Boris Johnson: cabinet minister won’t say if he thinks former PM returning to the Commons is unacceptable – UK politics live | Politics

Scotland’s first-ever recall petition for a sitting MP opened this morning following the suspension of Margaret Ferrier from the House of Commons, PA Media reports. PA says:

From 9am, voters in Rutherglen and Hamilton West will have the chance to sign a petition to recall their MP from Westminster.

If 10% of the electorate choose to do so – some 8,113 people out of 81,124 – then a by-election will be triggered.

Despite pressure to resign from her seat since breaching coronavirus rules, Ferrier remains the MP, now sitting as an independent.

She urged voters not to sign the petition, saying her constituents are her “top priority”.

Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons defence committee, has said that Shaun Bailey should consider turning down the peerage he was given in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list because of his attendance at a Partygate event. Ben Quinn has the story here.

Good morning. MPs voted last night, by 354 votes to 7, to accept the privileges committee report saying that Boris Johnson deliberately misled them about Partygate, but even though he is now out of parliament, and condemned as a liar in a report actively endorsed by more than half of the Commons, he is still having a corrosive impact on Tory politics. That was illustrated this morning when Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, gave an interview to the Today programme.

Stride said that he accepted the conclusions of the privileges committee report, but that he had doubts about the severity of the notional penalty applied (a 90-day suspension, if Johnson had still been an MP), and so that is why he was one of the 225 Conservatives who did not vote. But it was after that, when the Johnson questions kept coming, that Stride started to struggle.

• Stride admitted that he did not know what Rishi Sunak thought about the report. Sunak did not vote yesterday, and Stride defended this, saying the PM was busy. He said:

What I do know is I know that he had some long standing engagements yesterday, including with the Swedish prime minister and the Jewish Care event in the evening.

Stride said Sunak did not express a view before the vote, because he did not want to influence MPs on something that was not a goverment matter, and Stride defended this. Stride said he did not know if Sunak thought, as he did, that the proposed punishment was too harsh. But he said he had “no doubt” that Sunak would answers questions on this in due course.

I think really the caravan has got to move on from Boris Johnson, with respect.

But, when asked if he thought it would be acceptable for Johnson to return, he said:

I can’t read the future. And I don’t think it’s right for me to come on your programme and start speculating on the future.

Asked again if he would find Johnson acceptable as a Tory colleague in the future, he replied:

I’m not going to be drawn in speculating on the future of Boris Johnson.

• Stride failed to defend Johnson’s resignation honours list in its entirety, suggesting that it might be right for Shaun Bailey, the former Tory mayoral candidate, to refuse his peerage. Bailey’s peerage is in jeopardy because, just a week after it announced, the Mirror released a video of a Tory “jingle and mingle” party he attended that is being investigated by the police as a potential breach of lockdown rules. It was organised by Bailey’s campaign team. Asked if he agreed that Bailey’s peerage was in question, Stride said he did not want to prejudge the investigation. Asked if Bailey definitely would become a peer, Stride declined to say. Asked if he accepted that the Johnson honours list had not been good for the party, Stride said:

I think its down to Boris Johnson who he put forward.

Alastair Campbell, the former Labour spin doctor who hates Johnson, and most of the Conservative party too, is about the last person you would consult for an objective view. But this tweet does give a sense of quite how much difficulty Stride was in dealing with these questions.

In the debate yesterday Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons, suggested Johnson was responsible for the “debasement of our honours system”.

Eventually we will got on to some political news that isn’t about Johnson. Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning; Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.

10am: Oliver Letwin, the former Cabinet Office minister, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry. Later in the morning George Osborne, the former chancellor, will give evidence.

11.30am: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.

11.30m: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

After 3pm: Peers vote on Commons amendments to the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill.

4pm: David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, speaks at Best for Britain’s Trade Unlocked.

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