"Should the prime minister be held responsible for what happens in 10 Downing Street? If there are failures of leadership who is responsible for them? The answers to these questions are surely obvious" | ✍️ @Dannythefink
@Dannythefink "For the voters, this will only confirm what they already believed — that, at a time of exceptional national crisis, the prime minister and his team behaved as if the rules did not apply to them" | ✍️ @RSylvesterTimes
@Dannythefink@RSylvesterTimes@emmacduncan "The merit in Gray’s initial report, heavily constrained and redacted, is that it closes off his escape by in one simple phrase getting to the heart of the essential truth about the PM’s failure. Some of those who made the draconian rules did not obey the rules" | ✍️ @iainmartin1
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🔺 JUST IN: Boris Johnson has been warned that more Tory MPs will put in letters of no confidence unless he retracts his claim that Sir Keir Starmer failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile when he was director of public prosecutions thetimes.co.uk/article/tory-m…
Johnson repeated his claim at prime minister’s questions today after Starmer accused him of “parroting the conspiracy theories of violent fascists to score cheap political points.”
“He knows exactly what he is doing. It’s time to restore some dignity,” the Labour leader said
Tobias Ellwood, a Tory MP and the chairman of the defence select committee, today became the 11th Tory MP to call for the prime minister to go, citing concerns over Johnson’s comments about Savile
Russia has mocked Britain’s foreign secretary for not knowing the difference between the Baltic and Black seas, as Boris Johnson prepares to discuss the Ukraine crisis with President Putin today thetimes.co.uk/article/russia…
Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, took Liz Truss to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support into our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”
🗣 “The Baltic countries are called so because they are located precisely off the coast of this [Baltic] sea. Not the Black [Sea]. If anyone needs to be saved from anything, then it is the world from the stupidity and ignorance of Anglo-Saxon politicians”
Kat Cordiner, Abby Johnston and Charlotte Irving have shown that rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean can take only 42 days, 7 hours and 17 minutes – a world record for a female trio and one that gave a pummelling to the old record thetimes.co.uk/article/the-at…
More people have climbed Everest than have successfully rowed the Atlantic. Of those who have rowed it, 20% are women.
And Cordiner has terminal cancer. In 2019 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer “by chance” while undergoing treatment to freeze her eggs
She underwent a radical hysterectomy, and in February 2020, shortly before the first lockdown, she and Johnston signed up for the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Rowing Challenge
🗣 @PollyVernon: “If 2021 ended – culturally speaking – with breathless talk of Tortoise Media’s Sweet Bobby podcast, then 2022 certainly kicks off with Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler”
The 114-minute documentary details the life, cons, cruelty, downfall and putative rise from the ashes of fake international playboy Simon Leviev, more truthfully, a twentysomething grifter called Shimon Huyut
Carrie Johnson is, depending on your point of view, the queen bee of No 10 or the spider at the centre of the Downing Street web🕸️thetimes.co.uk/article/carrie…
One former Downing Street adviser says: “From wallpaper to parties, the holiday in Mustique or the evacuation of animals from Afghanistan, everything leads back to the advice the prime minister is receiving from his spouse and the fact that he is following it”
The 33-year-old mother of two was also at the lockdown-busting parties in the No 10 garden, muddying the distinction between work and play thetimes.co.uk/article/welcom…
🔺 Update: Sue Gray’s report has found that there were “failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No 10 and the Cabinet Office” thetimes.co.uk/article/sue-gr…
Sue Gray said that staff in No 10 had not met “the high standards expected of the entire British population”
The police are investigating 12 parties including Boris Johnson’s birthday celebration and a Downing Street garden party. They are also investigating allegations of a gathering in the prime minister’s flat on the day that Dominic Cummings left No 10