Boris Johnson’s GMB interview shows ‘narcissistic’ PM ‘out of touch’, says Labour – UK politics live
Johnson says government at risk of ‘inflationary spiral’ if it abandons ‘prudent’ approach to spending in cost of living crisis
Sometimes the key moments in big political interviews come in the asides. Politicians rehearse their answers to the obvious questions (or their non-answers), and that is one reason why modern interviews are often more tedious than ones conducted in the days before the term soundbite was invented (a point the New Statesman’s Harry Lambert makes powerfully here). But asides are (generally) unrehearsed, and there were two in this interview that stood out.
One was “Who’s Lorraine?” (see 9.21am).
The other, more serious, one came when Boris Johnson, was told about a pensioner, Elsie, being so poor she has to spend the day on buses using her freedom pass to avoid heating her home. The PM responded by going on about introducing the freedom pass when he was London mayor. Labour accuse him of being out of touch with the experience of people’s lives; this tone-deaf boast made their point for them.
Dave Hill, who runs the On London website, says that as well as being insensitive, on this point Johnson was also technically wrong.
There was a substantial takeaway in the interview too. It is normally assumed that Johnson is always keen to increase government spending, and only restrained by the more fiscally disciplined chancellor, Rishi Sunak. But in his comments on inflation, Johnson implied that the Treasury has won this argument.
Here are the main points from the interview.
- Johnson signalled that he was opposed to using benefit rises to help people with the cost of living because it could be inflationary. There was a risk of an “inflationary spiral”, he said. When Susanna Reid put it to him that inflation could reach 10%, he replied: “Correct”. But he appeared to rule out bringing forward benefit increases to help. He said:
We have a short-term hit caused by the spike in energy prices across the world. If we respond by driving up prices and costs across the board in this country, responding by the government stepping in and driving up inflation, that will hit everybody and that will mean that people’s interest rates on their mortgages go up, the cost of borrowing goes up, and we face an even worse problem …
I’m sorry to say this, but we have to be prudent in our approach. We have to help people like Elsie, like the families you mentioned, in the short term with huge sums of taxpayers’ cash, through local councils or through all the schemes that we’re doing. But the best answer is to have a strong economy and where we keep interest rates as low as is reasonable.
Benefits are uprated annually every year in April but, because the increase is pegged to the inflation rate the previous September, this year they have risen by well below the current rate of inflation. It is equivalent to a real-terms cut. Ministers have been urged to accelerate the next benefits rise to compensate, but Johnson seems to be firmly rejecting this option.
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary, says the PM’s comments could also be a hint that the government will for a second time abandon the triple lock, which is supposed to guarantee that pensions go up every year in line with earnings or inflation or by 2.5%, whichever is higher.
- Johnson failed to offer the prospect of any immediate, extra help for people struggling to pay their bills now. He said in general terms that there was “more that we can do”, but did not give details. His most awkward moment in the interview came when asked what advice he had for Elsie, a 77-year-old widow who’s monthly energy bills have gone up from £15 to £85. Johnson summed up the measures already taken by the government to help. Asked what Elsie should cut back on, Johnson said he did not want her to cut back on anything. But he did not float the prospect of further help with bills this year, and he said that what was important was to invest in energy now so that supply is secure for the medium and long term. Rather crassly, when told the Elsie spent her day using her freedom pass to travel on buses, to reduce the amount she has to spend on energy at home, Johnson said that as London mayor he introduced the 24-hour freedom pass. Reid asked if he thought that Elsie should be “grateful”.
- Johnson said he was opposed to a windfall tax on energy companies (Labour’s policy) because it would discourage investment. He said:
If you put a windfall tax on the energy companies, what that means is that you discourage them from making the investments that we want to see that will, in the end, keep energy price prices lower for everybody.
- He admitted that he did not know the amount by which carer’s allowance is rising this year.
- He insisted that global factors were to blame for the rise in prices. “The cost of chickens is crazy,” he said, in a reference to food prices.
- He said that he had “no idea” whether her would face further fines over Partygate. Asked why he had not resigned, as other people have for breaking lockdown rules, he replied:
I’m getting on with the job that I was elected to do and discharge the mandate that I was given, and I’m proud of what we have been doing.
- He insisted that he was “honest”. Referring to claims he misled MPs about Partygate, he said:
If you are talking about the statements I’ve made in the House of Commons, I was inadvertently … I was wrong and I’ve apologised for that.
- He admitted the UK could be giving visas to Ukrainian refugees more quickly. He said:
We have done a huge amount to help Ukrainian women and children in the area but we’re now seeing large numbers come to the UK.
So far 86,000 visas have been issued and 27,000 are already here and I want to say ‘thank you’ – 27,000 is a lot and it’s growing fast and I want to pay tribute to all those who are helping to look after Ukrainians.
Could we have done it faster? Yes, perhaps we could.
Libby Brooks
Two of Scotland’s leading women politicians have stood firmly for transgender rights in the past 24 hours when challenged on the campaign trail.
Nicola Sturgeon, whose government is currently putting through a bill to streamline how people change their sex on their birth certificate, warned that “every time we oversimplify this debate, trans people actually suffer”.
Referring to the latest revelations of misogyny in Westminster, along with the assault on abortion rights in the US, Sturgeon said:
These are the threats against women. I do not believe that trans rights and women’s rights are or should in any way be in conflict and I will argue that case until my dying breath.
Refusing to define the characteristics of a woman – a question that has been used by some media in an attempt to trip up or embarrass politicians across the political spectrum – Sturgeon said: “I’m not going to, I’m just not going to get into this debate at a level that’s about simplified and lurid headlines.”
Meanwhile former Scottish Conservative leader and peer Ruth Davidson said she wanted to “scold” journalists and politicians who have weaponised the topic as a culture war issue. She said:
Trying to do gotcha questions about who is a woman, who is a man, I’m not sure that helps, particularly for people in the trans community who are looking at the way this is reported, as well as the way policy makers are making decisions.
Davidson said that she agreed “we need absolute reassurance” that women’s safety, rights and spaces who be looked after, but added:
We also need to have a real understanding and compassion for people who are one of the most persecuted minorities in this country.
Boris Johnson (or his social media manager) has been tweeting this morning about his speech to the Ukrainian parliament.
Here is the extract from the speech released overnight.
When my country faced the threat of invasion during the second world war, our parliament – like yours – continued to meet throughout the conflict, and the British people showed such unity and resolve that we remember our time of greatest peril as our finest hour.
This is Ukraine’s finest hour, an epic chapter in your national story that will be remembered and recounted for generations to come.
Your children and grandchildren will say that Ukrainians taught the world that the brute force of an aggressor counts for nothing against the moral force of a people determined to be free.
Labour says GMB interview shows ‘narcissistic’ PM ‘out of touch’
Labour has said that Boris Johnson’s Good Morning Britain interview showed just how “out of touch” he is. It has issued this statement from Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary.
It is utterly shameful that pensioners have no choice but to sit on the bus all day to avoid racking up heating bills at home, or are left shivering in blankets and only eating one meal a day.
For Boris Johnson to respond by boasting about the London bus pass reveals just how out of touch this narcissistic prime minister is. The simple truth is Boris Johnson has just imposed the biggest real-terms cut to the pension in 50 years and charities like Age UK are warning this will be a year of hell for Britain’s retirees.
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader and a former energy secretary, has dismissed Boris Johnson’s argument that a windfall tax on oil and gas firms would deter investment. He told PA Media:
We know as we move towards net zero that they won’t be making profits on oil and gas, so it’s in their own interest [to invest].
What I think is right, though, is they are making unexpected profits – their investment plans a year ago didn’t expect them to make these huge profits, it’s total windfall profits and something that never happened in my time as energy and climate change secretary.
It is absolutely right and fair and proper that these companies who are taking the oil and gas out of British waters, who are licensed by the British government to do that, they should pay a windfall tax and we reckon a fair tax would raise at least £10bn over the next year.
The Lib Dems say that could pay for a cut in VAT from 20% to 17.5%, saving households around £600 a year, and help provide targeted support for vulnerable people to cope with soaring bills.
Here is some more comment on Boris Johnson’s Good Morning Britain interview.
From Talk TV’s Kate McCann.
From ITV’s Anushka Asthana
Starmer accuses Tories of ‘mud-slinging’ over lockdown beer photo
As my colleague Tobi Thomas reports, in his morning interviews Keir Starmer accused the Conservatives of “mud-slinging” over allegations he broke lockdown rules after a photograph emerged of him drinking a beer with staff in a constituency office last year.
In his Today interview Starmer refused to say whether Durham police had recently been in touch with him about the incident. According to the Mirror’s Pippa Crerar, they haven’t.
Here are some other lines from his morning interviews.
- Starmer said Labour favoured putting up defence spending in the light of the Russian invastion of Ukraine. Asked if defence spending should go up, he replied:
Yes, I do think the government’s going to have to come back to parliament and look again at defence spending, and I know many Conservative MPs think that as well.
I’d also say the government at the moment is proposing to cut a further 10,000 or so from our armed services and I think they’re wrong to do that and I would call on them not to do it.
But obviously I think there is now a clamour for the government to come back to parliament and to look again at defence spending and the defence strategy, frankly.
- He said the BP profits announced today showed that Labour’s proposed windfall tax on energy companies was the “right approach”.
- He said Labour has “real wind in our sails” ahead of the local elections on Thursday. Asked what success would look like for Labour, Starmer replied:
We want to hold seats where we’ve already got them, and we want to make gains where we can.
I’m conscious that we’ve got to earn every vote, I’m taking nothing for granted. What I can tell you is we’ve got thousands of fantastic activists across the country making the positive case for Labour. There’s a real wind in our sails at the moment.
Johnson says government at risk of ‘inflationary spiral’ if it abandons ‘prudent’ approach to spending in cost of living crisis
Sometimes the key moments in big political interviews come in the asides. Politicians rehearse their answers to the obvious questions (or their non-answers), and that is one reason why modern interviews are often more tedious than ones conducted in the days before the term soundbite was invented (a point the New Statesman’s Harry Lambert makes powerfully here). But asides are (generally) unrehearsed, and there were two in this interview that stood out.
One was “Who’s Lorraine?” (see 9.21am).
The other, more serious, one came when Boris Johnson, was told about a pensioner, Elsie, being so poor she has to spend the day on buses using her freedom pass to avoid heating her home. The PM responded by going on about introducing the freedom pass when he was London mayor. Labour accuse him of being out of touch with the experience of people’s lives; this tone-deaf boast made their point for them.
Dave Hill, who runs the On London website, says that as well as being insensitive, on this point Johnson was also technically wrong.
There was a substantial takeaway in the interview too. It is normally assumed that Johnson is always keen to increase government spending, and only restrained by the more fiscally disciplined chancellor, Rishi Sunak. But in his comments on inflation, Johnson implied that the Treasury has won this argument.
Here are the main points from the interview.
- Johnson signalled that he was opposed to using benefit rises to help people with the cost of living because it could be inflationary. There was a risk of an “inflationary spiral”, he said. When Susanna Reid put it to him that inflation could reach 10%, he replied: “Correct”. But he appeared to rule out bringing forward benefit increases to help. He said:
We have a short-term hit caused by the spike in energy prices across the world. If we respond by driving up prices and costs across the board in this country, responding by the government stepping in and driving up inflation, that will hit everybody and that will mean that people’s interest rates on their mortgages go up, the cost of borrowing goes up, and we face an even worse problem …
I’m sorry to say this, but we have to be prudent in our approach. We have to help people like Elsie, like the families you mentioned, in the short term with huge sums of taxpayers’ cash, through local councils or through all the schemes that we’re doing. But the best answer is to have a strong economy and where we keep interest rates as low as is reasonable.
Benefits are uprated annually every year in April but, because the increase is pegged to the inflation rate the previous September, this year they have risen by well below the current rate of inflation. It is equivalent to a real-terms cut. Ministers have been urged to accelerate the next benefits rise to compensate, but Johnson seems to be firmly rejecting this option.
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary, says the PM’s comments could also be a hint that the government will for a second time abandon the triple lock, which is supposed to guarantee that pensions go up every year in line with earnings or inflation or by 2.5%, whichever is higher.
- Johnson failed to offer the prospect of any immediate, extra help for people struggling to pay their bills now. He said in general terms that there was “more that we can do”, but did not give details. His most awkward moment in the interview came when asked what advice he had for Elsie, a 77-year-old widow who’s monthly energy bills have gone up from £15 to £85. Johnson summed up the measures already taken by the government to help. Asked what Elsie should cut back on, Johnson said he did not want her to cut back on anything. But he did not float the prospect of further help with bills this year, and he said that what was important was to invest in energy now so that supply is secure for the medium and long term. Rather crassly, when told the Elsie spent her day using her freedom pass to travel on buses, to reduce the amount she has to spend on energy at home, Johnson said that as London mayor he introduced the 24-hour freedom pass. Reid asked if he thought that Elsie should be “grateful”.
- Johnson said he was opposed to a windfall tax on energy companies (Labour’s policy) because it would discourage investment. He said:
If you put a windfall tax on the energy companies, what that means is that you discourage them from making the investments that we want to see that will, in the end, keep energy price prices lower for everybody.
- He admitted that he did not know the amount by which carer’s allowance is rising this year.
- He insisted that global factors were to blame for the rise in prices. “The cost of chickens is crazy,” he said, in a reference to food prices.
- He said that he had “no idea” whether her would face further fines over Partygate. Asked why he had not resigned, as other people have for breaking lockdown rules, he replied:
I’m getting on with the job that I was elected to do and discharge the mandate that I was given, and I’m proud of what we have been doing.
- He insisted that he was “honest”. Referring to claims he misled MPs about Partygate, he said:
If you are talking about the statements I’ve made in the House of Commons, I was inadvertently … I was wrong and I’ve apologised for that.
- He admitted the UK could be giving visas to Ukrainian refugees more quickly. He said:
We have done a huge amount to help Ukrainian women and children in the area but we’re now seeing large numbers come to the UK.
So far 86,000 visas have been issued and 27,000 are already here and I want to say ‘thank you’ – 27,000 is a lot and it’s growing fast and I want to pay tribute to all those who are helping to look after Ukrainians.
Could we have done it faster? Yes, perhaps we could.
‘Who’s Lorraine?’ – Johnson criticised for appearing not to know identity of star ITV presenter
Boris Johnson’s very final comment in his Good Morning Britain interview provided one of its most memorable takeaways. He implied he did not know who Lorraine Kelly was. (See 9am.)
It is not the worse thing a prime minister can say, but commentators, and opposition politicians, think it was a mistake.
This is from the i’s Paul Waugh.
This is from the Daily Mirror’s Pippa Crerar.
This is from Labour’s Chris Bryant.
And this is from the Independent’s Tom Peck (who suggests it was all an act by Johnson anyway).
In 2019 Johnson said in an interview that he did not know who the BBC presenter Naga Munchetty was, even though she had at the time been headline news for a comment about Donald Trump.
A full summary and analysis of the Johnson interview is coming up shortly.
Reid says the government cut the number of police officers and nurses in the first place.
Johnson says he was mayor of London at the time.
Reid says it was the same government.
She says they have to end the programme. She says “Lorraine” is waiting. (That’s Lorraine Kelly, who presents the next show on ITV.)
“Who’s Lorraine?”, Johnson asks.
And that’s it.
I will post a summary soon.
Johnson says he has ‘no idea’ if he will be fined again over Partygate
Q: We know you have broken the law. You are being investigated for lying to parliament. This is the most fined building in Britain for breaches of lockdown. rules. Why did you not follow the law?
Johnson says he has to wait until the end of the police investigation for commenting.
Q: Have you had a second fine?
No, says Johnson. But he says No 10 will say if that happens.
Q: Do you expect to be fined again?
“I have no idea,” says Johnson.
Q: Other people have resigned over this. Why haven’t you?
Johnson says he is getting on with the job he was given.
He says he said he would get Brexit done, he did. He said he would hire more police officers and nurses; he is on track with that, he says.
Johnson claims that the government is cutting national insurance.
Reid points out that this cut only came after an even bigger increase.
Johnson says changes to the universal credit taper rate gave people an extra £1,000.
Reid says the government cut that money in the first place.
Johnson argues that, if benefits were to rise by more, there would be an inflationary risk. That would lead to interest rates rising, he says. There would then be a risk of an “inflationary spiral”, he says.
Reid asks Johnson if he knows by how much the carer’s allowance went up.
Johnson does not, but he says he expects it was not by much.
Reid says it was £69.70. It has risen by just over £2.
Johnson says putting a windfall tax on energy companies would cut investment.
Reid quotes from a pensioner, Elsie, who says her energy bill has gone from £15 a month to £85 a month. She is now only having a meal once a day. And she says she uses her freedom pass to spend the day on the bus, so she does not have to pay for heating.
Johnson says as London mayor he introduced the freedom pass.
Reid asks if he is saying the viewer should be grateful.
Johnson swiftly moves on. He says she may qualify for help with heating.
Q: What else should Elsie cut back on?
Johnson says he does not want her to cut back on anything. He wants to cut the price of energy, he says.
Johnson says it is “insane” that the the UK has to import electricity from France.
Q: Why not have a windfall tax on energy companies?
Johnson summarises some of the measures already taken to help consumers.
There is more that the government can do, he admits.
But he says the priority is to deal with the problem in the medium to long term.
Q: So you are not doing everything you can now.
Johnson says the government’s £9bn plan is bigger than any rival plan he has seen (ie, bigger than Labour’s windfall tax plan).
Q: The biggest issue for people is the cost of living, not Ukraine. Are you in touch with what people are experiencing? Prices are rising, food bank use is rising, poverty is rising.
Johnson says the government is doing “everything we can” to help with the pressures on family budgets.
But he says it is important to see the global context.
The rise in the price of chicken is “crazy”, he says.
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