Boris Johnson became ‘suspicious’ of Sue Gray as she carried out her inquiry, says Guto Harri
Good morning. With the coronation over, politics is back in spades after three days where it has been effectively marginalised. There is plenty around.
But let’s start with the latest instalment of the Boris Johnson Tory psychodrama. Guto Harri, Johnson’s communications director when Johnson was PM, is launching a new podcast about his time in No 10 and, in an article for the Daily Mail, he claimed that Johnson and King Charles had a big row after the king reportedly described the government’s Rwanda policy as “appalling”.
This morning, in an interview with LBC plugging the podcast, Harri also said that, when Sue Gray was carrying out her inquiry into Partygate, Johnson regarded her as “psycho”.
Harri said that Johnson originally respected her a lot but that, as she was carrying out her inquiry, he was “getting suspicious”. Other No 10 staff felt the same way, Harri said, because Gray was taking advice from a Labour-supporting lawyer, and using her own press officer. “Why do you need a press officer when you’re writing a report for the prime minister?” Harri asked. He went on:
So this was not this objective, dispassionate view of what really went on … There are many people who behave badly during that period. None of them are in the public domain, none of them have been mentioned. It was all landed on one guy because he happened to be the guy at the top.
Asked how Johnson described Gray at the time, Harri said he did not want to give away everything, because he wanted people to listen to his podcast on Thursday. But he went on:
If I were to say one word, maybe, that will be recurring in [the podcast], ‘Psycho’ Sue Gray would be part of it. There was a sense that she lacked perspective as to what he had done.
Harri also claimed that Gray “must have been” talking to Keir Starmer at the time she was compiling her report, because she has now agreed to become his chief of staff. But in fact Gray, and the Labour party, say talks about a job did not start until months after the Partygate report was finished.
In one respect, these claims are ridiculous. No one has disputed any of the facts set out in the Sue Gray report into Partygate, and Johnson himself told MPs at the time that fully he accepted its findings, and its criticism of the culture within Downing Street. The notion that she published it as part of some plot to lever Starmer into Downing Street is just a conspiracy theory.
But it is a conspiracy theory embraced by some of the small band of Johnsonites in the party who continue to believe that he was somehow a victim. Last week Sunak linked the Tory poor performance in the local elections to voters being fed up with the Conservatives running politics like a “box-set drama”. Harri has just demonstrated that the drama is not yet over, and that the Johnsonites will continue to air their grievances about his downfall.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.
10am: Claire Coutinho, the minister for children, gives evidence to the Commons education committee about support for childcare.
Morning: Keir Starmer chairs a meeting the leaders of the 22 councils won by Labour in the local elections last week. In the afternoon he will chair a meeting of the shadow cabinet.
Morning: Sunak visits a pharmacist in Southampton, where he grew up and where his mother was a pharmacist, to publicise government plans to give pharmacies the power to issue prescriptions for seven common conditions.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.
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Tory backbench discontent at the party’s poor local election showing is continuing to reverberate with an MP in a key seat targeted by Labour describing the results as “devastating” and “off the scale”.
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Justin Tomlinson, who took north Swindon from Labour at the 2010 general election, warned in an interview on Times Radio that the party “don’t have a coherent message” and are in “a fight for our lives”. He said:
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“The results were devastating. It’s frankly an insane thing for anybody to try and spin otherwise,” said Tomlinson, after Labour last week took control of Swindon Borough Counci, a key target in its local election campaign, for the first time in 20 years.
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If you are going to fight a set of elections – whether it’s a parliamentary byelection, local elections or the general election, you must have a coherent message.
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Tomlinson’s comments came as former leader Iain Duncan Smith also heaped pressure, in an article for the Telegraph, on Rishi Sunak to cut taxes and warned that “the results can’t be spun away”.
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Comparisons with 1996 and the “inevitability” of Labour’s win the following year were wrong he insisted, and the Tories could still win by delivering on voters priorities which he listed, along with lower taxes, as including “lower cost of living, lower immigration and most of all growth”.
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Liz Truss, the former prime minister, is to visit Taiwan next week, where she will deliver a speech likely to anger Beijing and potentially upset the UK government’s careful approach to China relations.
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Speaking ahead of her visit, she said:
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Taiwan is a beacon of freedom and democracy. I’m looking forward to showing solidarity with the Taiwanese people in person in the face of increasingly aggressive behaviour and rhetoric from the regime in Beijing.
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The former Tory leader’s office said today that she is also expected to meet senior members of the Taiwanese government.
However, the trip comes after a warning by the foreign secretary James Cleverly that Britain should not “pull the shutters down” on China, as it would be counterproductive to the national interest.
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A port where a barge housing asylum seekers is set to dock has reportedly removed its cruise ship schedule from its website in a bid to deter far-right protests, PA Media reports. PA says:
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The Bibby Stockholm arrived in Falmouth, Cornwall, this morning where the accommodation barge will undergo an assessment and refurbishment.
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The vessel, which will house around 500 migrants, is then expected to be moved into position at the Portland of Port in Dorset in the next few weeks.
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According to The Times, the Portland Port has looked to deter anti-migrant demonstrations, which are expected in protest at the barge’s presence, from targeting the arrival of tourists coming into the area on cruise ships.
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The newspaper said the south Dorset harbour usually advertises the arrival and departure dates on its website of the 40 or more cruises set to dock at the port during the year.
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But the Times said that, after criticism of its plans to allow the Bibby Stockholm to moor in its waters, the port’s website has removed the dates.
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The paper cited a source involved in the planning as saying the dates were taken down because of concerns that far-right activists could organise anti-migrant protests on days when thousands of tourists are due to arrive on cruise ships.
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EDT","blockLastUpdated":1683624295000,"blockLastUpdatedDisplay":"05.24 EDT","blockFirstPublished":1683624295000,"blockFirstPublishedDisplay":"05.24 EDT","blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone":"05.24","title":"Barge set to house 500 migrants arrives in Falmouth for refurbishment","contributors":[],"primaryDateLine":"Tue 9 May 2023 06.05 EDT","secondaryDateLine":"First published on Tue 9 May 2023 04.39 EDT"},{"id":"645a0c238f08aa7a11cc1854","elements":[{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":"
Downing Street has put out a news release about what it describes as Rishi Sunak’s “primary care recovery plan”. The main feature is the plan to allow pharmacies in England to issue prescriptions for seven basic conditions, but the government is also investing £240m in new telephone systems for GP surgeries.
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Sunak claims his plans will “free up around 15 million GP appointments over the next two years”.
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At the weekend shadow ministers were relatively careful about what they said about the way new anti-protest laws were deployed against anti-monarchy protesters at the coronation. But this morning Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, was more critical, telling BBC Breakfast:
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\n
Clearly, something has gone wrong in this case.
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Nandy went on:
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Peaceful protest is an important part of British democracy. The Met accepted that and I think the mayor of London is right to ask for a review to determine what exactly went wrong in this case.
\n
Whatever it was, this was a very complex policing operation. It largely went off without a hitch and I think the police deserve credit for that. But where there are incidents like this, we have to take them seriously and I think that it’s right that we learn the lessons and take steps to rectify that.
\n
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Jamie Grierson has the story here.
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Good morning. With the coronation over, politics is back in spades after three days where it has been effectively marginalised. There is plenty around.
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Rishi Sunak is announcing his latest plan for NHS reform – a move that should make it easier for patients to get prescriptions for basic conditions, because pharmacists will be allowed to issue them.
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Keir Starmer is capitalising on his victory in last week’s local elections, meeting Labour council leaders and the shadow cabinet, and telling them that the Tories have misjudged the mood of voters by focusing on culture war issues.
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The Metropolitan police continues to face criticism for the arrest of anti-monarchy protesters on Saturday. There is very likely to be an urgent question on this in the Commons after 3.30pm.
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But let’s start with the latest instalment of the Boris Johnson Tory psychodrama. Guto Harri, Johnson’s communications director when Johnson was PM, is launching a new podcast about his time in No 10 and, in an article for the Daily Mail, he claimed that Johnson and King Charles had a big row after the king reportedly described the government’s Rwanda policy as “appalling”.
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This morning, in an interview with LBC plugging the podcast, Harri also said that, when Sue Gray was carrying out her inquiry into Partygate, Johnson regarded her as “psycho”.
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Harri said that Johnson originally respected her a lot but that, as she was carrying out her inquiry, he was “getting suspicious”. Other No 10 staff felt the same way, Harri said, because Gray was taking advice from a Labour-supporting lawyer, and using her own press officer. “Why do you need a press officer when you’re writing a report for the prime minister?” Harri asked. He went on:
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So this was not this objective, dispassionate view of what really went on … There are many people who behave badly during that period. None of them are in the public domain, none of them have been mentioned. It was all landed on one guy because he happened to be the guy at the top.
\n
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Asked how Johnson described Gray at the time, Harri said he did not want to give away everything, because he wanted people to listen to his podcast on Thursday. But he went on:
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If I were to say one word, maybe, that will be recurring in [the podcast], ‘Psycho’ Sue Gray would be part of it. There was a sense that she lacked perspective as to what he had done.
\n
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Harri also claimed that Gray “must have been” talking to Keir Starmer at the time she was compiling her report, because she has now agreed to become his chief of staff. But in fact Gray, and the Labour party, say talks about a job did not start until months after the Partygate report was finished.
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In one respect, these claims are ridiculous. No one has disputed any of the facts set out in the Sue Gray report into Partygate, and Johnson himself told MPs at the time that fully he accepted its findings, and its criticism of the culture within Downing Street. The notion that she published it as part of some plot to lever Starmer into Downing Street is just a conspiracy theory.
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But it is a conspiracy theory embraced by some of the small band of Johnsonites in the party who continue to believe that he was somehow a victim. Last week Sunak linked the Tory poor performance in the local elections to voters being fed up with the Conservatives running politics like a “box-set drama”. Harri has just demonstrated that the drama is not yet over, and that the Johnsonites will continue to air their grievances about his downfall.
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Here is the agenda for the day.
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Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.
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10am: Claire Coutinho, the minister for children, gives evidence to the Commons education committee about support for childcare.
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Morning: Keir Starmer chairs a meeting the leaders of the 22 councils won by Labour in the local elections last week. In the afternoon he will chair a meeting of the shadow cabinet.
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Morning: Sunak visits a pharmacist in Southampton, where he grew up and where his mother was a pharmacist, to publicise government plans to give pharmacies the power to issue prescriptions for seven common conditions.
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11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
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2.30pm: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.
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If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a PC or a laptop. (It is not available on the app yet.) This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
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Key events
Filters BETA
Here is a comment from a reader worth flagging up above the line.
Pharmacies in Wales have been able to prescribe certain medicines for a year now, so this is just the government stealing a Labour policy again. Why does the media happily report everyone Tory slur on the Welsh NHS but never point out the positives? As another example, there have been several stories in the Guardian recently about pregnant women being chased for prescription charges because they didn’t do the correct paperwork, but no mention that this would not have happened in Wales, where all prescriptions are free!
He’s right. Plans for a “Wales-wide pharmacy prescribing service” were announced by the Welsh government in December 2021.
Local election results ‘devastating’ for party, says Tory MP
Ben Quinn
Tory backbench discontent at the party’s poor local election showing is continuing to reverberate with an MP in a key seat targeted by Labour describing the results as “devastating” and “off the scale”.
Justin Tomlinson, who took north Swindon from Labour at the 2010 general election, warned in an interview on Times Radio that the party “don’t have a coherent message” and are in “a fight for our lives”. He said:
“The results were devastating. It’s frankly an insane thing for anybody to try and spin otherwise,” said Tomlinson, after Labour last week took control of Swindon Borough Counci, a key target in its local election campaign, for the first time in 20 years.
If you are going to fight a set of elections – whether it’s a parliamentary byelection, local elections or the general election, you must have a coherent message.
Tomlinson’s comments came as former leader Iain Duncan Smith also heaped pressure, in an article for the Telegraph, on Rishi Sunak to cut taxes and warned that “the results can’t be spun away”.
Comparisons with 1996 and the “inevitability” of Labour’s win the following year were wrong he insisted, and the Tories could still win by delivering on voters priorities which he listed, along with lower taxes, as including “lower cost of living, lower immigration and most of all growth”.
In his LBC interview this morning Guto Harri, Boris Johnson’s former communications director, also claimed that if Rishi Sunak had not resigned as chancellor, then Johnson would have soon demoted or sacked him anyway, because the pair disagreed so much on policy. Harri said there was a “fundamental disagreement of policy between the two of them”. He told LBC:
The tension between them was building. Boris was desperate to give something to the party, did not want to put up corporation tax. He didn’t want to cut taxes. He did want to bring the bread and butter benefits of Brexit to ordinary punters.
Rishi was reluctant to do all of that. So frankly, to cut to the chase, if things hadn’t turned out as they did last July, I think over the summer we’d have had a reshuffle and Rishi would have been offered a different job, should we say.
Harri also used the interview to claim that Johnson regarded Sue Gray as “psycho”. (See 9.39am.)
Liz Truss to visit Taiwan, saying she wants to show solidarity in face of ‘increasingly aggressive’ stance taken by China
Ben Quinn
Liz Truss, the former prime minister, is to visit Taiwan next week, where she will deliver a speech likely to anger Beijing and potentially upset the UK government’s careful approach to China relations.
Speaking ahead of her visit, she said:
Taiwan is a beacon of freedom and democracy. I’m looking forward to showing solidarity with the Taiwanese people in person in the face of increasingly aggressive behaviour and rhetoric from the regime in Beijing.
The former Tory leader’s office said today that she is also expected to meet senior members of the Taiwanese government.
However, the trip comes after a warning by the foreign secretary James Cleverly that Britain should not “pull the shutters down” on China, as it would be counterproductive to the national interest.
Barge set to house 500 migrants arrives in Falmouth for refurbishment
A port where a barge housing asylum seekers is set to dock has reportedly removed its cruise ship schedule from its website in a bid to deter far-right protests, PA Media reports. PA says:
The Bibby Stockholm arrived in Falmouth, Cornwall, this morning where the accommodation barge will undergo an assessment and refurbishment.
The vessel, which will house around 500 migrants, is then expected to be moved into position at the Portland of Port in Dorset in the next few weeks.
According to The Times, the Portland Port has looked to deter anti-migrant demonstrations, which are expected in protest at the barge’s presence, from targeting the arrival of tourists coming into the area on cruise ships.
The newspaper said the south Dorset harbour usually advertises the arrival and departure dates on its website of the 40 or more cruises set to dock at the port during the year.
But the Times said that, after criticism of its plans to allow the Bibby Stockholm to moor in its waters, the port’s website has removed the dates.
The paper cited a source involved in the planning as saying the dates were taken down because of concerns that far-right activists could organise anti-migrant protests on days when thousands of tourists are due to arrive on cruise ships.
Sunak claims primary care recovery plan will free up 15m GP appointments over next two years
Downing Street has put out a news release about what it describes as Rishi Sunak’s “primary care recovery plan”. The main feature is the plan to allow pharmacies in England to issue prescriptions for seven basic conditions, but the government is also investing £240m in new telephone systems for GP surgeries.
Sunak claims his plans will “free up around 15 million GP appointments over the next two years”.
Labour says ‘something has gone wrong’ over arrest of coronation protesters
At the weekend shadow ministers were relatively careful about what they said about the way new anti-protest laws were deployed against anti-monarchy protesters at the coronation. But this morning Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, was more critical, telling BBC Breakfast:
Clearly, something has gone wrong in this case.
Nandy went on:
Peaceful protest is an important part of British democracy. The Met accepted that and I think the mayor of London is right to ask for a review to determine what exactly went wrong in this case.
Whatever it was, this was a very complex policing operation. It largely went off without a hitch and I think the police deserve credit for that. But where there are incidents like this, we have to take them seriously and I think that it’s right that we learn the lessons and take steps to rectify that.
Jamie Grierson has the story here.
Boris Johnson became ‘suspicious’ of Sue Gray as she carried out her inquiry, says Guto Harri
Good morning. With the coronation over, politics is back in spades after three days where it has been effectively marginalised. There is plenty around.
But let’s start with the latest instalment of the Boris Johnson Tory psychodrama. Guto Harri, Johnson’s communications director when Johnson was PM, is launching a new podcast about his time in No 10 and, in an article for the Daily Mail, he claimed that Johnson and King Charles had a big row after the king reportedly described the government’s Rwanda policy as “appalling”.
This morning, in an interview with LBC plugging the podcast, Harri also said that, when Sue Gray was carrying out her inquiry into Partygate, Johnson regarded her as “psycho”.
Harri said that Johnson originally respected her a lot but that, as she was carrying out her inquiry, he was “getting suspicious”. Other No 10 staff felt the same way, Harri said, because Gray was taking advice from a Labour-supporting lawyer, and using her own press officer. “Why do you need a press officer when you’re writing a report for the prime minister?” Harri asked. He went on:
So this was not this objective, dispassionate view of what really went on … There are many people who behave badly during that period. None of them are in the public domain, none of them have been mentioned. It was all landed on one guy because he happened to be the guy at the top.
Asked how Johnson described Gray at the time, Harri said he did not want to give away everything, because he wanted people to listen to his podcast on Thursday. But he went on:
If I were to say one word, maybe, that will be recurring in [the podcast], ‘Psycho’ Sue Gray would be part of it. There was a sense that she lacked perspective as to what he had done.
Harri also claimed that Gray “must have been” talking to Keir Starmer at the time she was compiling her report, because she has now agreed to become his chief of staff. But in fact Gray, and the Labour party, say talks about a job did not start until months after the Partygate report was finished.
In one respect, these claims are ridiculous. No one has disputed any of the facts set out in the Sue Gray report into Partygate, and Johnson himself told MPs at the time that fully he accepted its findings, and its criticism of the culture within Downing Street. The notion that she published it as part of some plot to lever Starmer into Downing Street is just a conspiracy theory.
But it is a conspiracy theory embraced by some of the small band of Johnsonites in the party who continue to believe that he was somehow a victim. Last week Sunak linked the Tory poor performance in the local elections to voters being fed up with the Conservatives running politics like a “box-set drama”. Harri has just demonstrated that the drama is not yet over, and that the Johnsonites will continue to air their grievances about his downfall.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.
10am: Claire Coutinho, the minister for children, gives evidence to the Commons education committee about support for childcare.
Morning: Keir Starmer chairs a meeting the leaders of the 22 councils won by Labour in the local elections last week. In the afternoon he will chair a meeting of the shadow cabinet.
Morning: Sunak visits a pharmacist in Southampton, where he grew up and where his mother was a pharmacist, to publicise government plans to give pharmacies the power to issue prescriptions for seven common conditions.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a PC or a laptop. (It is not available on the app yet.) This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
