Boris Johnson tells No 10 staff change is good quoting Lion King amid resignations turmoil UK politics live
Boris Johnson told No 10 staff this morning that "change is good", the PM's spokesperson told journalists at the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning. Johnson was delivering a pep talk in the light of the announcements yesterday that four of his most senior aides were leaving.
As the Mirror reports, Johnson quotes from the Lion King when trying to persuade his team that the staff shake-up would be beneficial. He said:
As Rafiki in the Lion King says, change is good, and change is necessary even though it's tough.
Johnson also told his team to think of their current difficulties as a half-time moment in a rugby match. He said:
This is like a half-time pep talk ... This is the moment when you spit out the chewed up slice of orange. You put the gum-shield back in and then you get back on the pitch. That's what we're doing.
I will post more from the lobby briefing shortly.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has said that he has tested positive for coronavirus.
Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps)Have tested positive for #COVID19 so am self-isolating and testing as required.
February 4, 2022Yesterday Shapps was in the chamber at the Commons for transport questions.
On Monday Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, said she had tested positive.
Brexit checks on food and farm products entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain must continue pending a judicial review of the order made by Stormont's agriculture minister, Edwin Poots, the high court in Belfast has ruled. My colleague Lisa O'Carroll has the story here.
Here is a summary of the main points from the Downing Street lobby briefing.
[Johnson] reflected on the privilege of working in No 10 in order to deliver for the British people and reiterated his and No 10's commitment to serving the public by keeping people safe, improving lives and spreading opportunity.
As he reiterated to the team today, there is an important job to do, the public expects us to be focused on it, whether it is the situation in Ukraine, recovering from the pandemic or, as the chancellor was setting out yesterday, on issues such as cost of living.
It's not something that the prime minister is calling for. We obviously want a high-growth economy and we want people's wages to increase.
We recognise the challenge of the economic picture which Andrew Bailey set out but it's not up for the Government to set wages or advise the strategic direction or management of private companies.
As Graeme Wearden reports on his business live blog, trade unions are also dismayed by the governor's comments.
It is not hard to see why Johnson would have found Bailey's comments alarming; last year, in an interview ahead of the Conservative party conference, Johnson said that for him "wage growth" would be the most important measure of whether his levelling up policies were succeeding. But the Bank of England has said families are about to experience the biggest fall in living standards for three decades.
We have high confidence Russia is planning to engineer a pretext blaming Ukraine for an attack in order to justify a Russian incursion into Ukraine.
The details in the specific reports today are credible and extremely concerning. We've conducted our own analysis on this intelligence and share the US's conclusion.
This is from Peter Cardwell, a former Tory special adviser, on the Boris Johnson pep talk for staff this morning.
Peter Cardwell (@petercardwell)I'm told that within last hour PM addressed 70-80 Downing Street staff packed into Cabinet Room, with dozens more online. PM's principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds, who resigned yesterday, was also in attendance. PM quoted Lion King character Rafiki: "Change is good."
February 4, 2022Boris Johnson told No 10 staff this morning that "change is good", the PM's spokesperson told journalists at the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning. Johnson was delivering a pep talk in the light of the announcements yesterday that four of his most senior aides were leaving.
As the Mirror reports, Johnson quotes from the Lion King when trying to persuade his team that the staff shake-up would be beneficial. He said:
As Rafiki in the Lion King says, change is good, and change is necessary even though it's tough.
Johnson also told his team to think of their current difficulties as a half-time moment in a rugby match. He said:
This is like a half-time pep talk ... This is the moment when you spit out the chewed up slice of orange. You put the gum-shield back in and then you get back on the pitch. That's what we're doing.
I will post more from the lobby briefing shortly.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has this morning become the second cabinet minister to disassociate himself from Boris Johnson's Jimmy Savile smear about Keir Stamer. Echoing the line taken by Rishi Sunak (see 10.41am), Javid said:
Keir Starmer, when he was running the DPP, did a good job and he should be respected for it. It is a tough job and he deserved absolute respect for that.
But the prime minister has also come out and clarified those remarks, and that is important.
Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, said this morning that the resignation of Paul Givan as Northern Ireland's first minister yesterday was "very unwelcome". But, in an interview with RT?, Coveney said Givan's resignation "doesn't change much" with regard to the ongoing UK-EU negotiations about the future of the Northern Ireland protocol.
He said:
To be fair to the DUP, they've been saying for some time, that if they didn't get what they were asking for in relation to the protocol that they would do this. And now they've gone ahead and done it. But it's certainly very unwelcome.
It doesn't change much actually, in the context of the negotiations that are going on between Liz Truss and Maro? ?ef?ovi? - the two key negotiators who are trying to find common ground on how we implement the Northern Ireland Protocol in a way that everybody can accept. Those discussions and negotiations continue and were continuing yesterday.
Coveney also said that those on the EU side of the negotiation were "listening to unionism" and "working night and day to respond to legitimate unionist concerns and anxieties".
Here is my colleague Lisa O'Carroll's analysis of what Paul Givan's resignation means.
At his press conference last night Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, delivered a subtly crafted diplomatic put-down to Boris Johnson over the Jimmy Savile smear. Asked about the comment, he said:
Being honest, I wouldn't have said it and I'm glad that the prime minister clarified what he meant.
This was not a direct criticism, which would have sounded overtly disloyal (a line ministers tend not to want to cross when talking about their boss). But it signalled his disapproval very strongly, and that "being honest" aside was a helpful reminder of how a Sunak premiership would be quite different from the Johnson one.
Sunak has an article in the Sun today about the energy bills support package announced yesterday and it includes another dig at his Downing Street neighbour. Sunak says:
We have always been the party of sound money - we will always continue to be on my watch - and that is the only kind of party I am interested in.
Sunak also ends the article saying he wants to take the right economic decisions "to ensure I - and future chancellors after me - can respond in emergency situations and in the best interests of the country". The reference to "future chancellors" is a sign that he has been giving some thought to the time when he might have moved on to perhaps a bigger government job.
Boris Johnson privately conceded that there is less than a 30% chance of negotiating a new Brexit deal for Northern Ireland this month, it has emerged. As my colleague Lisa O'Carroll reports, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, said the prime minister made the admission during a private meeting last week. Lisa has the full story here.
Greg Hands, the energy minister, also refused to rule out offering consumers further help with their fuel bills later this year. Asked if that would happen if the energy price cap goes up when it is reviewed in October, Hands replied:
It is too early to say what the price cap will be.
We keep these things under constant review. Of course we won't hesitate to act if we need to to defend consumers.
But of course we have to recognise the UK is not in any way exempt or immune from high global energy prices.
Yesterday the National Energy Action, the fuel poverty charity, said that it thought a further support package for consumers was inevitable later this year because the measures announced yesterday were "inadquate".
Greg Hands, the energy minister, was doing broadcast interview round on behalf of the government this morning. But, for some questions, he did not have an anwer. Here are the main points on No 10/partygate matters.
My job is the energy minister, that is a big job. In politics you don't have to have an opinion on everything.
A reminder: on Monday Johnson said, as director of public prosecutions, Starmer "spent most of his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile". This clearly implied that Starmer was involved in decisions not to prosecute Savile, which is untrue.
The prime minister was absolutely clear on Monday that there would be changes at the top of No 10 and that is what he has delivered. The Sue Gray report update said that there were failings at the top of the operation. This is the prime minister taking charge.
But Hands accepted the resignation of Munira Mirza was "a little bit different".
In his Today interview the Conservative MP Huw Merriman, chair of the transport committee, said he agreed with what Munira Mirza said about why she was resigning over Boris Johnson's failure to apologise for his anti-Starmer Jimmy Savile smear. Merriman said:
I agree with [Mirza]. It's not right, when we expect a full apology [from Johnson], and it should be all about the issues and correcting it, to then go on the attack and making points that just clearly aren't accurate, that doesn't help us restore trust with the public.
Merriman also said Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, was right to say last night that he would not have said what Johnson said about Starmer on Monday. Other cabinet ministers, like Michael Gove, Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg, have been defending the smear this week.
Good morning. Yesterday four of Boris Johnson's most senior aides announced they were leaving Downing Street, but the resignations fell into (at least) two categories.
The decision of Munira Mirza to quit as head of the policy unit, in protest at Johnson's smear about Keir Starmer, was a shock, and about as damaging as the resignation of an official could be. She started working for Johnson when he was mayor of London, and had been utterly loyal, and many Tories will conclude if she can defend him no longer, then his situation is terminal.
The depature of Martin Reynolds, Johnson's principal private secretary, and Dan Rosenfield, his chief of staff, announced later in the day, were more akin to sackings, and potentially more helpful. Both had been expected to go as part of the long-promised shake-up in response to partygate and, while mass sackings never look savoury, some Tory MPs were happy to peddle the No 10 line that this showed Johnson was serious about change.
Jack Doyle's departure as press secretary - also widely expected - falls into the second category too, although he may have had more say over the timing of his exit than Reynolds and Rosenfield. Their resignations were only announced a bit later, as No 10 sought to convert the "Mirza quits" story into a "PM orders staff shake-up" one.
And it is not over. This morning Paul Goodman, editor of ConservativeHome, says another member of the No 10 policy unit, Elena Narozanski, has resigned. Narozanski has been an adviser on women and equalities.
Paul Goodman (@PaulGoodmanCH)Number Ten Policy Unit member Elena Narozanski has quit.
February 4, 2022All this means that the threat level for Johnson within the Conservative party, which has wavered between high and off-the-scale in recent weeks, is edging up again. This morning, in an interview on the Today programme, Huw Merriman, the Conservative chair of the Commons transport committee said that Johnson had to shape up or go. Mangling the familiar phrase (it was early in the morning), he said:
I'm deeply troubled by what's going on. We all know that if the prime minister doesn't ship up, then they have to shape out [sic], and that's exactly what happened when this prime minister took over.
Interestingly, Merriman also claimed that he was probably talking for a silent majority of Conservative MPs.
I think there are a large group of Conservative MPs who are being loyal, focusing also on the prime minister's positives and are not either eulogising with tweets, copy and paste, or going on the attack because they've never liked the prime mnister. That's why you don't hear from a lot of us, because we want this to work.
When it was put to Merriman that he was saying it was "shape up or ship out" for Johnson, Merriman replied:
It is for very single leader of any party, and certainly any prime minister, because it is all about winning elections and having a mandate to deliver.
Here is the agenda for the day.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
12pm: The ONS publishes the results of its latest weekly Covid infection survey in full.
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