Speaking to reporters on a trip to Lebanon Thursday, Cameron said U.K. recognition of an independent Palestinian state “can’t come at the start of the process, but it doesn’t have to be the very end of the process.”
“It could be something that we consider as this process, as this advance to a solution, becomes more real,” Cameron said.
“What we need to do is give the Palestinian people a horizon towards a better future, the future of having a state of their own,” he said, adding that recognition of a Palestinian state is “absolutely vital for the long-term peace and security of the region.”
Cameron is back from a tour of the Middle East to try and push a five-point plan to quell the latest war between Israel and Hamas.
The U.K. is among those continuing to argue that a two-state solution is the only viable long-term solution to the conflict. But such a proposal faces fierce resistance from Netanyahu and members of his government. The Israeli prime minister has called for “full Israeli security control over the entire area in the west of Jordan,” a move he made clear is “contrary to a Palestinian state.”
The U.K. government has previously said only that it will “recognize a Palestinian state at a time when it best serves the objective of peace” and has rejected calls from British lawmakers to go further.
DAVOS, Switzerland — It feels like the 1930s all over again but with Russian leader Vladimir Putin playing the role of Hitler, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron told POLITICO.
The war in Ukraine remains Cameron’s “absolute number one priority,” he told POLITICO’s Power Play podcast during an interview on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“This is the challenge for our generation,” Cameron said. “This is like being a foreign minister or a leader in Europe in the 1930s, we have got to not appease Putin. We have got to stand up to the evil that his invasion represents.”
The former U.K. prime minister’s remarks come as the West scrambles to keep Ukraine topped up with high-tech weaponry to fend off Russia’s full-scale invasion, while bracing for the potential return of NATO-skeptic Donald Trump to the White House.
“One thing we can do is demonstrate during the course of this year that Putin isn’t winning,” Cameron said.
Israel’s war on Hamas
Turning to Israel’s war on Hamas in the Middle East, Cameron defended Britain’s refusal to call for an immediate cease-fire, as the Israel Defense Forces bombard Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“I think that just wouldn’t have worked because if you want a two-state solution, if you want a sustainable cease-fire, you can’t ask the Israelis to have a two-state solution with the people who perpetrated 7th October in command in Gaza, still able to launch rockets into their country,” he said.
Cameron said he felt “deeply moved” by the suffering on both sides of the conflict. “I have been to a kibbutz in the south of Israel and seen the results of what happened on 7th October and the true horror of it,” he said.
“I’ve also listened to [accounts from British Embassy staff in Cairo] coming out of Gaza and what they’ve seen, what they’ve experienced, and the loved ones they’ve lost, and the family members they’ve seen killed,” Cameron added. “You know, a life is a life. I feel deeply about this, but I’m a very practical person and I want to know how do we bring this to an end?”
Cameron also kept open the door for future airstrikes against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have been attacking commercial and Western naval vessels in the Red Sea, resulting in a major bombing retaliation from an allied coalition last week.
“I think it is important ultimately to show you are prepared to follow up words with actions,” Cameron warned the Houthis, adding, “bear in mind when you make warnings, you have to be prepared to take action.”
Rwanda policy strife
On the domestic front, Cameron said he is “absolutely” behind Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s attempts to tackle undocumented migration by sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Cameron defended the policy despite describing it as “unorthodox” and “out-of-box thinking.” Asked whether he would have devised the policy when he was prime minister, Cameron said: “Yes, my heart is absolutely in it.”
After passing a crucial stage in the House of Commons on Wednesday, the legislation is expected to go on to meet stiff resistance in Britain’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, where Cameron now sits as a peer.
Reflecting on his return to front-line politics compared to his time as prime minister, Cameron said “it certainly makes you think a lot about how about making decisions, about trying to find the time to think through decisions. It’s still very, very difficult.”
Cameron said: “You can’t determine how people see you,” in response to a question on whether he was sensitive to personal criticism.
“I remember once bumping into Steve Bell, the Guardian cartoonist, and saying, ‘why do you always portray me with this sort of condom over my head? What is it I’ve done to deserve this?’ And he roared with laughter and said, ‘oh, you’re just too smooth.’ And that’s the only way I could put it. Strange way of putting it, but there we are. You have to take the rough of with the smooth in this job,” Cameron said.
LONDON — In May last year, my phone buzzed with a message from a contact in the British parliament whom I know well.
We meet every so often for coffee in a cafe far away enough from Westminster to be discreet, where he tells me what’s unfolding in the depths of parliament’s dingy corridors.
That day, his message read: “Has an MP been arrested today? Who can say?”
His first question was a news tip for me to follow up on. I began ringing and texting everyone I knew who might be able to tell me about the possible detention of a member of parliament.
Sure enough, the police soon confirmed that a 56-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of rape and other offenses.
My contact’s second question — “Who can say?” — was more complicated.
In the hours after the arrest, pretty much every British political media organization prominently reported the man’s arrest, together with his age, his position as an MP, and his alleged crimes.
But while every reporter in Westminster knew exactly who he was, it took more than a year before anybody dared publish his name.
As with many other matters of the public interest, Britain’s restrictive libel and privacy laws put any publication that reported his identity at risk of a lengthy legal battle and crippling financial penalties.
In July, London’s Sunday Times took the decision to name him, reporting that he had been absent from parliament since his arrest. With the exception of a single mention in the Mirror newspaper, no other mainstream publication followed suit.
POLITICO can now join in reporting that the man arrested is Andrew Rosindell, a member of the Conservative party who has served as MP for the constituency of Romford in Essex, east of London, since 2001.
Rosindell has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing. He, like every British citizen, is entitled to the presumption of innocence. He has been released by police while they look into his case.
While every reporter in Westminster knew exactly who he was, it took more than a year before anybody dared publish his name | Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images
But POLITICO believes there is a clear public interest in naming him, given the obvious impact upon his ability to represent his constituents — and because of further information we publish today about his activities since May 2021.
During the time he has been absent from parliament, he has continued to claim expenses for his work there and accepted foreign trips worth £8,548 (nearly $11,000) to Bahrain, India, Italy and Poland. He has also continued to receive donations from his supporters.
Rosindell declined to comment for this article.
These might seem like obvious and easy facts to report. But doing so has required extensive discussions with my editors and with a lawyer, even after the courage shown by the Sunday Times.
The Rosindell case is a clear-cut example — one among many — of how Britain’s media laws sometimes place individual privacy over the public interest, putting obstacles in the way of accountability journalism.
Given the work involved in reporting something like the allegations against Rosindell, it’s easy to see how many editors and reporters — battling for readers while grinding out the news — might look at the facts involved and conclude writing about it is simply not worth the risk.
For journalists trying to keep public figures honest, this can be a serious problem — and it’s one the United Kingdom is exporting around the world.
Burden of proof
The heart of the challenge lies in England’s incredibly tough defamation laws — which penalize statements that could damage someone’s public image among “right-thinking members of society” or cause “serious harm” to their reputation.
In the United States, journalists are not only shielded by the First Amendment, but for a defamation claim to succeed, the claimant must prove the allegations are false and were disseminated with malicious intent.
In English courts, the burden of proof lies on the publisher of the potentially libelous statement. Truth can be a defense, but you need to have the actual goods; simply pointing to another press report or even relying on allegations in a police arrest warrant, for example, is not enough.
In recent years, these defamation laws have combined with court rulings on the privacy of individuals under arrest or investigation to hinder reporting on potential abuses of power and other matters of the public interest.
This has contributed to the prevalence of “open secrets” in British public life: individuals known within their circles for alleged wrongdoing who cannot be named due to the onerously high burden of legal proof.
When the Sunday Times published an investigation into claims of sexual abuse against Russell Brand, many in the television industry responded that this had been known for as long as he had been famous | Jeff Spicer/Getty Images
A recent example of this is the allegations against the comedian Russell Brand. When the Sunday Times published an investigation into claims of sexual abuse against him, many in the television industry responded that this had been known for as long as he had been famous.
The trouble was, as the Daily Mail detailed, that for years Brand had deployed lawyers to use legal threats to shoot down stories or rumblings of stories that might crop up about his behavior.
SLAPP in the face
Scratch a high-profile scandal, and you’re likely to find a host of lawyers looking to block reporting about it, or seeking damages for what’s already been published.
The actor and producer Noel Clarke is suing the Guardian over a series of articles reporting allegations of sexual assault and harassment, which, even if unsuccessful, is likely to cost the newspaper hundreds of thousands of pounds.
A well-known British business is suing a broadcaster over an investigation into their working practices that has not yet been aired.
Complainants don’t even have to win for their lawsuits to have a chilling effect. Successfully fending off a claim can eat up months or years of a journalist’s time, if they have the resources at all to fight it.
Even the threat of a lawsuit can be enough to give many journalists pause.
When Ben De Pear was editor of Channel 4 News, the broadcaster worked with the Guardian and New York Times to expose the collection of Facebook users’ personal data by the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica for use in the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign.
After the journalists reached out for comment from Facebook, they were met with a barrage of different tactics, he said. “They didn’t answer till the last possible minute. Their response was published and sent to news organizations before it was sent to us. They prevaricated. Their lawyers sometimes sent 30 or 40 pages of legalese.”
“Normally, the longer the response, the less there is in it,” he added. “Good lawyers, journalists and editors will be able to cut through that, but it still sucks up time and causes an inordinate amount of stress.”
So common have efforts by rich individuals and companies to squash stories become that the practice has been endowed with an acronym: SLAPPs, or strategic lawsuits against public participation.
The English model
The problem isn’t constrained to local shores; England’s libel laws are increasingly being deployed against reporting in foreign countries about foreign individuals — a practice detractors describe as “libel tourism.”
Journalists Tom Burgis and Catherine Belton were both sued over books they wrote about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and corruption in the former Soviet Union | Pool photo by Mikhail Metzel via AFP/Getty Images
Claimants have to establish jurisdiction to bring their action in the U.K., but the threshold is “not a very onerous one,” said Padraig Hughes, legal director at the Media Legal Defense Initiative, a London nonprofit offering advice and financial support to journalists facing defamation claims.
Journalists Tom Burgis and Catherine Belton were both sued over books they wrote about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and corruption in the former Soviet Union.
Burgis and Belton both won, but their experiences don’t tell the whole story, said Clare Rewcastle Brown, a British journalist who helped expose one of the largest ever corruption scandals: the looting of billions of dollars from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.
“For every showcase where publishers can boast that they stuck with the author — and well done them — the fact of the matter is, they’ll have killed numerous other books,” she said.
My call with Rewcastle Brown was arranged around her schedule of getting up at 3 a.m. to appear via Zoom as a defendant in a defamation action brought against her by a member of the Malaysian royal family — one of dozens of similar actions she has faced.
She tells me she has survived through sheer bloody-mindedness, and by “frankly, having nothing to lose.”
She acknowledged that for many media outlets, especially smaller ones, these types of attacks could cause them to re-evaluate whether the efforts are worth it.
“As the money starts to ebb, the courage likewise ebbs away,” she said.
Devastating effect
England’s media laws do have their defenders, and there are examples where the system has made a positive difference. It “serves to make journalism in this country very rigorous, so it does have a good effect,” is how De Pear, of Channel 4 News, put it.
Gavin Phillipson, a professor of law at Bristol University, pointed out that the U.S. is not a model but an exception, with English law “completely in line with the vast majority of liberal democracies in both Europe and the Commonwealth.”
He has written about the “devastating effect” of stories such as the Mail Online’s decision to name a young Muslim man arrested in connection with the 2017 Manchester arena bombing. He was innocent and released without charge, but his name had already spread across the world in connection with the atrocity.
Phillipson notes that while the courts have established that everyone should have a reasonable expectation of privacy, “it doesn’t cover the underlying conduct itself.”
“If the press do their own investigative journalism and find out what actually has happened, then the law of privacy doesn’t stop them publishing that,” he said.
This factored into POLITICO’s decision to publish sexual harassment allegations against Julian Knight, a senior member of parliament, early this year.
Our story relied on our reporting, not just the fact that he’s being investigated by police. (Knight strongly denies all the allegations against him.)
Testing limits
Some in the U.K. have recognized the problem and made efforts to stamp down on libel tourism.
The Defamation Act 2013 raised the bar so that claimants would have to show they had suffered “serious” harm to their reputation, and introduced tighter rules for litigants not domiciled in the U.K.
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act attempted to give extra protection to defendants in litigation related to economic crimes. And this year the government announced legislation to scrap a rule forcing media companies to pay the legal bills of people who sue them.
But the pendulum has also swung the other way.
There was until recently a rule that the police had to notify the House of Commons Speaker of the arrest of any member of parliament and their name would be published.
If this measure had still been in place, it would have made the debate about publishing Rosindell’s name moot. But MPs opted to scrap it with very little fanfare in 2016.
Gabriel Pogrund, Whitehall editor for the Sunday Times, wrote the newspaper’s story naming Rosindell. He also reported on an accusation of rape against the former MP Charlie Elphicke, over which Elphicke sued the paper. (Elphicke was later convicted of sexual assault and dropped his claim.)
Pogrund argues that his job has gotten harder as a string of recent legal defeats for publications has diminished the appetite for testing where the line is.
The result, when it comes to public figures and organizations suspected of serious wrongdoing, he said, has been “an informal conspiracy of silence.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Sunday called for a “sustainable cease-fire” in the Middle East, lamenting that “too many civilians have been killed” in the Israel-Hamas war.
In a joint article in the Sunday Times, Baerbock and Cameron made clear that: “We do not believe that calling right now for a general and immediate cease-fire, hoping it somehow becomes permanent, is the way forward.”
“We must do all we can to pave the way to a sustainable cease-fire, leading to a sustainable peace,” they said.
The article represents an apparent shift in the stances of both countries on the conflict in Gaza. The British government has called for a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting, but has stopped short of urging a cease-fire. Germany has staunchly defended Israel’s right to defend itself since the attacks by Hamas on October 7.
“Our goal cannot simply be an end to fighting today. It must be peace lasting for days, years, generations,” the two ministers said in their article, stressing that they support “a cease-fire, but only if it is sustainable.”
The international calls for an immediate cease-fire are “an understandable reaction to such intense suffering, and we share the view that this conflict cannot drag on and on,” Baerbock and Cameron wrote. That is why the two governments “supported the recent humanitarian pauses” and are “pushing the diplomatic effort to agree further pauses to get more aid in and more hostages out,” they said.
“Only extremists like Hamas want us stuck in an endless cycle of violence, sacrificing more innocent lives for their fanatical ideology,” the two ministers wrote.
However, “the Israeli government should do more to discriminate sufficiently between terrorists and civilians, ensuring its campaign targets Hamas leaders and operatives,” Cameron and Baerbock said.
“We do not believe that calling right now for a general and immediate cease-fire, hoping it somehow becomes permanent, is the way forward” because “it ignores why Israel is forced to defend itself: Hamas barbarically attacked Israel and still fires rockets to kill Israeli citizens every day,” they said. Baerbock and Cameron prefer “a sustainable cease-fire, leading to a sustainable peace. The sooner it comes, the better — the need is urgent,” they said.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, meanwhile, on Sunday urged an “immediate and durable” truce in the Gaza Strip. Speaking in Tel Aviv during a meeting with her Israeli counterpart, Eli Cohen, Colonna said that “the truce should lead to a lasting cease-fire with the aim of releasing all hostages and delivering aid to Gaza.”
LONDON — As David Cameron heads to Washington this week for his first big speech back on the world stage, his bête noire Boris Johnson will be sat in a dingy room in west London.
Johnson is to give two days of televised testimony before Britain’s COVID-19 inquiry, answering a barrage of questions under oath about decisions he took while prime minister in 2020 and 2021 which — many believe — cost thousands of people their lives.
As Johnson battles to salvage his battered reputation, Cameron will be strutting through America in a ministerial motorcade, glad-handing Washington’s power players and preparing to address the Aspen Security Forum as U.K. foreign secretary.
It’s a stark symbol of just how quickly the political sands can shift.
Cameron had long been written out of the British political scene, famously retreating to a hut in his garden to write his memoirs after calling — and losing — the divisive Brexit referendum in 2016. Johnson — an old acquaintance from his school days — had fought on the opposite side, and his star rose rapidly after the referendum victory. As Cameron licked his wounds, Johnson became foreign secretary in 2016 and then prime minister — with the landslide majority Cameron also craved — three years later.
But with Johnson now long gone and Cameron handed a dramatic ministerial comeback — along with a seat in the House of Lords — in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet reshuffle last month, the two men’s fate has come full circle.
And former colleagues say Cameron is making no secret of his delight at the turn of events, frequently texting associates to say how much he is enjoying the new gig.
Despite now having the run of the palatial Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office — known as the grandest building on Whitehall — Cameron has also been awarded two large private rooms in the House of Lords, displacing Conservative colleagues in the process.
Some friends believe he’s having more fun than when he was actually running the country.
“He has got the bits of the job he enjoyed, he has shed the bits he didn’t. It is the perfect semi-retirement job for him,” a former No. 10 adviser who worked for Cameron said. (The adviser was granted anonymity, like others in this article, to speak candidly about private interactions with the foreign secretary)
“All prime ministers like being on the world stage. It allows them to grapple with big issues,” a second former No. 10 adviser who worked closely with Cameron said.
Cameron’s closest political ally, his ex-Chancellor George Osborne, says his friend’s return will have fulfilled the “strong element of public service” in the ex-prime minister, which he claimed has “always been part of his DNA.”
Cameron’s closest political ally, his ex-Chancellor George Osborne (left), says his friend’s return will have fulfilled the “strong element of public service” in the ex-PM | Pool photo by Petar Kujundzic via Getty Images
“It’s like the sound of the trumpet. Back on … the political playing field, and serving your country. He’s doing it because above all he thinks he can make a difference,” Osborne said on a recent podcast.
Others are less impressed.
One Whitehall official, while acknowledging the diplomatic advantages of having a former PM in post, described Cameron’s appointment as “failing upward, writ large.”
Cameron’s peerage means MPs cannot quiz him in the House of Commons like other ministers, another fact which rankles with opponents.
“Once again Cameron is jetsetting around the globe with seemingly no accountability to the British public,” Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran said.
“We have very little idea whom this unelected foreign secretary is meeting and what he is saying. Maybe if he spent as much time — or indeed any time at all — making himself available for scrutiny from MPs, we would understand exactly what his foreign policy priorities are.”
Back onthe world stage
On his first visit to the U.S. since becoming foreign secretary on Wednesday, Cameron will meet key members of the Biden administration, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as Republican and Democratic Congressional figures in an effort to shore up support for Ukraine.
Cameron’s appointment has certainly made diplomats in foreign capitals sit up and take notice, if only because his is a familiar name in the hard-to-follow soap opera of British politics.
Even in the U.S., his appointment triggered some excitement. As one U.K. official put it, “Americans have a sort of respect for former office-bearers in a way that Brits don’t.”
An EU diplomat said that despite having “gambled” on the Brexit referendum, Cameron is still well thought of in Brussels.
Cameron will certainly feel at home, having relished life on the world stage as prime minister, according to multiple advisers who worked with him at the time.
“You get the idiosyncrasies of different leaders and he enjoyed that. He has a good sense of humor,” the second former adviser quoted above said. The aide recounted how a Nigerian president had once left a soap opera playing on TV throughout his meeting with the British prime minister. “[Cameron] came out laughing. He could roll with the weird and wonderful.”
With Johnson now long gone and Cameron handed a dramatic ministerial comeback in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet reshuffle last month, the two men’s fate has come full circle | Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
Predictably, Cameron has slipped back easily into government — perhaps a little too easily, according to the Whitehall official quoted above who said he had to be reminded he needed clearance before texting friendly hellos to former acquaintances from foreign powers.
The same person said he was demanding fast, detailed briefings at a rate more associated with No. 10, and has sometimes sent papers back asking for a more creative approach. They pointed out his only previous job in government had been as prime minister, which influences his way of working.
Green with envy
The notoriously competitive Cameron also won’t be displeased by the reaction to his appointment by his political peers.
Arch-rival and former school frenemy Johnson, who was ousted from office in 2022 over his handling of various personal scandals, couldn’t help but mock Cameron’s return, describing it as “great news for retreads everywhere.”
Osborne, Cameron’s closest political friend, admitted to being “a little bit jealous, but in a good way,” after he returned.
“There’s a little bit of me that goes ‘I’d fancy being foreign secretary,’” Osborne admitted, before insisting: “But I’m very happy with what I’m doing with the rest of my life, and I think it probably keeps me sane.”
Even the man who appointed Cameron — Sunak — may start to envy Cameron’s ability to detach from the day-to-day management of a fractious Conservative Party, something he endured throughout his own premiership from 2010-2016.
Two government officials said Cameron was essentially “prime minister of foreign affairs,” leaving Sunak to fix his attention on a raft of nightmarish domestic problems in the run-up to the next election, which he is expected to lose.
“[Cameron] can really dedicate himself in a way he never could as PM, because you’re on the plane back and you’ve got to deal with Mark Pritchard and circus tent animals, or whatever else there is when you are prime minister,” a third former adviser said, referencing a furor over a Tory backbench rebellion on banning circus animals.
Adrenaline rush
Life will certainly be different from the past seven years. Shortly after his appointment last month, Cameron told peers the Chippy Larder food project — where he volunteered for two years during his political retirement — would have to manage without him for a while.
“There’s an element of it being quite hard to replay that adrenaline rush [of being PM], the pace of what you do,” the second former adviser quoted above said, noting Cameron had quit before he was 50 and had been “at the peak of his abilities.”
“It’s a shot of redemption,” the third former adviser added. “He’s got another chance at it — and this one probably isn’t going to end in his failure.”
LONDON — Rishi Sunak appointed David Cameron as Britain’s new foreign secretary — in a shock comeback for the former prime minister.
Cameron, who resigned as PM in 2016 and later quit as a member of parliament after losing the Brexit referendum, will become a life peer in the House of Lords in order to take on the government role.
The move comes as Sunak carries out a major reshuffle of his government ranks, in a bid to arrest his Conservative Party’s large deficit in opinion polling.
He kicked off the reshuffle Monday by firing Home Secretary Suella Braverman, a key figure on the party’s right. James Cleverly, previously foreign sec, takes over from Braverman at the interior ministry.
Cameron’s return on Monday to one of the highest positions in government sent shockwaves through Westminster and the Conservative Party.
It marks the first post-war example of a former prime minister serving in a successor’s Cabinet since the 1970s, when Conservative Alec Douglas-Home was named foreign secretary in Ted Heath’s government.
Although both are seen as Tory centrists, Sunak and Cameron campaigned on opposite sides of the 2016 Brexit referendum. Cameron — who led a coalition government in 2010 and pulled off a dramatic election victory for the Tories in 2015 — has recently been critical of the prime minister over his decision to axe key parts of the HS2 rail link.
The ex-PM’s reputation took a hit amid a lobbying scandal in 2021. His record on foreign policy is controversial among some Conservatives. As prime minister he heralded a so-called “Golden Era” in U.K. relations with China, and hosted President Xi Jinping for a state visit.
Cameron: I want to help Sunak deliver
In a statement following his appointment, Cameron said the U.K. would “stand by our allies, strengthen our partnerships and make sure our voice is heard.”
And he added: “Though I may have disagreed with some individual decisions, it is clear to me that Rishi Sunak is a strong and capable prime minister, who is showing exemplary leadership at a difficult time.
“I want to help him to deliver the security and prosperity our country needs and be part of the strongest possible team that serves the United Kingdom and that can be presented to the country when the general election is held.”
But Pat McFadden of the opposition Labour Party used the new hire to take a dig at Sunak, who has recently attempted to pitch himself against successive governments of all stripes.
“A few weeks ago, Rishi Sunak said David Cameron was part of a failed status quo, now he’s bringing him back as his life raft,” McFadden quipped.
LONDON — Britain’s tech chief is no stranger to dealing with big egos. She used to promote superstar wrestlers.
U.K. Science and Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan’s past career as a marketeer for WWE wrestling may stand her in good stead at Bletchley Park on Wednesday, as she hosts representatives from more than 100 tech companies, countries and academic institutions on the first day of a U.K.-hosted summit which aims to grapple with one of the biggest challenges of our time — the rise of artificial intelligence.
Working at the fast-paced WWE was “very much like” being at her busy Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), Donelan tells POLITICO — somewhat improbably — in an eve-of-summit interview at her sparsely-decorated office on Whitehall.
The oddball world of commercial wrestling was also good training for politics.
“It was an eye-opener to different personalities, and how to deal with those different personalities,” she says — ideal for “dealing with big egos, in terms of British politics.”
A low-profile Tory MP who only bagged her first junior ministerial job in 2019, Donelan makes for a surprising compère for the first day of Rishi Sunak’s much-hyped AI summit.
Unlike Sunak, the 39-year-old was no self-professed tech geek when she was entrusted with setting up his new science and technology department in February 2023. By her own admission she doesn’t regularly use generative AI tools like ChatGPT.
But Donelan, who was pregnant with her first child when she was handed the science and tech brief, has been wading through piles of binders detailing technical information as she tries to get to grips with the subject. Colleagues note admiringly (and sometimes despairingly) how she operates on just a few hours sleep.
“I think my journey on this has been a deeper understanding of … just how vital it is that we do lead in this, that we aren’t passive, that we don’t wait for others,” she says.
Summit going on
Since February, Donelan has been laying the groundwork for a summit Sunak hopes will be one of the defining moments of his premiership, with the objective of convincing world leaders to agree on the risks posed by AI.
She, like the PM, is concerned about the potential disruption artificial intelligence could pose. “The risks are very daunting, there’s no denying that,” she says, while acknowledging “there is a debate about whether they will materialize or not.”
Her critics say the summit is wrongly focused on long-term risk, however, and argue not enough is being done to tackle AI’s more immediate threats.
The U.K. is “way behind” in terms of bringing forward actual legislation, said Peter Kyle, Donelan’s opposite number in the Labour Party, who has not been invited to this week’s summit. Donelan’s department has not yet even published a response to its own consultation on an artificial intelligence white paper published way back in March, he pointed out.
Donelan insists the summit is “only part” of the U.K.’s work on artificial intelligence, however and that it plans to say more about the white paper — a first step toward legislation — “by the end of the year.”
“We’re not afraid to legislate. There will have to be legislation in this space eventually,” she says.
But specifics are thin on the ground. She refuses to be drawn on “arbitrary timelines.”
Surviving the hospital pass
It was Donelan’s embrace of the government’s controversial Online Safety Bill, which she inherited in her previous ministerial role during the short-lived premiership of Liz Truss, which attracted the attention of Sunak.
In the hard-fought Tory leadership campaign of July and August 2022, Truss and Sunak both promised to scrap parts of the bill focused on policing “legal but harmful” online content. It was Donelan, appointed as culture secretary by Truss, who was left to unravel those pledges.
Her “no-nonsense” and “methodical” approach to the bill, and her willingness to take the views of her MP colleagues seriously, impressed Sunak when he arrived in No. 10 following Truss’ self-destruction.
For that reason he kept her in post — and then chose her to set up the new department for science and technology earlier this year, according to a No. 10 official closely involved with that decision, granted anonymity to discuss internal government business.
“I think Rishi, like me, can see that she is one of those effective secretaries of state that will deliver outcomes,” said former Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi, whom Donelan worked alongside prior to her promotion to Cabinet.
Finally getting the Online Safety Bill into law was a notable achievement. Donelan’s previous claim to fame had been her unwanted record of being the shortest-serving Cabinet minister in British history. She took the job of education secretary, and then resigned 35 hours later, in the chaotic final days of the Boris Johnson administration.
Child protection
Donelan’s resolve to get the bill through parliament had been hardened by a one-to-one meeting with campaigner Ian Russell last November. His daughter Molly took her own life after viewing suicide content online.
Donelan has kept the dossier of Molly’s posts handed to her by Russell at that private meeting, according to one U.K. government official. “From that [meeting] she was more determined to do something on child protection,” they said.
“It was heart-wrenching to hear his story, and those of other bereaved parents and I felt very passionately that we had an opportunity to really make a difference on this and to and to change the nature in which we regulate the online world,” Donelan says.
Her approach was strikingly different to the long line of Tory ministers who preceded her. Her willingness to simply pick up the phone to relevant business leaders — often bypassing official government channels — has won her admirers in the exasperated U.K. tech industry, which has endured a succession of different ministers overseeing a bill plagued by uncertainty.
“It was a complete breath of fresh air when she came in,” said Dom Hallas, executive director of tech lobbying outfit the Startup Coalition. “At industry roundtables she is to the point and well-briefed, but she is also frank when something is not going to happen.”
“She actually gets things done, which I would contrast with the previous [Boris Johnson-led] regime. She does listen and seems interested in trying to find out what various stakeholders think about things,” Julian David, chief executive of industry body TechUK, added.
Donelan feels she has skin in the game. Her son was born in the spring, and the tech secretary says the new online laws make her “a lot more confident in his use of social media, when he’s old enough.”
Donelan confirms, however, that being handed a new government department, while heavily pregnant, and about to take maternity leave, was no small challenge.
“I’m not going to lie. It’s a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Before you have a child you don’t appreciate you are going to have things like ‘Mum guilt’,” she says. “It was easier in my head and harder in reality.”
The long game
Donelan’s unshowy style belies a burning ambition, according to multiple MPs and officials who have tracked her career to date.
In 1999, aged just 15, she spoke at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool. She was just 26 when she first stood for election, as a no-hoper in the safe Labour seat of Wentworth and Dearne in 2010.
Three years later she became the Conservative candidate for the Lib Dem held seat of Chippenham — going on to overturn a 2,470 Lib Dem majority in the 2015 general election.
On arriving in parliament, Donelan’s ambition was obvious to colleagues. One recalls her immediately asking for advice on how to climb the career ladder.
Soon after she took her first step up, as a parliamentary private secretary — a lowly unpaid aide to a minister — the Conservative whips’ office created a leaderboard tallying the workrate of the 40-odd MPs holding similar roles. Donelan led the way, smashing every target by a significant margin, one minister said.
“If she’s given a task she will attack it like nothing else. I’m not so sure about the bigger picture stuff — wider strategizing and setting a direction herself. But give her a direction and she’ll go at it,” the same minister said.
In her private life, Donelan is a committed Christian who shies away from the darker side of politics. She is “extremely respectful of Cabinet colleagues,” another former government official who worked with her said. “She doesn’t seem to be involved in backdoor skulduggery. It is all very earnest, but it is working for her in a way that is quite refreshing.”
Yet she raised eyebrows at the Conservative Party conference in October with a main stage speech clearly designed to please the grassroots and capture a few right-wing headlines. Donelan vowed a crackdown on the “creeping wokeism” she claimed is threatening scientific research — and went viral for all the wrong reasons.
A difficult interview with the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire at the same conference also landed her less-than-positive headlines.
For an ambitious minister looking to wrestle her way onto the world stage this week, these are nothing more than hazards of the job.
LONDON — Britain is in talks to move more training and production of military equipment into Ukraine, U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said.
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, which took place following a briefing with Chief of the General Staff Patrick Sanders on Friday, Shapps said he had been “talking today about eventually getting the training brought closer and actually into Ukraine as well.”
“Particularly in the west of the country, I think the opportunity now is to bring more things ‘in country,’ and not just training but also we’re seeing [U.K. defense firm] BAE, for example, move into manufacturing in country,” he said.
“I’m keen to see other British companies do their bit as well by doing the same thing. So I think there will be a move to get more training and production in the country,” Shapps said.
The U.K. and other NATO members have so far avoided setting up a military presence in Ukraine to reduce the risk of a direct conflict between the defense alliance and Russia.
Dmitry Medvedev, chairman of Russia’s security council, suggested that British soldiers training Ukrainian troops in Ukraine would make them legitimate targets for Russian forces. The move would “turn your instructors into legal targets for our armed forces,” Medvedev said on Telegram. “Knowing full well that they will be mercilessly destroyed. And not as mercenaries, but precisely as British NATO specialists.”
Shapps traveled to Kyiv last week where he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Talking about Russian attacks on commercial vessels in the Black Sea, Shapps said: “It’s important that we don’t allow a situation to establish by default that somehow international shipping isn’t allowed in that water.”
NEW DELHI — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak raised “very strong concerns” with Beijing about China’s alleged interference in the U.K. parliament.
Sunak relayed his concerns to Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the G20 summit in India following the arrest of a purported Chinese spy working in the parliament.
Sunak told broadcasters in New Delhi that he expressed “very strong concerns about any interference in our parliamentary democracy, which is obviously unacceptable.”
He added that his meeting with Li in the margins of the G20 gathering was an example of the benefits of engagement rather than “shouting from the sidelines.”
“We discussed a range of things and I raised areas where there are disagreements,” Sunak said. “And this is just part of our strategy to protect ourselves, protect our values and our interests, to align our approach to China with that of our allies like America, Australia, Canada, Japan and others, but also to engage where it makes sense,” he said.
The Sunday Times reported that a parliamentary researcher with links to several senior Tory MPs, including the foreign affairs committee chair Alicia Kearns, was arrested under the Official Secrets Act.
The researcher was arrested along with another man on March 13. Officers from the Metropolitan police’s counterterrorism command, which covers espionage, are investigating, the paper said.
The researcher, in his 20s, was arrested in Edinburgh and the second man, who is in his 30s, was detained in Oxfordshire, according to the report. Police also carried out checks at an address in east London. Both men were held at a south London police station before being bailed until a date in early October.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has pressed the U.K. government for a more hawkish stance toward Beijing, said it was “appalled at reports of the infiltration of the U.K. parliament by someone allegedly acting on behalf of the People’s Republic of China.”
Kearns declined to comment but said on social media: “While I recognize the public interest, we all have a duty to ensure any work of the authorities is not jeopardized.” A person close to her told the PA news agency: “It is inevitable the Chinese Communist Party would target and seek to undermine parliament’s leading voices who have demonstrated the ability to constrain the CCP’s ambitions.”
The researcher also had links to security minister Tom Tugendhat, but is said to have had no contact since Tugendhat took on that role, according to the Sunday Times report.
At the end of August, James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, visited Beijing amid criticism from hawkish Tory MPs.
Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith said U.K. institutions were “deeply penetrated by the Chinese,” and that the government was “so desperately thinking about China as a business problem, they fail to realize how dangerously threatening China really is becoming.”
A meeting between Sunak and Li at the margins of the G20 had been discussed in the run-up to the summit, as POLITICO reported, but it was not confirmed until Sunday morning.
According to Chinese state-controlled news agency Xinhua, Li told Sunak that the U.K. and China should properly handle disagreements and respect each other’s interests and concerns.
NEW DELHI — With the clock likely ticking on his time in Downing Street, Rishi Sunak wants to secure a legacy on the world stage. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be just what he needs.
The British prime minister faces a general election next year with his Conservative Party languishing 18 points behind the Labour opposition in the polls.
But though Sunak told reporters travelling with him to the G20 leaders’ summit in India this weekend he was “entirely confident” he can still win re-election, U.K. government insiders say the PM already has one eye on his possible post-Downing Street legacy.
Sunak takes pride in how he has helped repair the U.K.’s diplomatic standing after the rancour of Boris Johnson’s premiership and Liz Truss’ brief but disastrous stint in power. He sees the Windsor Framework — the agreement on post-Brexit trade checks in Ireland which markedly improved U.K. relations with the EU and the U.S. — as his signature achievement so far.
Now the bigger prize in Sunak’s sights is the opportunity to position the U.K. as the leading authority on the governance of AI.
“He sees it as one of his long-term legacy pieces,” one government adviser told POLITICO. “Shaping the world’s response to a paradigm-shifting technology would be a big deal — and it would be recognized as a big deal.” A second government official said Sunak “never misses a chance” to bring up AI.
There are several existing international forums for governments to discuss AI regulation, including a G7 process and the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council. Sunak’s challenge is to convince countries to take the U.K. seriously as a place to bring existing initiatives together and fold in unrepresented countries. And that will require some skillful diplomacy.
From G20 to AI summit
Sunak used conversations with other world leaders at the G20 to drum up interest in his landmark AI safety summit, which is taking place in the U.K. in November. The invitation list has yet to be made public, but is expected to include a range of countries including China.
The prime minister told POLITICO en route to New Delhi: “So far, the response we’ve had has been really positive, people are really keen to participate and they recognize that the U.K. can play a leadership role in AI.”
At a technology-focused session of the summit on Sunday the PM made comments on the need to develop AI responsibly. He praised India for “bringing AI to the top of the agenda at the G20” and said that there was “an opportunity for human progress that could surpass the industrial revolution in both speed and breadth.”
He told leaders that first and foremost, the development of AI had to be done safely to manage risks. “This requires international cooperation,” he said. “The U.K. will be hosting the first ever international AI Safety Summit in November to help drive this forward.”
Sunak added that the technology must also be developed securely “to protect the digital economy from malevolent actors and states” and fairly to “ensure inclusivity.”
“Getting this right is one of the greatest challenges and opportunities of our age,” Sunak said. “Let’s work together to make sure we all benefit.”
Lacking luster
But to make Sunak’s summit a success — and help secure his legacy — he will be reliant on the buy-in and active participation of fellow world leaders.
Despite Sunak congratulating his host Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a successful summit, the G20 was noteworthy for the absence of powerful figures including China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Sunak will be hoping to avoid similar ‘no shows’ at his AI summit. He has already been dealt a blow with news last month that U.S. President Joe Biden will not be attending.
Key European leaders have also failed to confirm their attendance. In comments to POLITICO, one French official questioned the need for U.K. mediation, given alternative international avenues for discussing AI.
Sunak’s experience at the G20 also demonstrates the difficulties of choreographing the good optics and effective diplomacy required for a successful summit.
Predictions from U.K. government figures that Sunak would be mobbed by the adoring public did not materialize in a locked-down New Delhi where there were few people on the streets.
There were also hiccups in Sunak’s summit agenda. He had been due to meet Modi at his house on Friday but that was replaced with a 20-minute meeting on the margins of the summit on Saturday. On Friday night Modi hosted President Biden for dinner instead. The two leaders held talks for about an hour.
A planned business reception for Sunak on Friday at the British High Commission was also cancelled, because of transport issues. Sunak’s spokesperson said rescheduling was “part and parcel” of any summit.
Things did improve over the weekend for the British PM. Modi and Sunak were filmed bear-hugging each other when they met. According to the U.K. government’s readout, Modi “noted the warm reception” Sunak had had in India, and the pair had agreed to continue moving towards a free trade agreement “at pace.”
The Indian government said Modi has now formally invited Sunak for a bilateral visit, after POLITICO reported that U.K. officials were already drawing up plans for a possible return trip for Sunak later this year.
U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace plans to leave the government at the next Cabinet reshuffle and will not stand in the next general election, he told the Sunday Times newspaper.
Wallace informed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of his plans on June 16 but had hoped to make the announcement later in the summer, the newspaper reported late Saturday. A Cabinet reshuffle is expected by September.
“I’m not standing next time,” Wallace was quoted as saying. But he ruled out going “prematurely” and forcing another by-election, the newspaper said.
“I went into politics in the Scottish parliament in 1999. That’s 24 years,” Wallace, who has been defense chief since July 2019, told the paper.
The development comes days after Wallace controversially said Ukraine should put more emphasis on showing “gratitude” to “doubting politicians” in the U.S. and other allied countries who might not be completely convinced of the need to maintain military and economic support to Kyiv as it defends the country from Russia’s invasion.
“There’s a slight word of caution here which is, whether you like it or not people want to see gratitude,” Wallace told reporters at a NATO summit in Lithuania on July 12.
Sunak was forced to try to calm the diplomatic tumult caused by Wallace’s remarks. The prime minister said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed gratitude to Kyiv’s allies “countless times.”
Wallace’s name was in the mix of potential candidates to be the next secretary-general of NATO before the defense alliance in early July agreed to extend Jens Stoltenberg’s term by a year.
LONDON — Liz Truss isn’t laughing at the lettuce that outlasted her premiership.
Asked Monday about the Daily Star’s live stream of a lettuce that eventually outlasted Truss’ chaotic, market-crashing period in Downing Street, the former British prime minister did not see the funny side.
“I don’t think it was particularly funny, I think it’s puerile,” Truss told Irish broadcaster RTÉ — after she snapped at the interviewer for even asking the question.
Truss — who crashed out of office after 44 days while the lettuce was still going strong — was speaking at the European Broadcasting Union’s NewsXchange conference in Dublin on Monday.
Since leaving No. 10, Truss has primarily intervened on foreign affairs and particularly on U.K.-Chinese relations. She became the first former U.K. PM to visit Taiwan in May and has called for “more action” from the West to combat China.
But in her interview with RTÉ’s David McCullagh, Truss was largely questioned about her brief spell in No. 10, where she quickly lost public and party support after announcing large-scale borrowing and unfunded tax cuts — all of which she then reversed in a matter of weeks.
Truss argued that the U.K. was, and still is, in “serious economic trouble” and that she needed to be “bold” to reverse declining economic growth. She admitted she lacked support from Tory MPs and “could have gone a bit slower” with her economic reforms.
The ex-PM also turned her fire on the U.K.’s media, who she attacked for treating politics as a “soap opera.”
“I do think sometimes politics is sort of treated as a branch of the entertainment industry, who’s up, who’s down, who says what about who,” Truss said.
“I think the level of understanding of economic ideas in the media and the ability to explain them is very poor indeed,” she added. A wide spectrum of economists criticized Truss’ economic reforms both before and after she enacted them for a brief period in No. 10.
LONDON — “Britain Trump” may have a long wait on his hands if he’s going to stage the kind of comeback dreamed of by the former American president.
Boris Johnson’s exit did nothing to discourage comparisons with its blasts at the “kangaroo court” of lawmakers whose verdict sealed his fate, condemning the committee which judged him to have lied to parliament as a “witch hunt” seeking “revenge for Brexit.”
But while Monday’s debate in the House of Commons on the committee’s findings could have presented a crunch moment, with MPs forced to decide whether or not they would condemn or back their former leader, it has instead been deflated as Johnson told his loyal supporters Friday not to bother opposing the verdict. Johnson himself, the Sunday Times reported, will spend the day celebrating his 59th birthday far away in Oxfordshire.
While Donald Trump pursues the narrative of martyrdom at every available opportunity, for now at least, Johnson is ducking tests of his popularity and biding his time.
Unfortunately for Johnson, polls suggest he’s not that popular.
James Johnson, director of JL Partners which carries out polling on both sides of the Atlantic, described the respective standing of the two leaders as “very different — there’s 40 percent that backs Trump regardless. By comparison, Johnson wins the support of only about 15 to 18 percent of the population.”
Perhaps more crucially, the pollster added: “Trump has almost become a form of identity for many Republicans. If you back Trump, then you’re standing up to the liberals, you’re standing up to what’s going wrong in society. I don’t think Boris takes on anything as totemic as that.”
A Tory MP in a seat where Johnson remains popular commented that he had received only one email about the so-called partygate report, suggesting that while some voters may not care much about his misconduct, neither are they clamoring for him to come back.
Without an outpouring of support amongst voters, few within his own party in Westminster have run to his defense either.
“I’m done with that drama. There’s no way I’m ever going back there,” one Conservative minister said over the weekend, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly.
For others the collective running out of patience is symptomatic of cultural differences across the Atlantic. A U.K. diplomat, previously based in the U.S., said that while Trump is still able to whip up crowds, “I think a bit sooner than in America we get sick of it and just actually want people to shut up.”
Not so Trumpian
Trump’s offhand anointing of Johnson back in 2019 — “they call him Britain Trump” — never rang that true, for all their shared populist tendencies.
Even as he pushed for Brexit, Johnson retained a liberal streak, unable to get as fired up about immigration or spending cuts as many of his colleagues would have liked. His famed rhetoric was rambling and deliberately ridiculous, rather than hectoring.
The route back may look harder for Johnson than it does for Trump, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try | Leon Neal/Getty Images
However, his resignation marked a sharp change in tone as he announced his departure with a savage attack on the committee which had condemned him.
In the immediate aftermath, there were signs of an insurrection as two of his close allies, ex-ministers Nadine Dorries and Nigel Adams, swore to go down with him.
The report’s full publication brought fresh howls of anguish as his supporters tweeted graphics boasting “I’m backing Boris,” while David Campbell Bannerman, chairman of the Conservative Democratic Organisation, warned that Tory MPs would face deselection if they backed what he called a “Stalinist show trial.”
But without Trump’s popularity with voters, it has proved difficult for Johnson to capitalize on a sense of martyrdom in the short term.
Matthew McGregor, a former adviser to the U.K. Labour Party and the U.S. Democrats and now CEO of campaign group 38 Degrees, points out that Trump stole a march by using the primary system to his advantage, but it would be difficult for Johnson to stage any equivalent “takeover” of the Conservative grassroots and equally difficult to run as an outsider.
While Johnson could, in theory, run for election to the House of Commons again, party headquarters would likely need to sign off on his candidature, which seems unlikely at this juncture.
A Conservative MP who served as a minister under Johnson said that insofar as he has a strategy, “it is to say you’ve got to throw absolutely everything at this, and some people will stick with you,” but “the trouble with this is that there are diminishing returns.”
Never say never
The route back may look harder for Johnson than it does for Trump, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try.
The two men share some temperamental qualities, as one former Tory minister who worked closely with Johnson admitted: “They both have a sense that because they have won against the odds their own judgment is infallible.”
“Their shamelessness is a superpower,” said McGregor. “The ability to give zero fucks whatsoever allows them to do things that other politicians can’t do, and that is pretty powerful.”
Guto Harri, who was Johnson’s head of comms, claimed this week in the Mail that Johnson last year told MPs who were urging him to resign with dignity that “dignity is a grossly overrated commodity and that I prefer to fight to the end.”
The Tory party’s torrid love affair with Johnson has been a long one — longer than Trump’s political career so far. Johnson may have the stomach for an even longer game.
Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is stepping down as a member of parliament with immediate effect.
Johnson made the move as he hit out at an investigation by the House of Commons’ privileges committee, which is examining whether the ex-prime minister knowingly misled parliament about COVID rule-breaking parties held in Downing Street.
The resignation of Johnson, the Tory MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, will trigger a by-election in a seat he held in 2019 by 7,210 votes.
In a statement, Johnson said the committee — whose findings have yet to be published but which can recommend a suspension from the Commons — has “still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled” MPs.
He added: “They know perfectly well that when I spoke in the Commons I was saying what I believed sincerely to be true and what I had been briefed to say, like any other minister. They know that I corrected the record as soon as possible; and they know that I and every other senior official and minister — including the current Prime Minister and then occupant of the same building, Rishi Sunak — believed that we were working lawfully together.
“I have been an MP since 2001. I take my responsibilities seriously. I did not lie, and I believe that in their hearts the Committee know it. But they have wilfully chosen to ignore the truth because from the outset their purpose has not been to discover the truth, or genuinely to understand what was in my mind when I spoke in the Commons.
“Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court.”
Hitting back, a privileges committee spokesperson said the group of MPs had “followed the procedures and the mandate of the House at all times and will continue to do so.”
They added: ”Mr Johnson has departed from the processes of the House and has impugned the integrity of the House by his statement. The Committee will meet on Monday to conclude the inquiry and to publish its report promptly.”
LONDON — Donald Trump and Boris Johnson discussed “the situation in Ukraine and the vital importance of Ukrainian victory” this week, according to a spokesperson for the former British prime minister.
Johnson, ousted from office last year, has been touring America to try and drum up support among top Republicans for Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion.
Pro-Ukraine think tankers this week hosted the ex-British leader for a private lunch in Texas, where he told a gathering of politicians, donors and captains of industry that America must stay the course in its support for the country.
Talking to the Republican frontrunner appears to have been next on the list.
The New York Times first reported that Trump — who has faced scrutiny over whether he supports Russia or Ukraine in the conflict and has promised to resolve the war in 24 hours — was planning to host Johnson for dinner. Trump told CNN earlier this month: “I want everybody to stop dying. They’re dying. Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying,”
The meeting took place Thursday, and a spokesperson for Johnson disclosed that Ukraine talks had been on the menu.
“Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP met President Donald J Trump to discuss the situation in Ukraine and the vital importance of Ukrainian victory,” the spokesperson said.
Trump and Johnson had a complex relationship when both men were in office. The former U.S. president described Johnson as a “friend,” and once branded him “Britain Trump” — but the two appeared to have diverged politically in recent years.
Trump told GB News last month that he believed Johnson’s government had taken a “far left” tilt, hitting out at his support for wind farms and other eco policies.
“They really weren’t staying Conservative,” he said of Johnson’s ill-fated administration.
LONDON — Frost/Nixon it was not. But at least the golf course got a good plug.
Brexit firebrand Nigel Farage bagged a half an hour sit-down interview with Donald Trump on Wednesday as part of the former U.S. president’s trip to his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.
The hardball questions just kept on coming as the two men got stuck into everything from how great Trump is to just how massively he’s going to win the next election.
POLITICO tuned in to the GB News session so you didn’t have to.
Trump could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours
Trump sees your complex, grinding, war in Ukraine and raises you the deal-making credentials he honed having precisely one meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
“If I were president, I will end that war in one day — it’ll take 24 hours,” the ex-POTUS declared. And he added: “That deal would be easy.”
Time for a probing follow-up from the host to tease out the precise details of Trump’s big plan? Over to you Nige! “I think we’d all love to see that war stop,” the hard-hitting host beamed.
Nicola Sturgeon bad, Sean Connery great
Safe to say Scotland’s former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon — who quit a few months back and whose ruling Scottish National Party now faces the biggest crisis of its time at the top — is not on Trump’s Christmas card list.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever met her,” Trump said. “I’m not sure that I ever met her.” But he knew one thing for certain. Sturgeon “didn’t love Scotland” and has no respect for people who come to the country and spend “a lot of money.” Whoever could he mean?
One Scot did get a thumbs-up though. Sean Connery, who backed Trump’s golf course and was therefore “great, a tough guy.”
Boris Johnson was a far-leftist
Boris Johnson’s big problem? Not the bevy of scandals that helped call time on the beleaguered Conservative British prime minister, that’s for sure.
Instead, Trump reckons it was Johnson’s latter-day conversion to hard-left politics, which went shamefully unreported on by every single British political media outlet at the time. “They really weren’t staying Conservative,” he said of Johnson’s government. “They were … literally going far left. It never made sense.”
Joe Biden isn’t coming to King Charles’ coronation because he’s asleep?
Paging the royals: Turns out Joe Biden — who is sending First Lady Jill Biden to King Charles’ coronation this weekend — won’t be there because he is … catching some Zs. “He’s not running the country. He’s now in Delaware, sleeping,” Trump said.
Don’t worry, though: Trump explained how Biden’s government is actually being run by “a very smart group of Marxists or communists, or whatever you want to call them.” Johnson should hang out with those guys!
Meghan Markle ain’t getting a Christmas card either
Trump found time to wade into Britain’s never-ending culture war over the royals, ably assisted by a totally-straight-bat question from Farage who said Britain would be “better off without” Prince Harry turning up to the weekend festival of flag-waving.
Harry’s wife Meghan Markle has, Trump said, been “very disrespectful to the queen, frankly,” and there was “just no reason to do that.” Harry, whose tell-all memoir recently rocked the royals, “said some terrible things” in a book that was “just horrible.”
But do you know one person who really, really respected the queen? Donald J. Trump, who “got to know her very well over the last couple of years” and revealed he once asked her who her favorite president was.
Trump didn’t get an answer, he told Farage — but we’re sure he had one in mind.
Trump’s golf course really is just absolutely brilliant
Only got half an hour with the indicted former leader of the free world now leading the Republican pack for 2024? Better keep those questions tight!
Happily, Farage got the key stuff in, remarking on how “unbelievable” Trump’s Turnberry golf course is, and how it slots neatly into “the best portfolio of golf courses anyone has ever owned.”
“We come here from this golf course,” Farage helpfully told Trump, from the golf course. “You turned this golf course around. It’s now the No. 1 course in the whole of Britain and Europe. You’ve got this magnificent hotel. You must have missed this place?”
Trump, it turns out, certainly had missed the place. He is, after all, a man with “very powerful ideas on golf and where it should go.” A news ticker reminded us Turnberry is the No. 1 rated golf course in Europe.
Legal troubles? What legal troubles?
A couple of minutes still on the clock, Farage danced delicately around Trump’s recent courtroom drama, saying he had never seen the former president “looking so dejected” as when he sat before the Manhattan Criminal Court last month.
Trump predicted the drama would “go away immediately” if he wasn’t running for president. But he made clear there are still some burning issues keeping him going: Namely, taking on the “sick, horrible people” hounding him through the courts and relitigating the 2020 election result.
In an actual flash of tension, Farage delicately suggested Trump won in 2016 by tapping into voters’ concerns rather than reeling off his own grievances. “You brought this up,” the former president shot back.
At least they ended it on a positive note. Trump said a vote for him in 2024 would “get rid of crime — because our cities, Democrat-run, are crime-infested rat holes.” Unlike Trump Turnberry, which is the No. 1 rated golf course in Europe!
King Charles III was crowned at a ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London on Saturday.
The coronation was attended by members of the king’s family as well as global leaders, and watched by people across the United Kingdom and many others worldwide.
The following photos offer a glimpse into the coronation, the first of a British monarch in almost 70 years.
An army contingent marches across Westminster Bridge | Sgt Donald C Todd/EPA-EFEMounted police on the Mall | Jon Super/WPA Pool via Getty ImagesSpectators gather to watch the coronation procession | Yara Nardi/WPA pool via Getty ImagesPeople sit in Hyde Park to watch coverage of the coronation | Ian Forsyth/Getty ImagesWell-wishers along the procession’s route | Niklaas Halle’n/AFP via Getty ImagesKing Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla are carried to Westminster Abbey in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach | Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool via Getty ImagesPrince William and Princess Catherine | Pool photo by Phil Noble/AFP via Getty ImagesPrince Harry | Pool photo by Andy Stenning/AFP via Getty ImagesBritish Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murty | Toby Melville/WPA Pool via Getty ImagesU.S. First Lady Jill Biden and Finnegan Biden | Andrew Milligan/WPA Pool via Getty ImagesFrench President Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte Macron | Pool photo y Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty ImagesCanadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Sophie Trudeau | Toby Melville/WPA Pool via Getty ImagesKing Charles III arrives at Westminster Abbey | Andrew Matthews/WPA Pool via Getty ImagesThe Archbishop of Canterbury crowns King Charles III | Pool photo by Victoria Jones/AFP via Getty ImagesThe Archbishop of Canterbury crowns Queen Camilla | Richard Pohle/WPA Pool via Getty ImagesKing Charles III leaves Westminster Abbey | Pool photo by Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty ImagesKing Charles III and Queen Camilla en route to Buckingham Palace | Pool photo by Rob Pinney/Getty ImagesPrince William and Princess Catherine depart Westminster Abbey | Jeff J Mitchell/Getty ImagesKing Charles III and Queen Camilla move down the Mall | Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesKing Charles III and Queen Camilla on the Buckingham Palace balcony | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
BELFAST — He fought for peace in Northern Ireland — and now George Mitchell is fighting for his life.
The former U.S. Senate majority leader from Maine, who became a diplomatic superhero in Northern Ireland after leading years of painstaking talks to produce the Good Friday Agreement, may be visiting his adopted homeland for the final time.
He hopes not. But, as Mitchell reflected in an interview with POLITICO, he simply cannot know.
Welcomed by well-wishers young and old this week as he returned to Belfast and to Queen’s University, where he served as chancellor for a decade following his peacemaking triumph in 1998, Mitchell opened a conference marking the accord’s 25th anniversary.
For nearly 45 minutes, Mitchell argued passionately for the power of compromise, his message leavened with well-timed jokes poking fun at the entrenched attitudes — and tough-to-decipher vowels — that tested him in Northern Ireland.
You’d never have known that Mitchell, 89, was making his first public speech in three years — nor that he had only recently ended years of chemotherapy in a battle with leukemia that came close to killing him.
“This is a gift by the grace of God to be able to come back here. I’ve had a rough couple of years,” he said.
“I retired from my law firm at the end of 2019, planning with my wife a life of travel and doing a lot of things that we hadn’t done. Then COVID hit and I was almost immediately diagnosed with acute leukemia. So I’ve been pretty sick. I haven’t been able to do very much.
“Initially I underwent intensive chemotherapy, which was very severe. I didn’t read a newspaper, I didn’t watch a minute of television. I was bedridden and very, very sick for about three months. Then I was on chemo for about two-and-a-half years,” he said. “The doctors said to me: ‘There’s a limit to how much chemotherapy you can take. We have to take you off.’ The disease may return. It may be six months, it may be two years — or who knows.”
‘Nothing in politics is impossible’
Mitchell now describes himself as pain-free and in remission.
He spoke in a Queen’s office overlooking the university’s entrance, where a bronze bust honoring him has just been unveiled by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the former British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. In April 1998, the two premiers joined Mitchell for the intensive final days of the talks in Belfast, while Clinton cajoled Northern Ireland’s polarized politicians by phone from the White House.
Several other figures who helped deliver that breakthrough are no longer alive, including Northern Ireland’s joint Nobel Peace Prize laureates from 1998, John Hume and David Trimble, both of whom have died since the last Good Friday commemorations five years ago.
George Mitchell (C) attends a gala marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement | Pool photo by Charles McQuillan/AFP via Getty Images
In his speech, Mitchell paid equal tribute to Hume, the moderate Irish nationalist leader who opposed Irish Republican Army violence and laid the intellectual architecture for the Good Friday deal; and Trimble, the prickly legal scholar who risked splitting his Ulster Unionist Party by accepting a deal that allowed IRA prisoners to walk free and ex-IRA chiefs to join a new cross-community government without clear-cut guarantees the outlawed group would disarm.
“Without John Hume, there would not have been a peace process. Without David Trimble, there would not have been a peace agreement,” Mitchell said to thunderous applause from the crowd, among them most of today’s crop of British unionist, Irish nationalist and middle-ground leaders.
Left unsaid was that others wanted to see Mitchell himself share that same Nobel prize, given his central role in sustaining hope in the talks after what U.S. President Joe Biden last week described as “700 days of failure.”
Indeed, it has been a common refrain this week among those now seeking to revive Northern Ireland’s shuttered regional government — the centerpiece of a much broader Good Friday package that included police reform, prisoner releases and paramilitary disarmament — that they wish Mitchell was still in the market for one more Belfast mission.
Mitchell offered only raised eyebrows and a wry smile when asked if he’d like to lead one more round of talks at Stormont, the government complex overlooking Belfast.
But he expressed unreserved optimism that the Democratic Unionists — the party that physically tried to block him from taking his chair when the talks began in June 1996, and spent years condemning the peace process as a sellout to IRA terror — will find a way to return to a cross-community government with the Irish republicans of Sinn Féin.
The DUP has refused to revive the coalition government since May 2022 elections, citing its opposition to post-Brexit trade rules that treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the U.K.
Mitchell thinks Northern Ireland’s political fundamentals have evolved since he wrote, in his 1999 book “Making Peace,” that the Good Friday Agreement became possible only because the DUP had abandoned the talks the year before.
“Times and circumstances change,” he said. “Nothing in politics is impossible.
“Political parties change and evolve. Does the Republican Party in the United States today reflect the views of the Republican Party of 20 or even 10 years ago? Does the Democratic Party? The challenge of leadership is to recognize that and to deal with change, all in the broader public interest.”
He also rejected any notion that blame for the current Stormont impasse lies entirely with the DUP. “There isn’t any one villain,” he said. “Everybody’s trying to do what they think is best. The question is: What is best?”
Mitchell stressed that “100 percenters” — people who see “any compromise as weakness” — exist in pretty much every political party on earth, including his own Democrats. And he said no American politician should criticize the depth of political division in Northern Ireland given that, today, the divide in U.S. politics has grown arguably even more noxious.
Former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and George Mitchell shake hands during a photocall at the BBC studios, in Belfast in 2008 | Peter Muhly/AFP via Getty Images
Leaders in any democracy, he said, must be ready to absorb criticism from within their own ranks and keep striving for common ground.
“You can’t let the first ‘no’ be the final answer,” he said. “Or the second ‘no,’ or the seventh ‘no.’ You just have to treat everyone with respect and keep at it.”
A final goodbye
Mitchell came face to face with his own mortality during Monday’s unveiling of his bronze bust, drawing big laughs from the crowd as he observed: “When you’re looking at a statue of yourself, you know the end is near.”
But the reality of living with leukemia, which makes him more vulnerable to infections and other threats, draws his mind back to one of his great regrets from the Stormont talks.
“We were at a critical early moment in the talks in the summer of 1996. I was trying to get them going, to adopt a set of rules. It was very complicated, unnecessarily complicated,” he recalled.
With a vote on the rules due that coming Monday, he received an unexpected phone call from Maine. His brother Robbie, who had been fighting leukemia for five years, was close to death. If Mitchell hopped on to the next flight, he might make it back to his hometown of Waterville by Friday night — but he’d risk having the talks fall at their first hurdle.
Mitchell called his brother’s doctor, oncologist Richard Stone at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, to be told that although Robbie’s health was deteriorating and it was impossible to be certain, he might well survive for several weeks longer. Wanting to get the first step of the peace talks banked before negotiations broke for the summer, Mitchell chose to stay in the U.K. over the weekend.
That Saturday night, another call from Waterville confirmed that his older brother had just died.
“I came back to Belfast on Monday and we got those rules adopted. I made it home in time to speak at Robbie’s funeral. But I didn’t see him before he passed away. That’s one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made,” Mitchell said.
A quarter-century later, the same Dr. Stone is now treating the younger Mitchell brother for the same disease. Mitchell has been told that if the cancer returns, his advanced age means chemotherapy must be kept to a bare minimum.
“Medical science has advanced very rapidly in the curing of leukemia. But as the doctors explained to me, chemotherapy is poison and if you take enough of that, that will kill you,” he said. “The doctor also explained to me that, on the other hand, I might go a few years and die of something else.”
Bill Clinton shakes hands with George Mitchell in the Oval Office at the White House after naming the retiring senator to be a special advisor for economic initiatives in Ireland | Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images
Mitchell estimates he’s already flown back and forth to Belfast at least 100 times since 1995. He and his wife, Heather, have approached this trip as if it could be his last — that this week might represent his final goodbye to a vexatious land he’s come to love.
“I honestly don’t know if this is the last time I’ll ever be in Northern Ireland. But my wife and I accept the possibility that it is,” he said. “I told Heather on the way over, we’ve really got to enjoy this and take in the sights and sounds of this beautiful place and the people. My fervent hope is that I’ll be able to come back again.”
BELFAST — President Joe Biden arrives in Northern Ireland on Tuesday to salute the 25th anniversary of its U.S.-brokered peace accord. But it will be a hollow celebration.
Power-sharing between British unionists and Irish nationalists, the central vision of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, is failing.
Northern Ireland has for nearly a year had no elected government at Stormont, the grand parliament building overlooking Belfast. It has no annual budget either — only red ink, rising in a sea of dysfunction. And thanks to Brexit, the U.K.’s most socially divided region this month lost tens of millions in annual European Union funds that had sustained the poorest communities.
Northern Ireland’s fiscal council, created two years ago to advise Stormont following a previous government shutdown, estimates an extra £808 million is needed this year just to keep existing services running at a time of rising energy bills and wage demands.
Instead, the British government in London wants immediate spending cuts topping £500 million. Its failure to deliver a 2023 budget in time for the new fiscal year, or to fulfil pledges to match now-departed EU funds, have left local hospitals, schools and community groups scrambling for services to curtail and staff to cut.
Who slashes spending when there’s no bona-fide government? Emergency legislation laid in Westminster places this burden on 10 unelected permanent secretaries — senior civil servants who were employed to advise ministers neutrally, not take direct political decisions.
With finances running low, the education department has already ended holiday meal subsidies for schoolchildren from poor households — nearly a third of all students. Other departments are braced for cuts averaging 6 to 10 percent. Those drawing up the cuts are incensed.
“I shouldn’t be forced to play the role of minister. It’s an affront to democracy and it’s politically indefensible,” one of the permanent secretaries told POLITICO.
“Locally elected ministers must be taking these deeply consequential decisions if the power-sharing element of the Good Friday Agreement is to mean anything any more,” said the civil servant, who spoke on condition they were not identified because they traditionally do not talk on the record to journalists.
“As long as power-sharing is not working, London needs to take its own responsibilities seriously. Its refusal to act in a timely fashion is making matters needlessly worse. We’re doing damage to so many lives. It’s truly shameful.”
The U.K. government insists it’s right to expect sharp cuts now, arguing the financial problems were created by years of divided, indecisive Stormont governments that failed to take other tough financial decisions.
“We’ve inherited an enormous black hole,” said Steve Baker, a minister in the U.K.’s Northern Ireland Office. “It hasn’t arisen overnight. It is the product of many years of financial mismanagement, and often the expectation of bailout.”
Notorious DUP
Baker places primary blame on the Democratic Unionists, the main pro-British party in Northern Ireland, who refused to form a new unity government with the Irish republicans of Sinn Féin following last year’s Stormont assembly election.
The Democratic Unionists say they will indefinitely obstruct Stormont in protest at the U.K.’s Brexit treaty with the EU. It keeps Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the U.K., still subject to EU goods rules. Since 2021, that policy has kept cross-border trade with the Republic of Ireland flowing freely — but at the price of complicated new controls on goods arriving from Britain.
Unionists fear, and nationalists hope, that these shifting trade winds will eventually help push Northern Ireland out of the U.K. and into the arms of the republic.
After two years of diplomatic wrangling, the U.K. government and European Commission six weeks ago published a wide-ranging agreement, the Windsor Framework, that vastly reduced EU-required checks on British goods arriving at Northern Irish ports. London and Brussels voiced hopes this would be enough to revive Stormont.
But the famously stubborn DUP — which grew to become the largest unionist party specifically because it rejected the Good Friday deal and opposed compromise with Sinn Féin — is holding out for more, and still won’t re-enter Stormont alongside its adversaries.
Once committed to Northern Ireland’s violent overthrow and abolition, Sinn Féin topped last year’s election ahead of the DUP for the first time, meaning its regional leader — party vice president Michelle O’Neill — should be entitled to the top Stormont post of first minister. The DUP’s loss of top-dog status has increased unionist unease that Northern Ireland’s bonds with Britain could be irreversibly fraying.
The center cannot hold
Moderate politicians blame both extremes for making Northern Ireland ungovernable. They suggest that power-sharing rules drafted a generation ago no longer work in today’s hardened political landscape.
They argue the central requirement for “mandatory coalition” between unionist and nationalist forces should be eased. The policy effectively gives the largest party from each sectarian bloc — for the past two decades the DUP and Sinn Féin — the power to block the formation of any government. As a result, the hard liners have taken turns periodically shutting down Stormont over the past decade.
These rules have a particularly perverse impact on Northern Ireland’s most compromise-minded party, Alliance, which refuses to define itself as either British unionist or Irish nationalist — and is treated as a power-sharing irrelevance as a result.
Alliance was a fringe player back in 1998 but made the biggest gains in last May’s election, finishing third with 17 assembly seats to Sinn Féin’s 27 and the DUP’s 25. Yet instead of Alliance becoming a coalition kingmaker, the current power-sharing rules mean its nonsectarian votes don’t count at all.
Some suggest Alliance leader Naomi Long could sue the British government to force reform.
Alliance Party leader Naomi Long says the Good Friday Agreement’s power-sharing rules explicitly permit periodic reviews of the system | Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images
“I don’t believe that our votes counting for less than other people is legal,” Long said, citing legal advice that found the prevailing rules violate European human rights law. “We are willing to challenge what is a fundamental inequality at the heart of our government.”
Long says she hopes such a confrontation won’t be necessary, emphasizing that the Good Friday Agreement’s power-sharing rules explicitly permit periodic reviews of the system.
Time for a new deal?
Bertie Ahern, the former Irish prime minister who worked alongside Britain’s Tony Blair in 1998 to achieve the Good Friday breakthrough, also believes the time for dumping “mandatory coalition” is fast approaching. In its place, as advocated by recent think tank papers exploring ways to save Stormont, would be a voluntary coalition — which Ahern pointedly describes as “what happens in a democracy.”
Such a change would mean Sinn Féin and the DUP retain rights, as the largest parties on either side of the divide, to lead a Stormont coalition together. But should either one balk, they could no longer block the formation of a different government combination. This would open the door for more moderate politicians to represent their communities once again.
But while Sinn Féin has said it would be open to talks on making the rules more flexible, the DUP has been quick to rule out the surrender of its veto.
For the journalist who famously broke the news of the Good Friday Agreement a quarter-century ago, Stormont’s ongoing inability to build a stable culture of partnership has made this week’s anniversary bittersweet.
Stephen Grimason, at that time BBC Northern Ireland’s political editor, became Stormont’s chief spin doctor for 15 years. He worked alongside a string of DUP and Sinn Féin ministers who, in his eyes, too often ducked the difficult decisions that would have delivered strong, reforming government.
“Looking back, I have this emptiness in the pit of my stomach about all the opportunities we had,” he told the Belfast Telegraph last week. “We missed every single one of them.”
Boris Johnson’s political career ended on Wednesday, with stuttering and fake politesse.
Seated before a U.K. House of Commons committee poised to rule on whether he lied to parliament about Partygate, Johnson was far from his element. Beneath the ghost of his famous bonhomie and the half-conceived rhetoric, I saw anger segueing to bafflement: A man who has been forgiven all his life, now unforgiven. He should rewatch the original “House of Cards”: nothing lasts forever.
If Johnson once coasted on the times, now he is cursed by them. Britain has a new seriousness and a new PM: In politics, a bookie is followed by a bishop, to borrow the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge’s famous phrase. (I’m not including Liz Truss, who is owed a special category of her own.)
Johnson may be suspended from parliament if the committee finds against him, and he may then lose his seat. The classicist in him will understand: He is most in danger from his friends. The committee’s Tory questioners were more savage, but they have been more deeply betrayed. He is an embarrassment now. They will throw him overboard for a percentage point. When the committee paused for a vote, he led a rebellion against the government on the Windsor Framework, Rishi Sunak’s solution to Johnson’s own Brexit deal. Only 22 out of 354 Tory MPs followed him. This is how he departs.
The hearing took place in a dull room with expensive furniture that looked cheap and a mad mural of leaves in his eye line. Johnson isn’t in politics for dull rooms: He’s in it to ride his motorbike around Chequers.
Harriet Harman, the Labour MP and Mother of the House, was in the chair wearing black, as precise as Johnson is chaotic, with a necklace that looked like a chain. Was it metaphor? Harman has spent her career supporting female parliamentarians. Then a man who said voting Tory would give wives bigger breasts won an 80-seat majority in 2019. But that was a whole pandemic ago.
Johnson was there to defend himself against the charge that he repeatedly lied to parliament when he said guidance was followed in No. 10. His strategy was distraction: obscuration, and repetition, and sentences that tripped along ring roads, going nowhere.
He has never been so boring: No one listening ever wants to hear the word “guidance” again. If the ability to inflict boredom was his defense, it was also his destruction. Johnson is supposed to be a seducer with a fascinating narrative arc ― one of his campaign videos aped the film “Love Actually” ― not a bore. But needs must. The fascination was thrown overboard.
He swore to tell the truth on a fawn-colored Bible, but he did not look at it. He rocked on his heels. He has had a haircut: As ever, his hair emotes for him. The mop, so redolent of Samson ― he would muss it before big speeches, to disguise that he cared ― is a sullen bowl now. He looked haunted. Lord Pannick, his lawyer, smiled behind him. His resting face is a smile, and he needed it.
Johnson told Harman there would soon be a Commons vote, as if she, Mother of the House, didn’t know. She said she would suspend proceedings for the vote, and he talked over her with a flurry of thanks. He thanked her four times. He didn’t mean it.
He read a statement: “I’m here to say to you, hand on heart, that I did not lie to the House.” He made a fist, and placed his hand on his chest where his heart isn’t: on the right-hand side. He said there was a near-universal belief in No. 10 that the guidance was followed, and that is why he said so to the House.
He shuffled his papers, as handsome Bernard Jenkin, a Tory, began the questioning with exaggerated gravity, to indicate that the Tories are through with levity. He reminded Johnson that he had regularly said “hands, face, space” while standing behind podiums that said also said, “hands, face, space,” which indicated he understand the guidance.
People sit in the Red Lion pub in London as former Prime Minister Boris Johnson giving evidence on Partygate is shown on the TV | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
They discussed the leaving party of Lee Cain, Johnson’s former director of communications. There were 15-20 people there, Jenkin reminded him, you gave a speech. Johnson said guidance was followed, at least while he was there. Jenkin pressed him. “I don’t accept that people weren’t making an effort to distance themselves socially from each other,” Johnson said, while we gazed at a photograph of people standing next to each other. And this was how it was for 300 minutes: We were invited to ignore the evidence of our own eyes, even asthey chilled with boredom.
Johnson insisted: “It was necessary because two senior members of staff were about to leave the building in pretty acrimonious circumstances. It was important for me to be there and to give reassurance.” This fits the Johnson myth. He was there for morale, while others governed, because that’s boring. I am not sure that the leaving party of a press aide is a matter of state, but Johnson always lived for headlines. Even so, he pleaded: We had sanitizers, we kept windows open, we had Zoom meetings, we had Perspex screens between desks, we had regular testing ― way beyond what the guidance advised!
“If you had said all that at the time to the House of Commons, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here,” said Jenkin mildly, even sympathetically, and that’s when I knew it was over. Tories are awfully like characters from “The Godfather” sometimes: murderers come with smiles. “But you didn’t.”
Jenkin read the guidance to him: “You must maintain social distancing in the workplace wherever possible.” “The business of the government had to be carried on!” Johnson cried. “That is what I had to do!” No one replied: “It was Lee Cain’s leaving do, you maniac.”
On it went, trench warfare. Johnson didn’t seem to understand that he wasn’t describing an absence of law-breaking, but a culture of it. In his wine-filled wood, he couldn’t see a tree. Committee members suggested he breached the guidance. He said he didn’t ― and if it should have been obvious to him that he was breaching it, it should have been obvious to Rishi Sunak too. They asked him why he didn’t take proper advice when talking to the House. (Because he trusted the press office. His people. Lawyers aren’t his people.)
Bernard Jenkin said: “I put it to you, Mr. Johnson, that you did not take proper advice.” Johnson’s thumb stroked his other thumb. He exploded with tangents, and eventually half-shouted: “This is nonsense, I mean complete nonsense!” Lord Pannick’s smile slid down his face. He blinked.
I would like to say this is the last gasp for Johnson’s faux-aristocratic style, with its entitlement and its pseudo-intellectualism, but his danger was ever in his precedent. It is always pleasing when a narcissist is exposed, and by himself, but there will be another one along soon enough. I wonder if its hair will have its own cuttings file.
Amid his word salad, Johnson told Harman she had said things that were “plainly and wrongly prejudicial, or prejudge the very issue you are adjudicating.” She told him the assurances he used to inform parliament had been “flimsy.” Finally, he said he’d much enjoyed the day. (He lied.) The question, as ever with Johnson, is ― does he believe it himself? Truthfully, it doesn’t matter now.
