The Foreign Office said the sanctioned Iranian officials are members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a branch of the Iranian military which broadcaster ITV linked to a plot to kill two journalists on British soil in a recent investigation.
But the sanctions fall short of a full proscription of the IRGC, a step called for by some British lawmakers who want it designated as a terrorist group.
“The Iranian regime and the criminal gangs who operate on its behalf pose an unacceptable threat to the U.K.’s security,” Foreign Secretary David Cameron said in a statement.
He added: “The U.K. and U.S. have sent a clear message – we will not tolerate this threat.”
The curbs come amid heightened tensions between U.S. allies and Iran, although are not being directly linked by the U.K. government to the latest flare-up.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday urged Iran to “de-escalate” after three U.S. troops were killed in a drone strike on an American base in Jordan. The U.S. and U.K. have blamed Iran-backed militants for the attack, although Tehran has denied playing a role.
LONDON — The British government failed to take the coronavirus pandemic as seriously as a terror attack, a top government scientist told the country’s official COVID-19 inquiry Tuesday — even as he declined to take swipes at Boris Johnson.
The government’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty — who became a household name in the U.K. during the crisis — avoided singling out individuals for the U.K. government’s mixed record as he faced the inquiry. Instead, he trained his fire on the machinery of the British state.
Whitty was the main source of health advice to Johnson, then the prime minister, during the pandemic. He argued that Whitehall failed to become “electrified” in the way it should have done at the start of the pandemic — and that health threats were not taken as seriously as other national security threats would have been.
Whitty said he warned Johnson in early February 2020 that the pandemic could lead to more than 100,000 deaths — a grim prediction that later came true. Despite this, Johnson chose not to chair the government’s next emergency COBR committee meeting on the virus — leaving the responsibility to Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
“Had, let us say, the director general of [security service] MI5 come in and said there is a possibility of 100,000-plus people sadly dying from a terrorist attack or an attack on the U.K. … the chances that the system would have continued as it did, and the next COBR meeting still chaired by [Hancock], I think is quite small,” Whitty said.
“The system is surprisingly bad, in my view, at responding to threats of this kind which are not in the traditional national security system,” he added. “I think nobody looking at this could say it was ideal.”
Whitty earlier admitted that, with the benefit of hindsight, the U.K. “went a bit too late” when choosing to lock down during the virus’ first wave.
When asked about Johnson — and a chaotic style of leadership that has been repeatedly highlighted by witnesses at the inquiry — Whitty said he didn’t want to offer “commentaries” on individual politicians.
“I think that the way Mr Johnson took decisions was unique to him,” Whitty said when drawn — to laughter in the inquiry room.
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 — 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.
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.”
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.
LONDON — In six short weeks, Liz Truss has succeeded in angering all wings of her party. Most now agree she can’t fight the next election.
Britain’s latest prime minister, who won a Tory leadership contest with promises of tax cuts and “growth, growth, growth,” by Friday had driven supporters on the Tory right to send furious WhatsApp messages bemoaning her latest U-turn on corporation tax as more of her planned budget crumbled.
“I’ve never known the atmosphere to be as febrile as it is at the moment,” one veteran Tory MP who backed Truss in the leadership contest said. Another MP who supported her said: “It feels like the end. I think she’ll be gone next week.”
Tory MPs began casting around wildly for mechanisms to oust Truss and candidates to replace her. While party rules make that complicated, rules can be changed and Truss’ removal is fast becoming a question of when, not if. Her only strength at this point, insiders say, is that there is no obvious successor.
With markets showing little signs of being placated by the prime minister’s decision to sack her friend and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, the latest in a series of steps that have tried and failed to calm the turmoil in the three weeks since her budget was announced, there were whispers that some of her former leadership rivals were testing their level of support should they decide to mount a challenge.
A tense, hastily-arranged press conference in which Truss took just four questions and left after 10 minutes did nothing to improve the mood. Her weakness was underlined by the appointment of Jeremy Hunt to the Treasury, a veteran Cabinet minister of the Cameron and May years who backed her rival Rishi Sunak. Steve Brine, an ally of Hunt’s, told the BBC that while Truss would be the “chairman” Hunt would be the government’s “chief executive.”
Craig Mackinlay, a Tory backbencher, messaged colleagues saying of Kwarteng’s departure: “This is a double U-turn with the handbrake on. Never U-turn. Others will smell the blood in the water knowing they can take bites out of your backside & dictate the agenda. No, No, No!”
Tory WhatsApp groups descended into open warfare. One MP messaged colleagues urging them to “show backbone” and claimed the maelstrom had been an invention of the press. A colleague responded to say they were “living in a fantasy world.”
Thérèse Coffey, the deputy prime minister and Truss’ closest ally, held a call with a supportive group of Tory MPs in an attempt to calm the waters at 2:15 p.m. and a second call with to which all Tory MPs were invited later in the afternoon. One attendee at the first meeting said she appeared “emotional” and “very down”.
Andrew Griffith, a Treasury minister, spoke in support of Truss on the 2:15 p.m call and told colleagues that asset managers were “pumped” by the government’s policies, according to one MP present.
Another MP, asked if she had done enough to steady the ship, replied: “Ship’s fine. It’s the crew!”
How badly can we lose?
Truss’ most strident critics now argue that removing her is a matter of national rather than political interest — they are resigned to losing the next election but view her premiership as a threat to the U.K. economy.
Truss’ weakness was underlined by the appointment of Jeremy Hunt to the Treasury | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Some Tory rebels believe there is nothing Truss can do to regain the confidence of the markets. “They want to know that the government understands its parliamentary party and the two are aligned rather than constantly in battle,” one former Cabinet minister said. “Otherwise, why do you trust anything the government says publicly?”
For many MPs, it’s also a question of limiting the damage done to the Tory brand. “A bunch of libertarian entryists have taken over the Tory party,” one rebel MP said. “It’s our Corbyn problem. We now have a choice between landslide and annihilation. You can’t destroy the economy and our reputation for economic competence and expect anything less.”
Truss’ biggest flaw has been her rigidity. She has insisted that the market reaction to her mini-budget was the result of a communication failure rather than a policy error. Her decision to stick to that line and refusal to admit fault at a meeting Wednesday with the organizing group for backbench Tory MPs, the 1922 committee, infuriated MPs.
One well-connected Tory strategist said the prime minister was unfazed by the dire polls. “She doesn’t care about the polling. She says something to the effect of ‘we’re not populists, we need to do what’s right.’ She just doesn’t accept that she needs people to buy into her plans.”
A group of Tory MPs have settled on the idea of a joint ticket of Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak to take over from Truss. “Rishi and Penny got over two-thirds of the parliamentary party between them on the final MPs ballot,” one Tory rebel organizer said. “You have a critical mass already backing them.”
In a message leaked to POLITICO, Crispin Blunt told colleagues in a Tory backbench WhatsApp group on Friday afternoon: “Enough. Emergency repair needed for our party and our country. Step forward Rishi and Penny, with our support and encouragement in the interests of us all.”
But it is unlikely that other leadership hopefuls will be content to give the pair a free run.
What now?
Ousting Truss this year would make her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.
But orchestrating her exit is easier said than done. One mechanism under discussion is changing party rules to allow for Truss to be challenged — ordinarily she is immune for the first year of her premiership — and for Tory MPs to choose her successor without a vote by the grassroots membership.
One member of the 1922 committee executive, which oversees leadership rules, said no change had been discussed and that none was currently anticipated.
Another mechanism being mooted in some quarters is getting a majority of Tory MPs to agree on her replacement and installing the new prime minister via a majority vote in the Commons. Such a move might be technically possible but would drag the King into a constitutional row, with opposition parties demanding an election if Truss cannot command a parliamentary majority.
Labour leader Keir Starmer called for a general election to be triggered | Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images
And getting all Tory MPs to agree on a candidate would be no easy feat, particularly at a time when the party is so viciously divided.
Truss’ defenders are strident in their criticism of those plotting to get rid of her. A Tory MP who backs Truss said “a lot of people are getting really rather overexcited.”
“The wild talk about replacing her as a unity candidate at this particular stage is not going to go down very well,” the MP said. “Colleagues who do this sort of thing ought to start to think about the impression that they give to their own associations. The Conservative Party doesn’t like what it perceives as disloyalty.”
When former Prime Minister Boris Johnson won an 80-seat majority — which has now been whittled down to 69 seats — the general assumption was that the Tories would govern for at least two terms.
The electoral challenge facing Labour — winning back enough seats in the north and in Scotland while also gaining ground in the south — was seen as too great. But Tory MPs point out that on current polling figures, those calculations are blown out of the water.
Both the Labour leader Keir Starmer and the Liberal Democrat leader called for a general election to be triggered on Friday. If Labour’s current lead in the polls were to be replicated in an election, the party would win more than 400 seats, dwarfing even Tony Blair’s landslide 1997 victory.
Labour’s lead will almost certainly narrow when an election comes. But many Tory MPs believe the damage of the past months will take a long time to repair — and that Labour is certain to win the next election as a result.
“We don’t know whether it goes on for three months, six months, or another year,” said a former Cabinet minister, “but the thing is bust.”
