The Kill Switch is printed. It will be available in shops on 16 July. Attached is a big chunk of this morning

Labour: “The BBC’s cowardly decision to take Gary Lineker off air is an assault on free speech in the face of political pressure. Tory politicians lobbying to get people sacked for disagreeing with Government policies should be laughed at, not pandered to. BBC should rethink.”

For the Prime Minister and Chancellor to be fined while parliament is in recess and cannot be held to account by MPs is extraordinary. The Met Police are literally a law unto themselves

Buried on page 199 of the Department of Health and Social Care’s annual report published yesterday is the shocking disclosure that it has incurred £8.7bn of losses - £8.7bn ! - on £12.1bn of PPE bought in 2020/21. Think about how that money could have been…

Respect for the late Queen Elizabeth from the EU. Flags at half mast

A member of Truss's own cabinet tells me Truss's and Kwarteng's governance is so dire that some Tory MPs would vote against her in a confidence vote, preferring even a general election that cost them their seats to the current economic chaos

Why did @KwasiKwarteng and @trussliz drop the abolition of the 45p top tax rate? Because super wealthy donors to the Tory party told them “we don’t need the money, we don’t want the money and you are bringing us into disrepute”. This is the highest political farce

Of course @BorisJohnson could have asked his wife, Carrie Johnson, who was with him and drinking (gin, I’m told), whether they were at a party, if he wasn’t sure

This makes me want to retire as a journalist, because I have been desperate to put Brexit in a simple nutshell, and the bloomin’ PM of Luxembourg has done it perfectly. Impossible to better. Sigh nitter.app/mattholehouse/status/9…

Theresa May absolutely savages @BorisJohnson on Downing St parties. The moment of the day

The Irish leaders’ debate is really quite shocking. The three leaders have a detailed grasp of complex welfare and tax issues, they are polite and courteous, they admit mistakes, they say sorry. They might even be largely honest. Why is all that possible in Ireland but not here?

Senior Tory MP: "We all f***ing hate her. But there is nothing we can do. She has totally f***ed us".

Just to be clear, it would be nonsensical for @AllegraCOP26 to have resigned if the Downing Street party had never happened, and she wasn't conspicuously making light of it. So she has just blown up the prime minister's "I've been assured the party never happened"

The police have today concluded that the PM, the Chancellor and the PM’s wife all attended illegal parties, that breached Covid laws written by the PM. This is most serious for Boris Johnson of the three of them, because it was he who told MPs on 8 December…

That was a truly remarkable resignation statement by Nicola Sturgeon. Whether or not you back her ideas and convictions, she has been one of the most important politicians of this generation. Her call for less irrationality and hysteria in politics should be heeded

Is it time to reform the honours system?

Mordaunt keeps saying Labour wants to return the UK to the disaster of the 1980s. I am finding this quite confusing. Because that was Thatcher’s heyday.

Wow. @trussliz has now over-ruled @Jeremy_Hunt and pre-committed that the state pension will rise in line with 10.1% inflation. This really is a car crash. “I’ve been clear we are protecting the triple lock” she says. Opposite of what Hunt told me on Monday

Gary Lineker was pulled off air by the BBC because he refused to issue a public apology for his tweets criticising the government’s Illegal Migration Bill, according to sources close to him. Lineker rejects the idea he breached social media guidelines, which is what…

In Downing Street there is a sense of injustice and considerable upset that the 126 Partygate fines have been levied disproportionately on women and junior officials. One source said: “the majority of [those fined] are very junior diary managers etc on 24k-ish and these fines…

MPs vote by 354 to 7 that Boris Johnson is an intentional and serial liar. No former prime minister has ever suffered quite such an indignity

A trio of extraordinary women have today changed the course of British politics in a fundamental way: Gina Miller, Joanna Cherry and Lady Hale. Wherever you stand on Brexit or Johnson, you’ve got to be impressed

It is eight weeks till we leave the EU. And we don’t know anything about what kind of Brexit it will be. I cannot really believe I wrote this and I am not dreaming.

Gary Neville says standard of leaders in this country has been poor over last two years, and that Southgate is a true leader.

.@susannareid100 asks Boris Johnson what he would do to help pensioner Elsie who can’t afford to stay at home because keeping heating on is too expensive and travels round London on bus all day. Johnson says that as London mayor he introduced the 24 hour freedom bus pass.

Tory minister: "Kwasi is toast"

Big shout of “you’re a wan**r Peston” after my live broadcast outside parliament. Great to get the recognition I deserve

Should MPs change the Brexit default from no-deal to “revoke article 50”? What do you think. It would mean UK automatically staying in EU rather than leaving without deal, in event that there is no negotiated exit. SNP have been contemplating putting up amendment to that...

Jarring moment at Exeter hustings was when Sunak said Truss’s Australia free trade deal was bad for GB farmers but he wouldn’t renegotiate because it would be wrong to rip up an international treaty. Hello! Paging Mr Sunak! NI Protocol Bill is holding for you on the other line

Twice now @pritipatel has been asked why these latest lockdown rules are not as tough as those in the first lockdown. Twice she has spoken at length and not engaged with the question at all. Very odd from an occupant of one of the the great offices of state

PM is not denying he said “all the sex pests are supporting me”. This is painful

.@Ed_Miliband in the Commons just now, opposing the PM and his attempt to legislate to over-ride the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, has given one of the most compelling speeches I have heard in a very long time. Tory MPs were looking extremely glum.

This is not going well for the BBC

It is completely clear from video footage that @MattHancock's adviser was not whacked by a protestor, as I was told by senior Tories, but that he inadvertently walked into a protestor's hand. I apologise for getting this wrong.

Abolition of top rate of tax by @KwasiKwarteng is opposed by 72% of voters, including 69% of Tory voters, says @YouGov for @thetimes. Similar proportions oppose scrapping of bankers’ bonus cap. This increasingly looks serious unforced error by @KwasiKwarteng and @trussliz

As a Jew, I have become increasingly worried that the charge of antisemitism is being levelled to silence legitimate and important debate. Antisemitism is on the rise, but there is also a rise in the unscrupulous use of the term to silence reasonable questions about the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. This article in the Harvard Crimson by Jewish community leader Bernie Steinberg warns of incipient McCarthyism. It is worth reading, whichever side of the debate you are on thecrimson.com/article/2023/…

I’ve had an identical email asking me to leave poor Boris Johnson alone from five “different people” (well five different email accounts). Subject line changes, body of email identical. “What an utter disgrace that you are causing trouble about the Prime Minister”. Etc. Weird

In many eyes, the reputation of Cressida Dick and the Met Police will be significantly damaged by the timing of her decision to investigate. There was plenty of prima facie evidence of crimes in Downing Street weeks ago. Dick refused to investigate then. She is only…

Quite striking that only 46 out of 365 Conservative MPs have turned up for this important debate on the standards to be followed by MPs and how they are enforced

.@michaelgove said just now that the difficulty in increasing number of #COVID19 tests was due to a shortage of the relevant "chemcial reagents". Well I've just talked to the Chemical Industries Association, which represents the UK's very substantial chemicals industry. It...

The ministerial code, revised today by the PM, seems to say that so long as the PM continues to have confidence in himself, he would not have to resign, even if he has breached the code (including, for example, being found guilty of willingly lying to parliament by…

I've rarely read legislation so lacking in underlying coherence and logic as today's bill from the government that would significantly restrict the right to strike - and I quote - in "health services, fire and rescue services, education services, transport...

This is not a great look for the party of free speech. I’ve seen heckling in my time and I am not sure this meets the threshold

It is the “secret Santa” detail in the Times about the Downing St party last 18 Dec that is a serious problem for the government. Because that would indicate it was properly planned, and should have been cancelled under Tier 3 rules. It is clear this story is not going away

Public servants, Whitehall, being told by PM that 91,000 are surplus to requirements and a pay rise of 3% is sufficient when inflation is heading for 10%. They’re also being told they are slackers if they work from home. Morale among public servants being tested, to put it mildly

Boris Johnson today calls Starmer “Sir Keir Schnorrer” (see attached). “Schnorrer” is the Yiddish word for beggar and scrounger. It is pretty offensive. It was part of the lingua franca of my grandparents and of my childhood. I find it unsettling to see Johnson appropriating it to describe someone whose wife is Jewish - and especially when he says “if Schnorrer gets in, he will immediately begin the process of robbing this country of its new-found independence and make the UK the punk of the EU”. What do you think? Am I being over sensitive?

BBC wants to be seen as rigorously impartial, it cannot apply the principles of impartiality selectively.

It’s extraordinary and unprecedented that @nadhimzahawi negotiated his multimillion pound tax settlement with @HMRCgovuk while Chancellor of the Exchequer. See attached. I am staggered this was thought appropriate by either the cabinet secretary or Treasury…

The number of times that Nadhim Zahawi breached the ministerial code of conduct over more than 18 months is breathtaking. Really quite extraordinary. It is almost comic that he did not include details of the outcome of the HMRC investigation in his declaration of interests...

party with a big majority is simply an elected dictatorship, and the constitution means little or nothing. This is not just a slippery slope. It is the bottom of the slope.

No one in or around SAGE and Nervtag is aware of any scientific advice given to the PM that the requirement to isolate for those infected with Covid19 should be terminated from end of the month. “It’s politics, isn’t it” is a typical reaction

A Tory ex minister: “what worries me is never again will we be able to accuse Labour of being fiscally reckless or believing in the magic money tree. This better work, or we are in deep trouble”.

Two things. 1) These are not petitioning-signing bots. They are very passionate people. 2) They want to revoke Article 50 and stay in the EU. Unsurprisingly there are no Brexiters here, or at least none I can see. So, as of now, they show the nation’s wounds, not a healing

Government announces the fracking vote is no longer a confidence vote - because of the scale of the expected rebellion by Tory MPs. Truss could not afford to expel them. It is no longer clear what authority she has over her party. Extraordinary. Yes (yawn), another u-turn

In case you missed, @neil_ferguson didn't simply say that locking down a week earlier would have saved 25,000 lives, he also said that while the policy was always to protect the elderly in care homes "the policy failed to be enacted till recently".

Look what is written by @SuellaBraverman on the face of the Illegal Migration bill - that this legislation may not be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights

Theresa May: "I also want to say to members of my own party that it is doubly important for us to show that we are prepared to act when one of our own - however senior - is found wanting." This ex PM appears to be telling the current PM Sunak he should be in House of Commons and should vote against Johnson, rather than abstaining. Biggest moment so far

As a matter of logic, the A level and looming GCSE mess is either the fault of the Secretary of State or of the PM and his chief adviser. So who will take responsibility? @GavinWilliamson or @BorisJohnson and D Cummings? It is not as though this was a complex unforseeable problem

I‘ve been banging on for months about how unsatisfactory it is that daily Covid19 infection figures exclude re-infections. Today’s record 78,610 STILL EXCLUDES re-infections, even though Omicron re-infects significant numbers who’ve had Covid19 previously. Nuts

This recent argument between @Tobias_Ellwood and @BorisJohnson is absolutely jaw dropping, and shows how little the prime minister and his advisors understood Putin and his ambitions

Do prime minister’s choose their podiums? Look at the difference between Truss’s and Sunak’s

It is slightly odd that the daily press conferences are being abolished, as of today, when the appalling economic phase of this crisis is only just starting

I understand Sue Gray has found the email from a senior official to PM’s principle private secretary Martin Reynolds warning him the 20 May party should not go ahead, as per Cummings’s revelation and my blog below. So huge…itv.com/news/2022-01-17/why-…

Thank you Wordle for helping me understand with dazzling clarity what it is to be British. I solved you, but I felt cheapened in the process. I think I am done with you

This from IMF is humiliating for Kwarteng and Truss: “Given elevated inflation pressures in many countries, including UK, we do not recommend large untargeted fiscal packages at this juncture, as it is important fiscal policy does not work at cross purposes to monetary policy”.

What I simply don’t understand about the graduated approach to Boris Johnson’s sanctions against Russian banks and oligarchs is anyone who thinks they will be targeted will now be shipping their liquid assets out of London by the lorry load

Andrew Mitchell: “he no longer enjoys my support”. A Tory ex chief whip on Boris Johnson. This is turning into a disaster for @BorisJohnson

Imagine handing £150bn to British businesses and people in a single year in energy subsidies and tax cuts - the biggest giveaway in history - and then seeing your party’s popularity sink 33 points below Labour’s. Wow.

If Sunak over-ruled advice of cabinet secretary Case when re-appointing Suella Braverman as cabinet secretary, as believed, serious constitutional issues are raised, especially the role of cab sec in making sure ministers are not a security risk. @johnmcdonnellMP, member…

If this wasn’t a real conversation between a PM and his scientific and political advisers about a lethal pandemic, it would be funny. Sadly it is real and thoroughly depressing. Is the teaching of maths at Eton so poor? Johnson: “What is the mortality rate of Covid?” @Telegraph

“Nobody wanted Allegra [Stratton] to resign. I was very sad when she did” says @BorisJohnson. So why on earth did he lay into her at #PMQs after @itvnews showed the press conference rehearsal video that seemingly made light of Downing St parties?

.@RoryStewartUK electrified this tent. He delivered the most coherent and lyrical launch speech of any candidate. On this showing the Tories have found a proper star. But they will reject him, because his “moderate” views are out of touch with his party. Labour will be relieved

We’ve got an official opposition tearing itself apart over antisemitism, the founder of the EDL running rings around the judiciary and a government negotiating a Brexit plan that its own MPs and ministers tell me is dead. When will we pull ourselves together, as a nation?

You really should not complain about the quality of our politicians if you are too apathetic to vote. I know it is a cliche that people died winning us our democratic rights. But it is also true. Don’t dishonour them. Please vote today - or if you insist on abstaining…

You know that Downing Street Xmas party that the government party denies ever happened, well @itvnews has exclusive footage of a mock Downing St press conference four days after in which head of broadcast Ed Oldfield and @AllegraCOP26 joke about it. itv.com/news/2021-12-07/no-1…

Starmer: “I believe in honour, integrity and the principle that those who make the laws should follow them…if the police decide to issue me with a fixed penalty notice I would do the right thing and step down”

Poland not only hands over all its MiG fighters to the US for transfer to the Ukraine airforce but calls on all other countries with comparable jets to also transfer them. This is the kind of western unity that was incredibly rare before Putin invaded Ukraine

Super wealthy private-equity investor Guy Hands says the British economy is “frankly doomed” unless the government succeeds in fundamentally changing the Brexit negotiated by Boris Johnson. He says Truss’s disastrous unfunded tax cuts were necessitated by Brexit but…

It turns out Liz Truss willfully misrepresented her own public sector pay proposals

The prime minister saying a fall in the price of government debt is not the same as a rise in interest rates is bizarre. It is by definition a rise in interest rates. On @bbclaurak

Unless - presumably - the families are wearing Barbours and carrying shotguns

This is so upsetting. The climate-change protestors were, according to the police and friends who were there, wholly peaceful. Why on earth does Field react with such ferocity? The violence of his intervention is quite wrong.

Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor George Osborne chased across the world to recruit, has just endorsed Rachel Reeves to be the UK’s next chancellor. Remarkable

Important additional detail about @itvnews scoop pictures of the PM drinking at Nov 2020 leaving do for his director of comms: the police have fined some who were at the party. It was therefore an illegal party. No explanation from Met about why they didn’t fine @BorisJohnson

According to @TheIFS analysis, the only people benefiting from the combination of tax cuts and frozen tax thresholds are those earning more than £150,000 a year.

Tory confidence vote result. 211Tory MPs have confidence in Boris Johnson. 148 do not have confidence. This is a bad result for the prime minister. He is not supported by 41% of the party. If history is a guide, he is seriously wounded

One of Buffett’s most famous aphorisms is “only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked”. This applies in spades to the many members of the political and financial establishment who took money and favours from Russian oligarchs and kleptocrats…

The projection from @sajidjavid that infections could surge to a record 100,000 a day in a few weeks, as all social distancing and mask-wearing regulations are removed, is especially terrifying for those whose immune systems are impaired or are clinically vulnerable in…

Inevitably after Truss’s resignation, all the talk is of @BorisJohnson running again and how popular he is with Tory members. But this is to forget that he is still to be in effect tried by the Commons privileges committee for allegedly lying wilfully to MPs. If PM again, this…

Pay growth for the private sector was 6.9% Aug to Oct, and 2.7% for the public sector, says @ONS. The rejected pay offers to nurses, teachers and the rest are nowhere near private-sector settlements. It is no wonder there are crippling staff shortages throughout public services

It is very odd that Boris Johnson’s old mobile phone has - he says - not been switched on since April 2021. It is the phone that contains all the WhatsApps and messages relevant to Hallett’s Covid-19 inquiry, and presumably to Partygate. Has it really not been examined by Johnson, or his lawyers, or the Cabinet Office, or the security services since then? Did Sue Gray not ask to see it? What about the Privileges Committee? Did no one till today remember that it contains so much precious data? It wasn’t a secret that Johnson was asked for security reasons to stop using it, because his number was in the public domain. So it makes no sense that there has apparently been no attempt to re-activate it. Apart from anything else, if the fear was that Russia and China had hacked the phone, wouldn’t it be sensible to know what they would have found there?

As I said just now on @itv, deep concern that rapid electronic voting by Tory members for new leader brings risk of overseas bad actor, like Russia, hacking the poll and choosing Britain’s new prime minister

This is amazing. Boris Johnson is refusing to commit to Bernard Jenkin he won’t dissolve parliament to save himself. This is quite astonishing.

Now that it is over, I can say I have never known a say of such chaos and confusion in UK politics. Just crazy

This was what I say at the start of #Peston tonight. It's on ITV at 10.45. As a journalist I have spent more or less my entire career weighing up stories by whether they are truly in the public interest or just interesting to the public. This has been on my mind a lot, following the allegations in the Sun newspaper about a BBC presenter and a young person, and a relationship between them that their parents alleged was harmful and possibly illegal. Tonight we heard from the Met Police that it had found no evidence of criminality. Shortly afterwards Vicky Flind made a public statement that the presenter is her husband, one of the most famous presenters in the country Huw Edwards, with whom I worked very closely when I was at the bbc. What few of you will know is that Vicky Flind is the editor of this show, and the person who created it with me - though she hasn't been involved tonight or at all this week. The Labour MP Jess Phillips tonight described Vicky as the nicest, kindest and most decent woman. I and everyone who works with me here would agree. It has been difficult to feel what she and her family have been going through - and to read her statement that Huw has been hospitalised with acute depression. None of this is to minimise complaints that have been made against Huw - or to ignore the suggestion that people and their families may have been hurt. I don't know exactly what he did, or why. The question however is whether - if it remains clear as the police say no crime was committed - there was a public interest in publishing the original story and in the subsequent coverage. Though at this point Vicky would tell me to get on with the show. So we will.

Am not quite sure what to say about this.

Out of interest, why is almost no Tory MP or minister pointing out how completely inappropriate it is for the US head of state to launch personal attack on serving British head of government? Are no international conventions important any more? @theresa_may @realDonaldTrump

I am going to try to explain why the Bank of England has gone into the market to buy up to £65bn of UK government bonds with maturities of 20 years or more, including £1bn today. It all stems from a dramatic collapse in the price of these government bonds, called gilts, a...

PM in a nutshell: “I’m sorry for going to a party that I could not see was a party and ‘technically’ may not have been. I take full responsibility but I am waiting to hear from Sue Gray because I don’t know what to do”. As Tory MPs tell me, it won’t stand. More want him to quit

Shadow attorney general ⁦@LordCFalconer⁩ makes whithering attack on attorney general ⁦@SuellaBraverman⁩ for defending Cummings on Twitter, saying she committed a “serious constitutional impropriety”. Senior Tories have privately said the same to me

.⁦⁦⁦@elashton⁩ reports that minutes after addressing 50 Tory MPs in a room with a notice saying capacity was 29, ⁦@BorisJohnson⁩’s office tweeted that meeting in groups of more than 30 is illegal, punishable with huge fine. Satire is dead bloomberg.com/news/articles/…