Third Tory MP calls for no confidence vote in PM – as it happened

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has now held his delayed phone call with the Russian president Vladimir Putin as the situation on the Ukrainian border continues to escalate.

It is understood the prime minister expressed his “deep concern” about Russian aggression to Putin this afternoon and warned that a further incursion into Ukraine would be a “tragic miscalculation”.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said:

The prime minister expressed his deep concern about Russia’s current hostile activity on the Ukrainian border. He emphasised the need to find a way forward which respects both Ukraine’s territorial integrity and right to self-defence.

The prime minister stressed that any further Russian incursion into Ukrainian territory would be a tragic miscalculation.

The prime minister underscored that, under Nato’s open door policy, all European democracies have a right to aspire to Nato membership. This right fully applies to Ukraine. He also reiterated that Nato is a defensive alliance.

The leaders agreed that aggravation was in no-one’s interest. The prime minister stressed the importance of dialogue and diplomacy, and the need to include Ukraine in talks.

Putin told Johnson the Nato bloc was not ready to adequately react to Russian concerns, according to the statement on the Kremlin website.

Earlier on Wednesday, Russia mocked Johnson as “utterly confused” and ridiculed British politicians for their “stupidity and ignorance”, hurling more scorn at the West after Putin accused Washington of trying to provoke war.

A third Tory MP has become the latest to go public today in calling for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister. Gary Streeter, the Conservative MP for South West Devon has posted on his Facebook account that he “cannot reconcile the pain and sacrifice of the vast majority of the British Public during lockdown with the attitude and activities of those working in Downing Street” and has submitted a letter of no confidence.

Statement on Boris Johnson and the Sue Gray Report.

I previously made it clear in response to the many e-mails I have received about the parties in Downing Street that appeared to break Lockdown rules, that the wise thing to do was to await the report from Sue Gray. This has now been received (albeit in truncated form) and I have made my decision.

I cannot reconcile the pain and sacrifice of the vast majority of the British Public during lockdown with the attitude and activities of those working in Downing Street.

Accordingly, I have now submitted a letter seeking a motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister.

I have not come to this decision lightly. It is not my intention to say any more about this matter.

I will focus on serving the residents of South West Devon.

• Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling-up secretary, has criticised Michael Gove’s long-awaited white paper, claiming it is evidence of “a government in freefall: out of ideas, out of energy”.

• Two Conservative MPs have submitted letters of no confidence in Boris Johnson, as more Tories broke cover to criticise the prime minister after the Sue Gray report on Downing Street lockdown parties.

• Keir Starmer has accused Boris Johnson of “parroting the conspiracy theories of violent fascists” for political gain after the prime minister doubled down on false claims about the Labour leader’s blame for the failure to prosecute Jimmy Savile.

• Lord Goldsmith, a Foreign Office and environment minister, has told peers that a “misunderstanding” was to blame for an official in his office writing an email saying Boris Johnson had authorised the evacuation of animals from Kabul last summer. These are from my colleague Dan Sabbagh.

Earlier I said Savanta ComRes has started inviting focus groups to watch PMQs and sending out the findings to journalists. Today their focus group comprised six people who all voted Tory in 2019 but who all say they will or might for another party at the next election (ie, floating voters - the people who decide elections).

Here is an extract from the write-up from Chris Hopkins from Savanta ComRes.

This dichotomy between the leaders was illustrated by asking the group who ‘won’ the session. Some felt as though Boris Johnson, with his punchier responses, highlighting his government’s record, cut way above [Keir] Starmer, while others found Starmer’s approach more palatable and Johnson’s deflection of the questions problematic. Praise was, once again, reserved for Ian Blackford, who the group seemed to appreciate for his directness in questioning and not letting the issue of partygate slide ...

However, it was in the meat of PMQs that came the most fascinating responses. Having led on Conservative tax rises despite claiming to be a low tax party, the group did not necessarily agree with Starmer’s questioning. Instead, the group tended to empathise more with the government, appreciating that tax rises may be necessary in order to pay back the cost of things such as furlough and business support, which the government were roundly praised for. The difficult decisions ahead for the government, including things such as the National Insurance rise, may not be the vote-loser some backbench Conservatives think it is, based on the evidence of this group, providing that the government can continue to hammer home its pandemic record.

Here is some reaction to the levelling up white paper from thinktanks.

From Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies

This white paper recognises the scale of the levelling up challenge. That lack of quick fixes, the long term perspective, and clarity about objectives are all very welcome, as is the recognition that real progress will require a change in governance in Whitehall and beyond.

This is all just a very first step though. The targets are largely in the right areas, but many look extremely ambitious - that is to say highly unlikely to be met, even with the best policies and much resource. There is little detail on how most of them will be met, and less detail on available funding. There is something for everyone, and hence little sense of prioritisation: ambition and resource will be spread very thin.

From Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit

In the end, perhaps inevitably, the long-awaited levelling up white paper doesn’t quite rise to its own challenge.

It sets out an analysis of the causes and impacts of regional economic disparities and proposes 12 missions to address these challenges. These give some clarity to what levelling up means, contain social as well as economic dimensions and have measurable metrics for success.

It’s far less clear how these missions will be accomplished. The structural reforms to local government and the specific policy measures announced feel piecemeal and, in the main, familiar.

From Torsten Bell, head of the Resolution Foundation

From Sarah Longlands, chief executive of Centre for Local Economic Strategies in Manchester

Even with 332 pages to fill out the detail, and after two years of hype, the levelling up white paper lacks the focus and finance to get to the root of the problem: an economic system which fails to give people a stake in their local place through, for example, decent work, housing and transport. This inequality, made worse by the pandemic, is what is driving down living standards and life expectancy rather than helping people to live good lives. The levelling up white paper doesn’t offer a coherent roadmap for economic change but a scattering of special projects which together will do little to alleviate the challenges faced by those who have not only been left behind but kept behind for decades.

From Miatta Fahnbulleh, head of the New Economics Foundation

From Jo Bibby, director of health at the Health Foundation

The target set to be set to be outlined in today’s white paper to close the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas over the next decade, while welcome, is extremely ambitious. It appears the government has failed to grasp the enormity of the challenge.

A healthier and fairer society needs secure jobs, good pay, decent housing and high-quality education. While there is some recognition of this in today’s announcements, insufficient funding means that, as it stands, the levelling up agenda is unlikely to lead to significant improvements in any of these areas.

Another Conservative MP has gone public to announce he has submitted a letter calling for a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson. It is Anthony Mangnall, who was elected MP for Totnes in 2019.

Mangnall’s intervention takes the number of Tory MPs publicly demanding a no confidence vote up to 13. Other letters may have been submitted to the chairman of the Conservative 1922 Committee in private, but 54 letters are needed (15% of MPs) for a no confidence vote to go ahead.

Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, says this was supposed to be at the centre of Boris Johnson’s mission. But Johnson himself is not here to announce this, she says. And she says Gove reportedly thinks it is not good too.

She is referring to this report by Richard Vaughan and Paul Waugh in the i. It says:

According to government sources, even those behind the white paper believe it falls short of what had been promised when the prime minister vowed to “level up the country” when he entered Downing Street.

“Everyone, including the Secretary of State [Mr Gove], thinks it’s s**t”, a government insider told i. The white paper is understood to contain an essay penned by former Bank of England economist Andy Haldane, who heads up the government’s Levelling Up Taskforce, which was described as “interesting – but it’s just an essay”.

Nandy says the 12 targets are admissions of failure. As an example, she cites education. She says Gove is concerned about the number of pupils leaving primary school without basic skills, but Gove was education secretary himself for four years, she says.

Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, is making his statement on the levelling up white paper.

He says he wants to shift wealth and power decisively to working people and their families.

This is not about holding back any part of the UK, he says. It is about turbo-charging the whole of the country.

He says if the government can boost productivity in every region to the levels in the best performing ones, that will increase the size of the economy by tens of billions of pounds.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has described Boris Johnson’s suggestion that Keir Starmer was to blame for the CPS’s failure to prosecure Jimmy Savile as “utterly despicable” and “Trumpian”. She said:

I’m of a different political party to Keir Starmer, but the Jimmy Savile comments about Keir Starmer were utterly despicable.

[It is] appalling that the holder of the office of prime minister is behaving in that fake news, Trumpian manner.

This is about the integrity of our democracy.

We’ve all got to ask ourselves... as citizens, are we content to have someone with no integrity and no shame occupying Number 10, and I think the answer to that question for the vast majority of people across the UK is no.

But the people who can make the decision about whether Boris Johnson stays there or not are Tory MPs and the longer they allow him to stay there, the longer they will become tarnished and tainted and complicit in his conduct.

In the Commons MPs spent more than an hour and a half after PMQs paying tribute to the late Jack Dromey. Here are some of the comments.

From Boris Johnson

Although Jack and I may have come from different political traditions, I knew him as a man of great warmth and energy and compassion ...

One day Jack was driving in Greece when he saw a family of British tourists, footsore, bedraggled, sunburnt with the children on the verge of mutiny against their father ... he stopped the car and invited them all in even though there was barely any room, and I will always be grateful for his kindness because that father was me and he drove us quite a long way.

From Keir Starmer

Since the sudden passing of our friend Jack, tributes from every walk of life have captured the essence of the man we knew and loved. Larger than life, bursting with enthusiasm and ideas, and tireless in the pursuit of justice and fairness.

Jack channelled all those attributes into representing the people of Erdington, a lifetime of campaigning for working people and his greatest love, his family.

From John Cryer, the Labour MP

He was one of the most successful trade union officers industrially that we have seen in the past 50 to 60 years, often in very difficult conditions. There was one overriding aim that Jack had and that was to improve the conditions and lives of the people that he and we represented. In that, I think he was successful and, in that, I think he left the world better than he found it.

From Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary

Most of all Jack was an optimist, he loved life and he loved people, and he made lives better because he believed things could be better.

Here is the Guardian’s obituary of Dromey, by Julia Langdon.

Priti Patel, the home secretary, has said Emmanuel Macron is wrong to say the UK’s immigration policy is encouraging people to risk their lives crossing the Channel from France, my colleague Rajeev Syal reports.

The Kremlin moved to belittle Boris Johnson on Wednesday, describing him as “utterly confused” and calling British diplomacy a waste of time, my colleague Patrick Wintour reports.

Here is the PA Media story about the Johnson/Starmer exchanges at PMQs.

Keir Starmer accused Boris Johnson of trying to “gaslight” Britons by making “absurd” claims he is cutting taxes when they are about to increase.

The Labour leader pressed the prime minister over cost of living concerns as Tory backbenchers continue to voice opposition to the forthcoming national insurance hike.

Starmer compared Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak to fictional outlaws Thelma and Louise - saying they are about to “drive the country off the cliff and into the abyss of low growth and high tax”.

Johnson suggested Starmer and Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, were Wacky Races cartoon duo Dick Dastardly and Muttley, and defended his government’s economic record.

The 1.25 percentage point national insurance increase from April is expected to raise £12bn a year for health and social care services but breaks Johnson’s 2019 election manifesto pledge not to raise taxes.

After Johnson batted away earlier questions about the introduction of “stealth taxes” on working people, Starmer - in a nod to Downing Street party allegations - told the House of Commons: “The prime minister might want to sharpen how he answers questions under interview - he’s going to need it in the next few weeks.”

Starmer said working people are “always asked to pay more” as he noted the prime minister ordered Tory MPs to oppose a proposed windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas producers, adding: “As a result, the country is missing out on over £1bn he could have used to cut taxes on energy bills for working people.”

He asked: “Why are the chancellor and the prime minister protecting oil companies and bank profits while putting taxes up on working people?”

Johnson replied: “This is all about dealing with the consequences of the biggest pandemic this country has seen, with an unprecedented economic crisis in which the state had to come forward and look after the people of this country to the tune of £408bn. Everyone can see the fiscal impacts of that.”

Starmer countered: “The truth is the Conservative party is the party of high taxes because they’re the party of low growth. They’re the party of high taxes because they’re the party of eye-watering waste.

“We know this prime minister has no respect for decency or honesty. I can take it when it’s aimed at me but I won’t accept it when he gaslights the British public - writing absurd articles about cutting taxes at a time when he is squeezing working people to the pips.

Today’s exchanges were notably calmer and more restrained than the last confrontation in the Commons between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer, two days ago on the Sue Gray report. It was not a particularly memorable PMQs, and it was relatively even-handed too (much more so than Monday, when Johnson got the tone wrong). What was most interesting was the subject matter.

Politicians study VI (voter intention) polling closely (how would you vote if there were a general election tomorrow), but two other polling questions are deemed as good or better guides to which party is most likely to win next time and they are ‘best leader’ and ‘best party on the economy’. Under Starmer, Labour has overtaken the Conservatives on leadership in a lot of polling (although it depends how the question is phrased). It has taken longer for the party to get level on economic competence, but Stamer’s team were particularly excited by a recent poll giving Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, a six-point lead over Johnson and Rishi Sunak on this metric. (Labour was ahead on VI and leadership too.) Starmer’s decision to focus on the economy today was a sign of his confidence on this terrain.

And his criticisms were well founded. After reprimanding Johnson for giving credence to a “fascist” conspiracy theory (about Starmer and Jimmy Savile), Starmer mocked the “absurd” claim by Johnson to be a low-tax Conservative when his government is putting taxes up. He stressed that growth was higher under the last Labour government than it has been since 2010, claimed that explained why taxes were going up (an argument Reeves has been making for weeks), highlighted waste on procurement and fraud and returned in his final question to the point about the hollowness of Johnson’s low-tax rhetoric.

We know this prime minister has no respect for decency or honesty. I can take it when it’s aimed at me, but I won’t accept it when he gaslights the British public - writing absurd articles about cutting taxes at a time when he is squeezing working people to the pips.

Isn’t it the case that he and his chancellor are the Tory Thelma and Louise, hand in hand as they drive the country off the cliff and into the abyss of low growth and high tax?

There were also two sharp, well-aimed jokes about Johnson facing a possible police interview soon.

On fiscal analysis, Starmer won hands-down. But in terms of political messaging, it was much more evenly matched. Partly that was because the pandemic, and the £400bn Covid rescue spending by the government, gives Johnson an entirely plausible excuse of his taxation record. (Savanta ComRes, a polling company, has started sending out focus group responses on the day to what gets said at PMQs; I would be surprised if participants weren’t nodding along with agreement when Johnson was making this point.) Johnson also boosted his case with half-true claims about post-pandemic growth and employment that are hard to rebut at PMQs, and sound impressive superficially.

A final problem for Starmer was that talking about growth is just too abstract. To many viewers, it just won’t mean very much, and he might have done better raising specific cases. (One of the best questions at a recent lobby briefing came from a journalist who asked why his heating bill had doubled at the weekend, and what the government was going to do about it.) Starmer also concluded with an image that did not quite work; Thelma and Louise did drive over the cliff, but we admired them as they did, didn’t we?

Keir Starmer starts by addressing Tory MPs. He says the party of Winston Churchill should not supporting a leader who repeats the conspirary theories of “violent fascists to try and score cheap political points”. He is referring to the Jimmy Savile smear.

I just want to say to the members opposite: theirs is the party of Winston Churchill. Our parties stood together as we defeated fascism in Europe.

Now their leader stands in the House of Commons parroting the conspiracy theories of violent fascists to try and score cheap political points. He knows exactly what he is doing. It’s time to restore some dignity.

He asks why the PM claims he supports low taxes when taxes have gone up.

Johnson starts by saying Starmer apologised for what the CPS did over Savile when he was DPP.

He claim taxes have gone down for those on universal credit (because of the change to the taper rate).

PMQs is starting shortly.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, has welcomed the publication of a white paper on levelling up. “When London succeeds our whole country benefits – and vice-versa,” he said in a statement. But he also said that “levelling up the UK must not be about levelling down London” and he urged the government to fund Transport for London properly, and to give City Hall more financial freedom. He said:

London has less control over the tax we generate than any other global city. If ministers truly wanted to level up it would give cities such as ours greater control over revenues to deliver economic growth and lasting social change for the benefit of the whole country.

The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry said the government’s plans would disadvantage the capital. In a statement its chief executive, Richard Burge, said:

The white paper’s recommended steps to devolve power to regions and cities, establish new mayors, improve transparency and performance management of local government, are all well-founded and will have significant impact.

However, we are disappointed that the core of the white paper’s proposals amount to levelling down London. By forcing investment in areas like R&D, education spending, and cultural grants away from London, as this white paper recommends, the government is choosing to cut London out of productive investment for the sake of optics and for political gain.

Simon Hoare, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons Northern Ireland affairs committee, has also urged Boris Johnson to withdraw his comment implying Keir Starmer was to blame for the CPS’s failure to prosecute Jimmy Savile.

Along with Tobias Ellwood (see 9.47am) and Sir Bob Neill (see 10.12am), Hoare is the third Tory select committee chair to speak out on this. Other senior Conservatives have criticised Johnson over this too, as has the Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle.

Johnson will be in the Commons within an hour for PMQs. MPs like Hoare would like to see him withdraw his remark then, although, as the Sun reports, yesterday Johnson defended his comment, saying it was “fairly accurate”.

Johnson first made his accusation in the Commons on Monday, when he said Starmer was “a former director of public prosecutions – although he spent most of his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, as far as I can make out”.

The comment is widely seen as a smear because Starmer was not involved in decisions not to prosecute Savile. Claims that he was involved have been promoted by online conspiracy theorists.

Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, also dismissed the levelling up white paper as a rehash of old ideas in an interview with Good Morning Britain this morning. She said:

We’ve had two and a half years of big promises and big talk from the government, and what we’ve just been handed this morning seems to boil down to a bunch of recycled money and repackaged announcements, which are so old they were actually first announced when Labour was in government by Gordon Brown.

I think for most people around the country this is deeply, deeply disappointing. No new money, no new powers. The government says it will initiate a process of dialogue with northern mayors, but nothing more than that.

Michael Gove was mostly speaking about his levelling up white paper during his broadcast interview round this morning. Here are the main points he made.

• Gove said the levelling up strategy was a response to the concerns highlighted by the vote for Brexit. He said:

The Brexit referendum was a wake-up call. As well as a clear commandment to leave the European Union it was also a way of saying to people in SW1, people like me, ‘look, it’s vital that you change the economic model of this country. It’s all very well if people are in London and the south-east in financial services and others do well, we don’t begrudge that. But you’ve got to listen to us’.

• He said he would like to see the House of Lords move to Glasgow or York temporarily. He said:

We’ve got our friends in the House of Lords who will have to move out of their current building, at the moment, because of the renovation of the Palace of Westminster. I think it’d be a really good thing if the House of Lords were to meet for at least part of the time in Glasgow or in York. I think it would do us all good.

• He said that the levelling up strategy effectively involved “new” money because it was government money being allocated for the first time. He explained:

There’s a difference between Rishi [Sunak, the chancellor] announcing that he’s going to give me money and me spending it ..

If you are in Wolverhampton or Sheffield, and you’re getting new cash to invest in your city centre, that is new money.

It may have been the case that a sharp-eyed political journalist will note that it was moved from one government account to another in October or November, but the reality is that it’s new money that makes a difference when you get it in your community.

In his Sky News interview (see 9.47am) Tobias Ellwood was particularly critical of Boris Johnson’s decision to blame Keir Starmer for the CPS’s failure to prosecute Jimmy Savile. Starmer was not involved in those decisions, and this has been widely seen as a false smear.

But, as my colleague Jamie Grierson reports, Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, defended what Johnson said in interviews this morning on the grounds that Starmer was head of the CPS at the time.

Boris Johnson will be hoping to get the debate switched to levelling up today, but No 10 has been unable to keep the leadership crisis out of the news. Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, has just made the PM’s position more difficult by announcing that he is joining the list of MPs formally calling for a vote of no confidence. Ellwood told Sky News:

This is just horrible for all MPs to continuously have to defend this to the British public. The government’s acknowledged the need for fundamental change, culture, make-up, discipline, the tone of Number 10, but the strategy has been one, it seems, of survival, of rushed policy announcements like the Navy taking over the migrant Channel crossings.

And attacking this week Keir Starmer with Jimmy Savile ... I mean who advised the prime minister to say this? We’re better than this, we must seek to improve our standards and rise above where we are today ....

I don’t think the prime minister realises how worried colleagues are in every corner of the party, backbenchers and ministers alike, that this is all only going one way and will invariably slide towards a very ugly place.

I believe it’s time for the prime minister to take a grip of this; he himself should call a vote of confidence rather than waiting for the inevitable 54 letters to be eventually submitted.

It’s time to resolve this completely so the party can get back to governing, and, yes, I know the next question you will ask, I will be submitting my letter today to the 1922 Committee.

Johnson could invite his supporters to submit letters calling for a no confidence vote as Ellwood proposes. It would be a version of the “put up or shut up” strategy adopted by John Major in 1995, when he was under pressure to resign from Tory MPs. Major triggered a leadership contest which led to him beating John Redwood convincingly. The result did quash further speculation about his leadership for a period, but almost a third of his MPs voted against him, and for the last two years of his premiership he was seen as permanently weakened.

According to the Spectator’s tally, 10 other Tory MPs have already called for Johnson to quit. Ellwood’s quotes imply he wants Johnson to quit too, but calling for a no confidence vote to “resolve” the situation is not quite the same thing, but Ellwood implies that what matters most is just getting a clear decision on Johnson’s future.

Good morning. Boris Johnson won the election in 2019 because he was committed to getting “Brexit done” but, beyond that, a frequent criticism was that he had little idea of what he wanted to achieve for Britain. He has never been interested in the detail of public policy, and he has always been more of a slogan politician. But he did have a slogan, “levelling up”, around which an entire domestic policy agenda could be constructed, and last autumn Michael Gove was appointed levelling up secretary and given the task of fleshing out Johnson’s “vision”. Today he is publishing a 350-page white paper containing his answer.

My colleagues Heather Stewart and Josh Halliday have a good preview, based partly on a preview released by Gove’s department overnight. It’s here.

Never one to under-sell a government initiative, Johnson has described this as the most ambitious plan of its kind every seen. In a statement released last night he said:

From day one, the defining mission of this government has been to level up this country, to break the link between geography and destiny so that no matter where you live you have access to the same opportunities.

It is the most comprehensive, ambitious plan of its kind that this country has ever seen and it will ensure that the government continues to rise to the challenge and deliver for the people of the UK.

But, in truth, every government at least since the 1960s has had some sort of regional strategy, and none of them have been powerful enough to prevent Britain having a worse record for regional inequality than almost any other comparable economy. From what we know so far about the white paper, which does not come with any funding not already announced by the government, it is not obvious that Johnson and Gove’s policies will be noticeably more transformative than their predecessors.

Last night Darren Jones, the Labour chair of the Commons business committee, said that the targets set in the white paper were essentially just a rehash of those in the industrial strategy drawn up by Theresa May that Johnson abandoned.

I will be covering a lot more reaction to the white paper as the day goes on, along with all the other politics on what promises to be a busy day. Here is the agenda.

9.30am: Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, gives evidence to the Commons transport committee on the integrated transport plan.

10am: Priti Patel, the home secretary, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee.

12pm: Boris Johnson faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.

After 12.30pm: Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, gives a statement to MPs on levelling up white paper.

2pm: The ONS publishes the headline results from its weekly infection survey.

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