Boris Johnson vows ‘Ill be back’ as ex-prime minister formally resigns as MP
A defiant Boris Johnson vowed “I’ll be back” as he called on the Tories to deliver on Brexit and the promises of the 2019 manifesto.
The former prime minister hinted at a political comeback on the day he formally resigned as an MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
In a message in the Daily Express on Monday night he said: “We must fully deliver on Brexit and on the 2019 manifesto. We must smash Labour at the next election.
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Johnson accuses Rishi Sunak of ‘talking rubbish’ on honours list
“Nothing less than absolute victory and total Brexit will do – and as the great Arnold Schwarzenegger said, I’ll be back.”
Mr Johnson announced his intention to quit as an MP on Friday in advance of a report from the privileges committee, which was investigating whether he lied to MPs about lockdown parties in Downing Street.
The cross-party Tory-majority panel, which is chaired by veteran Labour MP Harriet Harman, was expected to find he had deliberately misled parliament and recommend a suspension which could trigger a by-election.
The surprise resignation came hours after his long-awaited honours list was published, lacking the names of sitting MPs including former culture secretary Nadine Dorries and former minister Nigel Adams.
Rishi Sunak now faces three by-elections at a time when the Conservatives are trailing behind Labour in the polls.
Mr Johnson’s camp accused Mr Sunak of having “secretly blocked” their peerages to avoid the potentially damaging electoral tests – something Downing Street has strenuously denied.
The feud between the former allies erupted into a bitter public slanging match on Monday, as the prime minister claimed his predecessor asked him to overrule a panel vetting his nominations to the House of Lords.
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Rishi Sunak addresses Johnson peerages row
Mr Sunak said Mr Johnson wanted him “to do something I wasn’t prepared to do”, which was “to either overrule the Holac [House of Lords Appointments] committee or make promises to people”.
Hours later, the former Tory leader hit back with a fiery statement of his own accusing the PM of “talking rubbish”.
Mr Johnson 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.”
This line of attack was echoed by Ms Dorries, who claimed in an interview with Piers Morgan that she had her peerage “duplicity and cruelly ” snatched away from her by “privileged posh boys” and that she resigned because she was being “bullied” by Number 10.
In response, Downing Street repeated its insistence that Mr Sunak had “no involvement or input into the approved list”.
As the drama unfolded, Labour MP Chris Bryant, chair of parliament’s standards committee, tweeted: “Purely puerile was how I described Johnson’s hissy fit resignation. I hadn’t thought it would be followed by pathetic playground antics by both Sunak and Johnson arguing over who’s lying and who started it.”
Partygate report ‘expected on Wednesday after printing issues’
While many of Mr Johnson’s allies will likely welcome his intention to return to frontline politics, pundits have cast doubt on the likelihood of this happening before the next general election, while a YouGov poll has suggested the majority of the public (56%) don’t want him to come back as an MP.
It comes as the panel of MPs examining claims that Mr Johnson lied to parliament over “partygate” is poised to deliver a damning verdict on Wednesday.
Members of the committee met today to finalise their report but issues with printing hard copies mean that they need an extra day before it is ready to be published, Sky News understands.
In a report expected to be hard-hitting, the inquiry is believed to have found that Mr Johnson not only made recklessly inaccurate statements in the Commons over partygate, but also deliberately lied to MPs.
It has been suggested that – before Mr Johnson’s resignation as an MP – the committee had been discussing a 20-day suspension, triggering a recall petition and potential by-election.
He cannot be suspended now he has resigned, but he could be refused a parliamentary pass offered to former MPs, a sanction imposed on former speaker John Bercow after a bullying report.
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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