Boris Johnson news live: Call to suspend sexist MPs amid outrage at Angela Rayner claims

Boris Johnson is facing increasing calls from business leaders across the UK to make this year’s extra bank holiday — marking the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee — permanent.

Business leaders have said that a “thank holiday” would, besides honouring the monarch, also provide a much-needed boost to the economy after Covid.

In an open letter to Mr Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak, signatories suggested that making the holiday permanent “would provide a moment every year for individuals and communities to come together, to thank those who have contributed in ways big and small to making our country a better place to live”.

This year’s extra day off is set to take place on 3 June.

Boris Johnson will ask cabinet ministers to come up with ideas on easing the cost of living crisis as Britons were warned of a £10bn annual hike in petrol and diesel costs.

The prime minister wants his colleagues to develop “innovative” ways to reduce the pressure on households, saying moves to ease the burden from price rises and soaring bills must be “a team effort”.

Read the full story by Adam Forrest here:

Donald Trump has claimed that UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, forced him to cancel an interview with Piers Morgan shortly before the general election.

The former US president said in an interview aired on Monday night that Mr Johnson had asked him not to appear in an interview on Good Morning Britain in December 2019.

Mr Trump said that the interview was cancelled at the last minute when the UK PM intervened. He added that he did not know why Mr Johnson asked him not to appear on the interview but said that he did what the PM asked him to do.

During the interview with Talk TV’s “Piers Morgan Uncensored”, the host suggested that it could be because the interview might have created “something that would cost him the election” — which was just a few days after the planned interview.

Parliament’s longest-serving female MP has said that sexist MPs are currently able to make with “impunity” comments which would lead to a charge of gross misconduct if made by a senior executive in a private company about a colleague.

Calling for misogyny among MPs to be made punishable by suspension from the Commons, Dame Harriet Harman told The Independent that comments such as those made about Angela Rayner in the Mail on Sunday were a “universal” experience for women in the Commons.

Dame Harriet warned that such behaviour had got worse since she arrived at Westminster in 1982 as one of just 21 female MPs and was regularly mocked as “Harriet Harperson”.

Our political editor Andrew Woodcock has the full report here:

Parliament’s most senior female MP has demanded change to the Commons code of conduct to make misogyny an offence punishable by suspension from the House, our political editor Andrew Woodcock reports.

Dame Harriet said it was “not good enough” for Boris Johnson simply to disown the offensive remark, telling The Independent: “He shouldn’t just be commenting on it, he needs to be taking action.

“Prime ministers are judged on their actions not their words. He could very easily be taking action to find out who made these comments and removing the whip from them.”

Making misogynistic, homophobic and racist language a specific breach of the MPs’ code of conduct would allow an inquiry by Commons standards commissioner Kathryn Stone, potentially leading to a humiliating apology on the floor of the House or suspension. A suspension of more than 10 days could trigger a recall petition in the MP’s constituency to remove them from office.

You can read the full story here:

A legal challenge to the Northern Ireland Protocol has been referred to the UK’s highest court, in a move that has been welcomed by unionist politicians.

Last year, a case arguing that the post-Brexit trading agreement breaches the 1800 Acts of Union was rejected in both the High Court and Court of Appeal in Belfast.

But Northern Ireland’s Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan has now granted leave to appeal a ruling, and the case will now be considered by Supreme Court justices, although no date has yet been set.

TUV leader Jim Allister, one of several people behind the case, said he was “delighted” by the move, which he called “a clear indication and recognition of the fact that there are significant legal and constitutional issues to be resolved by the highest court in our land”.

He said he looked forward “to definitive rulings which go to the very heart of Northern Ireland’s position as a threatened integral part of the UK”, adding: “This is a battle which must be fought both legally and politically.”

Our chief political commentator John Rentoul has highlighted this snippet in The Times from former Tory leader William Hague, suggesting that Boris Johnson’s desire to please the audience in front of him “tends to undermine his support rather than secure it”.

In his analysis, Mr Hague writes: “Even if he has to go through the humblest apologies on the floor of the Commons, as he did last Tuesday, he will then go upstairs to the 1922 Committee of his own MPs and seek roars of approval for jokes and ripostes to the attacks of the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

David Lammy has described the sexist claims made against his Labour colleague Angela Rayner in the Mail on Sunday “a disgrace”.

Labour’s shadow foreign secretary told Andrew Marr on LBC: “It’s an utter, utter disgrace. It puts women off politics, should never in my view have made the newspaper in the first place.

“The MPs around it should be identified and found, frankly. It was horrendous, absolutely horrendous, and I felt in total solidarity with Angela for finding herself in that situation.”

In his latest column, our associate editor Sean O’Grady responds to reports suggesting, in his words, “that Sue Gray’s report into the widespread criminality in Downing Street during lockdown is so dire in its details that it will finish off Boris Johnson for good, like a dose of Domestos down the loo”.

He writes: “Oliver Dowden, the over-promoted Conservative Party chairman who gives cynicism a bad name, says that removing Johnson from Downing Street would lead to “instability and uncertainty” in the country. Erm, what does Oliver think has been going on ever since Johnson became prime minister, indeed entered public life? He is the king of chaos, the crown prince of scandal, the president of peccadillos.

“As Keir Starmer put it, dissembling on the grandest scale possible is the whole point of Johnson – not some glitch in the system. Getting shot of Johnson would help to end the uncertainty and unpredictability, because he, personally, is at the heart of it.

“Breaching the lockdown rules wasn’t an aberration from a lifetime of probity and chastity. He isn’t Justin Welby. Johnson’s whole life has been “opposite of the nature of god”, not just his mad policy to transport innocent people to Rwanda.”

You can read his thinking in full here:

The new TalkTV channel is set to go live imminently, a venture Rupert Murdoch surely hopes will shake up the orthodoxy of British television – if not the country’s political landscape.

Following hot on the heels of GB News, whose launch last June was plagued by technical difficulties, the channel is expected to go on-air at 7pm, with Piers Morgan’s interview with Donald Trump set to be broadcast an hour later.

You can find out more here: