command posts set up for government work and the rebuilding of key infrastructure, such as energy supplies, in besieged areas.
The Ukrainian police and the National Guard will also utilise the fleet to rebuild vital railway lines in the east of Ukraine.
Updated
The Guardian’s Politics Weekly is hosting a live event tonight. My colleague John Harris, the podcast’s presenter, is joined by Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, our colleague Gaby Hinsliff, and Gavin Barwell, chief of staff to Theresa May when she was PM, for a livestreamed event discussing Partygate, the upcoming local elections, the cost of living crisis and more. It starts at 8pm (BST) and you can book tickets here.
Updated
Johnson tells Ukrainian MPs they will win war with Russia because 'guns cannot suppress nation fighting for its independence'
Here is the full text of Boris Johnson’s virtual address to the Ukrainian parliament.
- Johnson said that he was confident that Ukraine would win this war. He said:
They will say that Ukrainians proved by their tenacity and sacrifice that tanks and guns cannot suppress a nation fighting for its independence, and that is why I believe that Ukraine will win.
You have proved the old saying – it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog – which is an old English saying, I’m not sure how well that translates in Ukrainian but you get what I’m trying to say.
- He confirmed that the UK is sending Ukraine a new package of military aid worth £300m, including Brimstone anti-ship missiles and Stormer anti-aircraft systems.
- He said the long-term aim was to fortify Ukraine so that “no one will ever dare to attack you again”.
- He admitted that the west were “too slow” to respond to Russia robustly when it invaded Crimea in 2014. He said:
The truth is that we were too slow to grasp what was really happening and we collectively failed to impose the sanctions then that we should have put on Vladimir Putin.
We cannot make the same mistake again.
- He said that, from last year, when he was warned that Russia was planning to invade, he was convinced that Vladimir Putin had made a “fundamental miscalculation” because Ukrainians would fight.
- He said Ukrainians had already “exploded the myth” of Russian invincibility and that this was Ukraine’s “finest hour”. He said
You have exploded the myth of Putin’s invincibility and you have written one of the most glorious chapters in military history and in the life of your country.
The so-called irresistible force of Putin’s war machine has broken on the immoveable object of Ukrainian patriotism and love of country.
This is Ukraine’s finest hour, that will be remembered and recounted for generations to come.
- Johnson said Putin would lose because autocracies were inherently flawed. He argued:
When a leader rules by fear, rigs elections, jails critics, gags the media, and listens just to sycophants, when there is no limit on his power – that is when he makes catastrophic mistakes.
And it is precisely because we understand this danger in Britain and in Ukraine – precisely because we are democracies, and because we have a free media, the rule of law, free elections and robust parliaments, such as your own, we know that these are the best protections against the perils of arbitrary power.
When an autocrat deliberately destroys these institutions, he might look as though he is strong and some people might even believe it, but he is sowing the seeds of catastrophe, for himself and for his country, because there will be nothing to prevent him committing another terrible mistake.
Putin’s mistake was to invade Ukraine, and the carcasses of Russian armour littering your fields and streets are monuments not only to his folly, but to the dangers of autocracy itself. What he has done is an advertisement for democracy.
Updated
At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning the PM’s spokesperson was asked if Boris Johnson knew who Lorraine Kelly was. (See 9.21am.) The spokesperson said Johnson “wasn’t fully across the ITV daytime line-up this morning” (implying that Johnson might still know who Kelly is, but just did not realise she was on at 9am, immediately after his interview). The spokesperson went on: “As you’ll appreciate, he has a number of issues to deal with.”
Updated
Here is a question from below the line, prompted by the latest poll from Northern Ireland. (See 12.32pm.)
The leader of the Alliance party is Naomi Long, justice minister in the Northern Ireland assembly.
As this Institute for Government briefing explains, if the Alliance party were to become the largest party in the assembly, it would be able to nominate Long as first minister.
But if it were the second largest party, that would not happen. That is because Northern Ireland assembly voting rules take into account not just party size, but party “designation” - whether they are unionist, nationalist or non-aligned. This matters because power-sharing requires decisions to have cross-party support. If the first minister is not from the largest group, then the deputy first minister would have to come from a party belonging to the largest community designation.
Current polling suggests Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland, is on course to be nominated first minister. That means the DUP would get to nominate the deputy first minister. It has not confirmed yet that it would be willing to do so.
At the last assembly elections in 2017 the Alliance party was in fifth place, with 9.1% of the vote. It was behind the DUP, Sinn Féin, the UUP and the SDLP (in that order). But it has been increasing in popularity partly because increasing numbers of people in Northern Ireland no longer identify as unionists or nationalist.
Updated
Downing Street has confirmed that Boris Johnson has delivered his virtual address to the Ukrainian parliament.
I’ll post a summary when we’ve seen the text.
Alliance party neck and neck with DUP in Northern Ireland assembly elections, poll suggests
According to a new poll, the DUP is in danger of slipping into third place in the Northern Ireland assembly election, in terms of first preference votes. It suggests the DUP is on 18.2%, the same as the Alliance party (which, unlike the main parties in Northern Ireland, is neither unionist or nationalist). The survey suggests Sinn Féin is well ahead on 26.2%.
Updated
Two of Scotland’s leading women politicians have stood firmly for transgender rights in the past 24 hours when challenged on the campaign trail.
Nicola Sturgeon, whose government is currently putting through a bill to streamline how people change their sex on their birth certificate, warned that “every time we oversimplify this debate, trans people actually suffer”.
Referring to the latest revelations of misogyny in Westminster, along with the assault on abortion rights in the US, Sturgeon said:
These are the threats against women. I do not believe that trans rights and women’s rights are or should in any way be in conflict and I will argue that case until my dying breath.
Refusing to define the characteristics of a woman – a question that has been used by some media in an attempt to trip up or embarrass politicians across the political spectrum – Sturgeon said: “I’m not going to, I’m just not going to get into this debate at a level that’s about simplified and lurid headlines.”
Meanwhile former Scottish Conservative leader and peer Ruth Davidson said she wanted to “scold” journalists and politicians who have weaponised the topic as a culture war issue. She said:
Trying to do gotcha questions about who is a woman, who is a man, I’m not sure that helps, particularly for people in the trans community who are looking at the way this is reported, as well as the way policy makers are making decisions.
Davidson said that she agreed “we need absolute reassurance” that women’s safety, rights and spaces who be looked after, but added:
We also need to have a real understanding and compassion for people who are one of the most persecuted minorities in this country.
Boris Johnson (or his social media manager) has been tweeting this morning about his speech to the Ukrainian parliament.
Here is the extract from the speech released overnight.
When my country faced the threat of invasion during the second world war, our parliament – like yours – continued to meet throughout the conflict, and the British people showed such unity and resolve that we remember our time of greatest peril as our finest hour.
This is Ukraine’s finest hour, an epic chapter in your national story that will be remembered and recounted for generations to come.
Your children and grandchildren will say that Ukrainians taught the world that the brute force of an aggressor counts for nothing against the moral force of a people determined to be free.
This is Ukraine’s finest hour, an epic chapter in your national story.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) May 3, 2022
Your children and grandchildren will say that Ukrainians taught the world that the brute force of an aggressor counts for nothing against the moral force of a people determined to be free. pic.twitter.com/kx0IzM5dRS
Updated
Labour says GMB interview shows 'narcissistic' PM 'out of touch'
Labour has said that Boris Johnson’s Good Morning Britain interview showed just how “out of touch” he is. It has issued this statement from Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary.
It is utterly shameful that pensioners have no choice but to sit on the bus all day to avoid racking up heating bills at home, or are left shivering in blankets and only eating one meal a day.
For Boris Johnson to respond by boasting about the London bus pass reveals just how out of touch this narcissistic prime minister is. The simple truth is Boris Johnson has just imposed the biggest real-terms cut to the pension in 50 years and charities like Age UK are warning this will be a year of hell for Britain’s retirees.
Updated
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader and a former energy secretary, has dismissed Boris Johnson’s argument that a windfall tax on oil and gas firms would deter investment. He told PA Media:
We know as we move towards net zero that they won’t be making profits on oil and gas, so it’s in their own interest [to invest].
What I think is right, though, is they are making unexpected profits - their investment plans a year ago didn’t expect them to make these huge profits, it’s total windfall profits and something that never happened in my time as energy and climate change secretary.
It is absolutely right and fair and proper that these companies who are taking the oil and gas out of British waters, who are licensed by the British government to do that, they should pay a windfall tax and we reckon a fair tax would raise at least £10bn over the next year.
The Lib Dems say that could pay for a cut in VAT from 20% to 17.5%, saving households around £600 a year, and help provide targeted support for vulnerable people to cope with soaring bills.
Updated
Here is some more comment on Boris Johnson’s Good Morning Britain interview.
From Talk TV’s Kate McCann.
Susanna Reid's interview highlights big problem Gov has on cost of living. PM's answers to tackling rising costs and balancing inflation hike may make economic sense BUT they mean absolutely nothing to most people struggling. He might as well be speaking another language
— Kate McCann (@KateEMcCann) May 3, 2022
From ITV’s Anushka Asthana
Incredibly powerful interview from @susannareid100 Re windfall tax - it’s a very popular policy (political focus groups showing all parties that)- hard to make investment argument in face of profits we’ve seen today 1/ https://t.co/Cbb33kAu0B
— Anushka Asthana (@AnushkaAsthana) May 3, 2022
Starmer accuses Tories of ‘mud-slinging’ over lockdown beer photo
As my colleague Tobi Thomas reports, in his morning interviews Keir Starmer accused the Conservatives of “mud-slinging” over allegations he broke lockdown rules after a photograph emerged of him drinking a beer with staff in a constituency office last year.
In his Today interview Starmer refused to say whether Durham police had recently been in touch with him about the incident. According to the Mirror’s Pippa Crerar, they haven’t.
Labour sources confirm to me that Durham Police has *not* been in touch with Keir Starmer about beer pic. https://t.co/5CerXdIe03
— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) May 3, 2022
Here are some other lines from his morning interviews.
- Starmer said Labour favoured putting up defence spending in the light of the Russian invastion of Ukraine. Asked if defence spending should go up, he replied:
Yes, I do think the government’s going to have to come back to parliament and look again at defence spending, and I know many Conservative MPs think that as well.
I’d also say the government at the moment is proposing to cut a further 10,000 or so from our armed services and I think they’re wrong to do that and I would call on them not to do it.
But obviously I think there is now a clamour for the government to come back to parliament and to look again at defence spending and the defence strategy, frankly.
- He said the BP profits announced today showed that Labour’s proposed windfall tax on energy companies was the “right approach”.
- He said Labour has “real wind in our sails” ahead of the local elections on Thursday. Asked what success would look like for Labour, Starmer replied:
We want to hold seats where we’ve already got them, and we want to make gains where we can.
I’m conscious that we’ve got to earn every vote, I’m taking nothing for granted. What I can tell you is we’ve got thousands of fantastic activists across the country making the positive case for Labour. There’s a real wind in our sails at the moment.
Updated
Johnson says government at risk of 'inflationary spiral' if it abandons 'prudent' approach to spending in cost of living crisis
Sometimes the key moments in big political interviews come in the asides. Politicians rehearse their answers to the obvious questions (or their non-answers), and that is one reason why modern interviews are often more tedious than ones conducted in the days before the term soundbite was invented (a point the New Statesman’s Harry Lambert makes powerfully here). But asides are (generally) unrehearsed, and there were two in this interview that stood out.
One was “Who’s Lorraine?” (see 9.21am).
The other, more serious, one came when Boris Johnson, was told about a pensioner, Elsie, being so poor she has to spend the day on buses using her freedom pass to avoid heating her home. The PM responded by going on about introducing the freedom pass when he was London mayor. Labour accuse him of being out of touch with the experience of people’s lives; this tone-deaf boast made their point for them.
Dave Hill, who runs the On London website, says that as well as being insensitive, on this point Johnson was also technically wrong.
Just to confirm, @GMB team, #BorisJohnson *did* introduce a concessionary free travel scheme for 60-65 year-olds when he was London Mayor but it was *not* the Freedom Pass, which has existed for decades (cont)
— Dave Hill (@DaveHill) May 3, 2022
Since then, the PM's transport adviser, Andrew Gilligan, has been a driving force behind the government reducing the hours for which that separate concession applies as part of forcing its own policies on Transport for London...
— Dave Hill (@DaveHill) May 3, 2022
There was a substantial takeaway in the interview too. It is normally assumed that Johnson is always keen to increase government spending, and only restrained by the more fiscally disciplined chancellor, Rishi Sunak. But in his comments on inflation, Johnson implied that the Treasury has won this argument.
Here are the main points from the interview.
- Johnson signalled that he was opposed to using benefit rises to help people with the cost of living because it could be inflationary. There was a risk of an “inflationary spiral”, he said. When Susanna Reid put it to him that inflation could reach 10%, he replied: “Correct”. But he appeared to rule out bringing forward benefit increases to help. He said:
We have a short-term hit caused by the spike in energy prices across the world. If we respond by driving up prices and costs across the board in this country, responding by the government stepping in and driving up inflation, that will hit everybody and that will mean that people’s interest rates on their mortgages go up, the cost of borrowing goes up, and we face an even worse problem ...
I’m sorry to say this, but we have to be prudent in our approach. We have to help people like Elsie, like the families you mentioned, in the short term with huge sums of taxpayers’ cash, through local councils or through all the schemes that we’re doing. But the best answer is to have a strong economy and where we keep interest rates as low as is reasonable.
Benefits are uprated annually every year in April but, because the increase is pegged to the inflation rate the previous September, this year they have risen by well below the current rate of inflation. It is equivalent to a real-terms cut. Ministers have been urged to accelerate the next benefits rise to compensate, but Johnson seems to be firmly rejecting this option.
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary, says the PM’s comments could also be a hint that the government will for a second time abandon the triple lock, which is supposed to guarantee that pensions go up every year in line with earnings or inflation or by 2.5%, whichever is higher.
Sounds like Boris Johnson now rolling the pitch for breaking the triple lock on the pension AGAIN later this year and further severe real terms cuts to Universal Credit.
— Jonathan Ashworth (@JonAshworth) May 3, 2022
Boris Johnson confirming what working people and pensioners know - you’re worse off under the Conservatives. https://t.co/UKlJiWwAD0
- Johnson failed to offer the prospect of any immediate, extra help for people struggling to pay their bills now. He said in general terms that there was “more that we can do”, but did not give details. His most awkward moment in the interview came when asked what advice he had for Elsie, a 77-year-old widow who’s monthly energy bills have gone up from £15 to £85. Johnson summed up the measures already taken by the government to help. Asked what Elsie should cut back on, Johnson said he did not want her to cut back on anything. But he did not float the prospect of further help with bills this year, and he said that what was important was to invest in energy now so that supply is secure for the medium and long term. Rather crassly, when told the Elsie spent her day using her freedom pass to travel on buses, to reduce the amount she has to spend on energy at home, Johnson said that as London mayor he introduced the 24-hour freedom pass. Reid asked if he thought that Elsie should be “grateful”.
- Johnson said he was opposed to a windfall tax on energy companies (Labour’s policy) because it would discourage investment. He said:
If you put a windfall tax on the energy companies, what that means is that you discourage them from making the investments that we want to see that will, in the end, keep energy price prices lower for everybody.
- He admitted that he did not know the amount by which carer’s allowance is rising this year.
- He insisted that global factors were to blame for the rise in prices. “The cost of chickens is crazy,” he said, in a reference to food prices.
- He said that he had “no idea” whether her would face further fines over Partygate. Asked why he had not resigned, as other people have for breaking lockdown rules, he replied:
I’m getting on with the job that I was elected to do and discharge the mandate that I was given, and I’m proud of what we have been doing.
-
He insisted that he was “honest”. Referring to claims he misled MPs about Partygate, he said:
If you are talking about the statements I’ve made in the House of Commons, I was inadvertently ... I was wrong and I’ve apologised for that.
- He admitted the UK could be giving visas to Ukrainian refugees more quickly. He said:
We have done a huge amount to help Ukrainian women and children in the area but we’re now seeing large numbers come to the UK.
So far 86,000 visas have been issued and 27,000 are already here and I want to say ‘thank you’ - 27,000 is a lot and it’s growing fast and I want to pay tribute to all those who are helping to look after Ukrainians.
Could we have done it faster? Yes, perhaps we could.
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'Who's Lorraine?' - Johnson criticised for appearing not to know identity of star ITV presenter
Boris Johnson’s very final comment in his Good Morning Britain interview provided one of its most memorable takeaways. He implied he did not know who Lorraine Kelly was. (See 9am.)
It is not the worse thing a prime minister can say, but commentators, and opposition politicians, think it was a mistake.
This is from the i’s Paul Waugh.
"Who's Lorraine?" @BorisJohnson asks.
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) May 3, 2022
It didn't sound like a dig, it sounded like he genuinely had NO idea who @reallorraine is.
In an interview that was meant to tell @GMB viewers he was in touch with them... pic.twitter.com/lhTTb6vzOW
This is from the Daily Mirror’s Pippa Crerar.
Boris Johnson ends excellent @susannareid100 interview by asking "who is Lorraine?" @reallorraine and there goes another 1.5 million votes... 😬
— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) May 3, 2022
This is from Labour’s Chris Bryant.
Yep @BorisJohnson had nothing to say #gmb to those suffering the Tory cost of living crisis. So out of touch he even asked ‘who is Lorraine?’ Yes, he is toast.
— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) May 3, 2022
And this is from the Independent’s Tom Peck (who suggests it was all an act by Johnson anyway).
The “Who’s Lorraine?” bit is Johnson revealing, yet again, exactly who he is. He won’t change because he thinks his schtick works for him. It has done so far. But it really does feel like the game’s up and everyone’s had enough of him.
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) May 3, 2022
In 2019 Johnson said in an interview that he did not know who the BBC presenter Naga Munchetty was, even though she had at the time been headline news for a comment about Donald Trump.
A full summary and analysis of the Johnson interview is coming up shortly.
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Reid says the government cut the number of police officers and nurses in the first place.
Johnson says he was mayor of London at the time.
Reid says it was the same government.
She says they have to end the programme. She says “Lorraine” is waiting. (That’s Lorraine Kelly, who presents the next show on ITV.)
“Who’s Lorraine?”, Johnson asks.
And that’s it.
I will post a summary soon.
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Johnson says he has 'no idea' if he will be fined again over Partygate
Q: We know you have broken the law. You are being investigated for lying to parliament. This is the most fined building in Britain for breaches of lockdown. rules. Why did you not follow the law?
Johnson says he has to wait until the end of the police investigation for commenting.
Q: Have you had a second fine?
No, says Johnson. But he says No 10 will say if that happens.
Q: Do you expect to be fined again?
“I have no idea,” says Johnson.
Q: Other people have resigned over this. Why haven’t you?
Johnson says he is getting on with the job he was given.
He says he said he would get Brexit done, he did. He said he would hire more police officers and nurses; he is on track with that, he says.
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Johnson claims that the government is cutting national insurance.
Reid points out that this cut only came after an even bigger increase.
Johnson says changes to the universal credit taper rate gave people an extra £1,000.
Reid says the government cut that money in the first place.
Johnson argues that, if benefits were to rise by more, there would be an inflationary risk. That would lead to interest rates rising, he says. There would then be a risk of an “inflationary spiral”, he says.
Reid asks Johnson if he knows by how much the carer’s allowance went up.
Johnson does not, but he says he expects it was not by much.
Reid says it was £69.70. It has risen by just over £2.
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Johnson says putting a windfall tax on energy companies would cut investment.
Reid quotes from a pensioner, Elsie, who says her energy bill has gone from £15 a month to £85 a month. She is now only having a meal once a day. And she says she uses her freedom pass to spend the day on the bus, so she does not have to pay for heating.
Johnson says as London mayor he introduced the freedom pass.
Reid asks if he is saying the viewer should be grateful.
Johnson swiftly moves on. He says she may qualify for help with heating.
Q: What else should Elsie cut back on?
Johnson says he does not want her to cut back on anything. He wants to cut the price of energy, he says.
Johnson says it is “insane” that the the UK has to import electricity from France.
Q: Why not have a windfall tax on energy companies?
Johnson summarises some of the measures already taken to help consumers.
There is more that the government can do, he admits.
But he says the priority is to deal with the problem in the medium to long term.
Q: So you are not doing everything you can now.
Johnson says the government’s £9bn plan is bigger than any rival plan he has seen (ie, bigger than Labour’s windfall tax plan).
Q: The biggest issue for people is the cost of living, not Ukraine. Are you in touch with what people are experiencing? Prices are rising, food bank use is rising, poverty is rising.
Johnson says the government is doing “everything we can” to help with the pressures on family budgets.
But he says it is important to see the global context.
The rise in the price of chicken is “crazy”, he says.
Q: Why is the UK making it hard for Ukrainian people to get visas to visit the UK?
Johnson says 86,000 visas have been issued, and 27,000 people have already arrived in the UK.
Q: Why can’t we have visa-free travel? These are women and children. We have seen the horrors they are trying to escape.
Johnson says, in a wartime situation, some people might be “pretending” to be refugees. The government has to protect the country.
He claims the results are “starting to be really excellent”.
Q: Only a fraction of people with visas have arrived.
“Quite a big fraction,” says Johnson.
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Johnson says UK is not trying to force out Putin, saying it is "indifferent' on what happens in Moscow
Johnson says the UK ambassador in Ukraine is going back to Kyiv to reopen the embassy.
What the UK is doing in Ukraine “is lead the world in helping the Ukrainians to protect themselves against wanton aggression”, he says.
He says the UK is not doing this in order to “drive some geopoltical change”, or have some outcome in Moscow. The UK is “indifferent” to that.
Boris Johnson claims he is honest in interview with ITV's Good Morning Britain
Susanna Reid starts the interview by saying that GMB has waited more than 1,700 days for this interview.
Q: Are you honest, prime minister?
Yes, says Johnson.
Reid puts the question again. “Yes,” says Johnson, he is honest.
Q: Sometimes people say you lie.
Johnson says, if Reid is talking about the Partygate comments in the Commons, he “inadvertently” was wrong.
'Are you honest Prime Minister?' - @susannareid100
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) May 3, 2022
Watch GMB on ITV and ITV Hub now as Susanna interviews Prime Minister Boris Johnson 👉 https://t.co/6iQ6ebeOEQ pic.twitter.com/GyYTdGSn8v
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Boris Johnson was due on ITV’s Good Morning Britain at 8.15am, but he still has not appeared.
This, from Labour’s Chris Bryant, refers to an incident when the programme tried to interview him during the 2019 election campaign.
BREAKING - Johnson stuck in fridge.
— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) May 3, 2022
Here is the clip from 2019.
Starmer ends his Today interview saying he is “utterly focused” on winning elections.
Asked if Durham police have been in touch with Labour about the incident where Keir Starmer was filmed having a beer with party workers, Starmer says all that happened is that he and staff stopped for food when they were working.
Asked again if the police had been in touch recently about the story, Starmer sidesteps the question, and just says they looked at it months ago, and concluded that no rules were broken.
He also says it is absurd to suggest that no one returns to work after 10pm. That seems a reference to this tweet from Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary.
We are expected to believe that a curry and beers arrived for about 30 people at 10pm, and this was a break for a work meeting?
— Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) May 1, 2022
No reasonable person believes Labours story, so why do Durham police and what were they told?
https://t.co/XRopCmREzw
Dorries has been widely criticised for this tweet, mostly (but not exclusively) because it includes a picture of Starmer eating in 2015, six years before lockdown.
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Starmer suggests defence spending needs to rise, saying government needs to 'look again' at issue
In his Today interview Keir Starmer says the government will have to “look again” at defence spending. He does not mean with a view to cutting it.
He also restates Labour’s objection to the number of soldiers in the army being cut.
UPDATE: Asked if he supported increasing defence spending, Starmer said:
Yes I do think the government’s going to have to come back to parliament and look again at defence spending, and I know many Conservative MPs think that as well.
I’d also say the government at the moment is proposing to cut a further 10,000 or so from our armed services and I think they’re wrong to do that and I would call on them not to do it.
But obviously I think there is now a clamour for the government to come back to parliament and to look again at defence spending and the defence strategy, frankly.
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This is from Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary of state for climate change and net zero, on the latest BP profit figures.
Yet again we see the oil and gas companies making billions upon billions of profits coming directly from the pockets of the British people and the government shamefully refuses to act.
The oil and gas firms may be doing their job for the shareholders of their companies but the government is negligently failing to do its job for the people of this country.
The refusal to levy a windfall tax to help cut energy bills is deeply wrong, unfair, and tells you all you need to know about whose side this government is on - and it’s not the British people.
As Julia Kollewe reports, BP’s profits more than doubled to $6.2bn (£5bn) in the first three months of the year, boosted by soaring oil and gas prices.
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Keir Starmer is being interviewed on Today now. He is talking about the BP results announced this morning, which appear to back the Labour call for a windfall tax on energy companies because they show profits at their highest level for a decade. My colleague Graeme Wearden has more about those results on his business blog here.
Starmer says people are facing higher bills, but also having to pay more in tax because of the government’s national insurance hike. Most families will be much worse off, he says.
Tories on course to lose almost 550 seats in local elections, poll suggests
Good morning. Boris Johnson is giving his first interview to ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning. While Piers Morgan was a presenter there, Johnson never seemed to find time in his diary to make an appearance, but with the local elections just two days away, he will be on the programme shortly, with Susanna Reid asking the questions.
Later Johnson will be channelling Churchill as he gives a virtual address to the Ukrainian parliament. In his interview he will probably be less keen to talk about a new poll suggesting the Conservatives are on course to lose nearly 550 seats in the elections. The figure comes from a poll for Electoral Calculus using MRP (multilevel regression and post-stratification) analysis. In the past MRP polls have provided a better guide to election results than conventional polls because they take conventional polling and apply it on a constituency by constitiuency basis, using data about the demographic composition of those constituencies, and what the polling says about how different groups are voting.
The Electoral Calculus analysis of the findings is here. And here are its key conclusions.
Swing of 6pc to Labour away from Conservatives
Labour set to hold 3,500 council seats, with Conservatives holding fewer than 1,000 council seats
Labour likely to gain around 16 councils, giving them control of 85
Conservatives could lose several councils, including the flagship City of Westminster, and could end up with less than 40 councils
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.10am: Keir Starmer is interviewed on the Today programme. He is also on BBC Breakfast at 8.30pm, followed by Times Radio.
8.15am: Boris Johnson is interviewed by Susanna Reid on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Morning: Johnson is due to address the Ukrainian parliament by video link. As Aubrey Allegretti reports, Johnson will quote Churchilll, telling Ukrainians that their fight against Russia will come to be seen as their country’s “finest hour”.
After 4pm: Johnson is interviewed on Times Radio.
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If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com.
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