Day: August 9, 2018

    A formal decision to refer the former foreign secretary to an investigatory panel headed by a lawyer is expected this afternoon. Sources said they were sifting through a considerable volume of complaints from the public about the language used by Mr Johnson. But party leaders also hope referring the issue to the independent panel will cool the outbreak of Tory infighting that has given Jeremy Corbyn a breather from Labour’s anti-Semitism row. The party code sets out minimum standards of behaviour. It says elected Tories must lead by example to encourage and foster respect and tolerance and act in a manner which upholds the reputation and values of the party. In a Daily Telegraph column on Monday, Mr Johnson mocked the appearance of women who choose to wear the bur...

    Screen Grab Sergei and Yulia Skripal were attacked with novichok and found slumped on a bench in Salisbury in March The US state department will impose sanctions on Russia after it determined Moscow used a nerve agent to attack the Skripals. The US expelled a number of Russian diplomats as part of an international response to the attack, when the former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were taken ill in March. State department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said: Following the use of a 'novichok' nerve agent in an attempt to assassinate UK citizen Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal, the United States, on 6 August 2018, determined under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (CBW Act) that the Government of ...

    Boris Johnson’s joke about burka-wearing women looking like ‘letter boxes’ made me wince not least because I know there are so many women forced to dress that way at the behest of their menfolk and who hate how it makes them look. There are many worse things than giving offence, and one of them is to cordon off contentious topics and designate them no-go areas, while demanding punitive attitudes to people who make inappropriate jokes. So full marks to the former Foreign Secretary for getting this desperately needed public debate going. If he’d tackled the subject by writing something that wouldn’t upset even the most sensitive imam, then we might not now be having frank discussions in pubs, on phone-in programmes and on social media about two issues we need to spea...

    Theresa May included endorsements from senior figures including Dominic Raab, Michael Gove and Liam Fox Theresa May and her Cabinet have launched an attempt to persuade Tory members to back the Prime Minister’s Chequers plan which Brexiteers have labelled irrelevant. Mrs May has sent a letter outlining the case for her plan to the Conservative grassroots and has included endorsements from senior figures including Dominic Raab, Michael Gove and Liam Fox. But Eurosceptics questioned the decision to seek support for the Brexit blueprint given the fact the European Union had effectively rejected it as it stands. It came amid reports Mrs May is planning a crunch meeting with her senior ministers in September when they will discuss how best to prepare the UK for leaving ...