Boris Johnson formally quits as an MP, Treasury confirms, after day marked by war of words with Rishi Sunak – as it happened

• Boris Johnson has formally stepped down as an MP, parliamentary authorities have announced, bringing down the curtain on a tumultuous second stint in the Commons. The news came towards the end of a day during which Johnson and Rishi Sunak engaged in an extraordinary war of words over the former prime minister’s failed attempts to elevate several close allies to the House of Lords.

• The SNP has claimed that new regulations giving the police new powers to stop protesters (see 5.44pm) are a move in the direction of fascism. Opening the debate, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, said the police did need more powers to deal with disruptive protests. She said:

People have a right to get to work on time free from obstruction, a right to enjoy sporting events without interruption and a right to get to hospital. The roads belong to the British people, not a selfish minority who treat them like their personal property.

The impact of these disruptors is huge. Over the last six weeks alone, Just Stop Oil (JSO) carried out 156 slow marches around London. This has required over 13,770 police officer shifts, that’s over 13,000 police shifts that could have been stopping robbery, violent crime or anti-social behaviour, and the cost to the taxpayer is an outrage – £4.5 million in just six weeks on top of the £14 million spent last year.

But Alison Thewliss, the SNP’s home affairs spokesperson, said the new law took the government in the direction of fascism. My colleague Ben Quinn has the quote.

• Humza Yousaf has rejected growing calls from across the political spectrum to suspend Nicola Sturgeon from the Scottish National party after her arrest on Sunday.

• Scrapping single-word gradings for schools would not alleviate the “underlying discomfort” teachers feel, Ofsted’s chief inspector has said, as she came under increasing pressure to reform the system after a headteacher’s suicide.

In the Commons MPs are debating the Public Order Act 1986 (serious disruption to the life of the community) regulations 2023. These are new rules that lower the threshold for what counts as serious disruption when the police have to judge whether they have the powers to intervene to stop a protest.

They also allow the police to consider the cumulative effect of a protest when deciding whether campaigners are causing serious disruption. This measure is particular designed to stop slow-walking protests organised by groups like Just Stop Oil.

These measures are particularly controversial because they were originally meant to be primary legislation – part of the text of the Public Order Act – but they were voted down by peers. Because the amendments were introduced when the bill was in the Lords, not the Commons, they could not be reintroduced when the bill went back to MPs.

The Lords secondary legislation scrutiny committee raised concerns about this in a report published last month. Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, a member of the committee, said: “As far as we can ascertain, this is the first time a government has sought to make changes to the law by making those changes through secondary legislation even though those same changes had been rejected by parliament when introduced a short while before in primary legislation.”

Secondary legislation receives less scrutiny than primary legislation, it cannot be amended, and it is almost impossible to block.

Opening the debate in the Commons, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, said the government supported the right to protest, but that she was responding to police requests for greater powers.

The Treasury has released two statements confirming that Boris Johnson and Nigel Adams are now longer MP.

Here they are:

The chancellor of the exchequer has this day appointed Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to be steward and bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern.

The chancellor of the exchequer has this day appointed Nigel Adams to be steward and bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.

Both press releases consisted of just a single sentence, and neither of them explained what this process actually means. See 11.56am for an explanation.

12 Jun 202312.12 EDT

Penny Mordaunt says Tories should be 'calling out people attacking institutions', in jibe at Johnson and his allies

Ben Quinn

People who attack institutions including parliament need to be “called out,” Penny Mordaunt has told a conference in London, where she also railed against those waging “culture wars.”

Without specifically naming Boris Johnson or allies who have criticised the privileges committee investigation and its findings against the former prime minister, Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, said that politics was a team game but “quite often some people forget they are part of a team”.

Speaking at an even organised by the Centre for Policy Studies, she said that she would be going to the House of Commons where there would be a debate on standards “and all sorts of things that have been in the news,” adding:

We have to be really strong about calling out people out who are attacking institutions. People who are attacking the house for carrying out its work.

This included those who were attacking the media, she said, adding:

I never thought I would be defending the BBC. We have to stand up for these things because the price of not doing so is going to be very grave indeed.

Later, in a discussion which touched on Donald Trump and populism elsewhere, she said that she wanted to say something “which applies to my colleagues in the Conservative Party today”. She went on:

We have to have the strength not to be pulled in particular directions by particular media groups or pander to particular constituencies. We have to have a real sense with what we are about.

Mordaunt, who has been seen as a potential standard-bearer for the centrist wing of the Conservative party in a future leadership battle, also said she was “amazed” at the continuation of a “failed model of leadership at the top” revolving around one figure rather than “the team”.

I said to the PM: ‘Your team is the nation.’ That is why the culture wars and all that doesn’t help. We are here for everyone.

That is why I am unapologetic about talking about building more and taxing less and not talking about culture wars, because it doesn’t move the country forward.

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Here is a question from a reader, prompted by the earlier post about the mechanism whereby MPs resign.

If there are only two posts MPs can apply for if they want to resign, does that mean you can’t have three MPs resigning at the same time?

No. There is no minimum time period under which people can serve as crown steward and bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, or crown steward and bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, and as soon as a new one is appointed, the old one lapses. The Treasury tends to alternate; one “post” goes to one resigning MP, and the next MP to quit gets the other one.

Eight unionists MPs got the Chiltern Hundreds job in a single day in 1985, when there were mass resignations to force byelections over the Anglo-Irish agreement. Another seven unionists got the Manor of Northstead job on the same day.

Boris Johnson has now formally submitted his resignation as an MP, John Stevens from the Mirror reports. His resignation does not take effect until we get an announcement from the Treasury saying he has been appointed to an office of profit under the crown. (See 11.56am.)

And Nigel Adams has done the same, Lucy Fisher from the FT reports.

Downing Street has chosen not to escalate its war of words with Boris Johnson. After Johnson said this afternoon Rishi Sunak was talking “rubbish”, after Sunak said this morning Johnson tried to get him to do something improper with his resignation honours, the PM’s spokesperson was asked at the afternoon lobby briefing if he had a response.

The spokesperson defended Sunak, summarising what he said earlier, but did not criticise Johnson directly. He said:

You’ve got the words from the PM this morning.

I’m not going to get into more detail. He was very clear he was not prepared to deviate from established convention or do anything unprecedented, which is why, in line with a long-standing custom, he forwarded the list unaltered.

The line that Sunak was acting in line with “established convention” does rather undermine the claim he made this morning, when talking about this topic, that he wanted “to do things differently” because he wanted “to change politics”. (See 9.53am.) Sunak probably just meant he wanted to do things differently from Johnson.

For anyone who likes their political history neatly arranged, it is fitting that Boris Johnson may be ending his parliamentary life (although his resignation has not been confirmed yet) on the day of Silvio Berlusconi’s death. The former Italian PM was a prototype for the populist, norm-trouncing, egotistical, performance politics now represented by Donald Trump and Johnson.

Berlusconi was probably at his most powerful in the early years of the noughties, when Johnson was editor of the Spectator. Johnson went to interview him in 2003, with Nicholas Farrell. At the time received opinion in London was that Berlusconi was too corrupt to be a respectable European political leader. But Johnson recognised a kindred spirit, and filed a glowing tribute. Here’s an extract.

It is hard not to be charmed by a man who takes such an interest in cacti and who will crack jokes at important EU gatherings, not only about Nazi camp commandants but also about whether or not his wife is running off with someone else. There is something heroic about his style, something hilariously imperial – from the huge swimming pool he has created by flooding a basin in the Sardinian hills, to the four thalassotherapy pools he has sunk for Veronica, powered by computers more advanced than those used on the moon shots …

Suddenly, after decades in which Italian politics was in thrall to a procession of gloomy, portentous, jargon-laden partitocrats, there appeared this influorescence of American gung-hoery. Yes, he may have been involved in questionable business practices; he may even yet be found out and pay the price. For the time being, though, it seems reasonable to let him get on with his programme. He may fail. But then, of course — and this is the point that someone should write in block capitals, fold up and stuff in the mouth of Anna Lindh, Swedish foreign minister — he can be rejected by the Italian people.

She may not like it but he was democratically elected and can be removed by the very people Anna Lindh insults. If we are obliged to compare Silvio Berlusconi with Anna Lindh, and other bossy, high-taxing European politicians. I agree with Farrell: as the narrator says of Jay Gatsby, a man Berlusconi to some extent resembles, he is ‘better than the whole damn lot of them’.

UPDATE: Anna Lindh was stabbed to death very soon after the Johnson/Farrell article was published by a man who claimed to be hearing voices in his head.

Sir Jake Berry, Conservative party chair when Liz Truss was PM and one of Boris Johnson’s main supporters early in his leadership, posted a message on Twitter at the weekend saying Johnson had been forced out by the establishment “blob”.

Asked today to defend his claim, Berry said people could look at the facts themselves. He told broadcasters:

The establishment tried to block [Brexit]. I stand by that. That was definitely my experience working in Theresa May’s government. And the establishment has seen Boris out of the door. I think if people look at the facts, they either will or won’t agree with me.

But Berry would not go as far as calling for Johnson to return as an MP. Asked if he would like to see him back in the Commons, Berry replied:

Boris Johnson is a fantastic Conservative, a brilliant parliamentarian and appeals to the great British public in a way that I’ve never really seen any other politician do. I think there is just something special about him. He is an extraordinary character.

But, that said, I absolutely know and believe that under the leadership of Rishi Sunak, by pursuing bold, Conservative values, we can secure that general election.

12 Jun 202310.19 EDT

Ben Quinn

Would-be insurgent parties of the right, Reform UK and Reclaim, have announced a pact for the upcoming byelections in which they will allow each other a free one in the contests.

Reclaim’s leader and founder, Laurence Fox, will stand in Boris Johnson’s seat of Uxbridge while Dave Holland, managing director of an IT marketing company, will stand in Mid Bedfordshire, which is being vacated by Nadine Dorries.

Richard Tice, the leader of Reform UK, said:

This cooperation enables us to have extra focus on specific byelections.

Many people feel totally let down by the two main parties that are both variants of socialism: high tax, nanny state, low growth and open borders. We stand for low tax, high growth and net zero immigration.

My colleague Pippa Crerar says the Boris Johnson camp seem to have changed their story a bit over the past few days.

Boris Johnson’s comment today (see 2.48am) about his resignation honours, and his dispute with Rishi Sunak, suggests that what he actually wanted was two resignation honours lists. Given his cakeist philosophy on life (“my policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it”), this would be characteristic.

What seems likely to have happened is that Nadine Dorries, Nigel Adams, Alok Sharma and probably Alister Jack, were on the list of names that went to the House of Lords appointments commission (Holac) – but that they were not approved because they would not agree to resign as MPs when their peerages were announced. If so, they would account for four of the eight names that were refused.

Johnson is now implying that at some point in the future their names should have been resubmitted to Holac, not for a new reappraisal from scratch, but for revetting just on the resigning from the Commons issue. At that point the appointments might have gone through. Asking for a rethink was how Johnson got the Evgeny Lebedev peerage approved.

The implication is that we might have had two Johnson honours list – the version out on Friday, and a second edition, or series two, much closer to the election, when the peerages might not have triggered byelections.

Alternatively, Johnson was hoping that Sunak would promise to include his names on a subsequent honours list. A PM can announce peerages whenever they want, and there is normally a dissolution honours list at the end of the parliament. These names would have been in effect “Johnson honours part 2”, although perhaps not badged as such.

Boris Johnson has accused Rishi Sunak of talking “rubbish” about his resignation honours list. In a statement he said:

Rishi Sunak is talking rubbish. To honour these peerages it was not necessary to overrule Holac – but simply to ask them to renew their vetting, which was a mere formality.