The News Agents: Sunak v Johnson: it's war

Boris Johnson asked me to do something that I wasn't prepared to do because I didn't think

it was right. That was to either overrule the Holac committee or to make promises with people.

Now, I wasn't prepared to do that. As I said, I didn't think it was right.

And if people don't like that, then tough. That was the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak

hanging his predecessor Boris Johnson out to dry. He's come out fighting. He's telling us publicly

that he rejected Boris Johnson's requests to bend the rules, break the rules for his resignation

honours list. A few moments ago, we got the response from Boris Johnson, who said Rishi Sunak

is talking rubbish. To honour these privileges, it wasn't necessary to overrule the Appointments

Committee of the House of Lords, but simply to ask them to renew their vetting, a mere formality.

This is what open warfare looks like between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.

And in a way, the framing for what is happening, not only in London, but in Edinburgh as well,

with Nicola Sturgeon's arrest, is as we turn into this new political week. How, if you're a leader

who has followed a titan in your politics, a predecessor from your own party who is causing

you endless trouble, how do you deal with them? Do you keep them close? Do you put distance between

you and them? And what is the cost if you do so? Welcome to the News Agents.

The News Agents. This is Emily in News Agents HQ. And it's Lewis in Edinburgh in Holyrood,

the Scottish Parliament. And we'll be talking about the SMP later. And indeed, another titan

who has left us, Berlusconi. But we start in Westminster because of what happened between

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, which paved the way for this battle. And we should reference Tim

Shipman, because so much of this came from his account of a meeting between the two of them.

In which the question of honours, as in the honours list, was never meant to come up.

But it did at Boris's insistence. And Rishi Sunak was able to say to Boris Johnson

that he hadn't removed any of the names from Boris Johnson's honours list, given to him

by the body we're going to call Holak. It's the House of Lords Appointment Committee.

And that, we understand, at least in the Rishi Sunak version, is technically true. Because the

House of Lords Appointment Committee had all ready removed key names of those four sitting MPs

that wanted to go into the Lords quite simply because they were still sitting MPs. It seems

that Boris Johnson, the man of no detail, had once again failed to read the details,

written down in the rules for everyone to see that sitting MPs could not ascend straight to the House

of Lords. And by the time the House of Lords Appointment Committee had taken them off, and it

had fed back to Boris Johnson, and he'd asked Rishi Sunak to step in, Rishi Sunak was able to say,

sorry, I'm not going to overrule the House of Lords Appointment Committee because that's not

what I do. That's not what a prime minister of integrity would do. Q. Boris Johnson's fury,

his fury bleeding into Nadine Doris. We know that he also learned about the findings of the

Privileges Committee, which was threatening to recommend a suspension of more than 10 days,

recommending the key word, not insist upon. And that led to that, what I called on Friday,

the longest howl of self-pity in history, a thousand words from Boris Johnson, where he stepped down,

and a couple of his friends stepped down as well, triggering what looks like three more

by-election headaches for Rishi Sunak sometime at the end of July.

A. Isn't it extraordinary, Emily, that the thing which, or maybe it's not extraordinary,

maybe it absolutely aligns with the way Boris Johnson does politics and the way the turn the

politics within his bit with the Conservative Party has gone. The thing which has caused this

ultimate conflagration, leaving the Privileges Committee element to one side, is not some great

point of principle, not some great ideological question. Johnson tried to pretend that some of

this was about ideology, saying we needed a true Conservative government, low attacks and all this

sort of stuff. It's none of that. It's about whether or not some of his mates, some of his allies,

get a place in the legislature for life. Something they already have places in the

legislature. They're already MPs. They haven't really, by the way, given neither Doris nor Adams,

given any real explanation to their constituents. Why is that they have decided to leave Parliament

having been elected in 2019, not finishing their term? Other than, apparently, it seems,

a fit of peak that they were promised something, that they were assured something, these places

in the legislature for life, and then don't get them for whatever reason, either because of the

House of Lords Commission, because of Sunat. Whatever the reason is, whether Sunat portrayed

what he said to Johnson, whatever it is, what an extraordinary kind of turn of events and an

extraordinary set of events, that that is the thing that should make you walk away from your

seat in the Commons, for which you were elected, and for which your constituents thought you were

going to serve a full term. Totally in keeping, though. I mean, if you cast your mind back to

the beginning, if you like, of the Johnson downfall, which was over Owen Patterson, why on earth would

you try and protect a man who'd once again fallen foul of parliamentary rules? Why would you come

to the defence of Chris Pinscher, whom he knew had been, on previous occasions, accused of sexual

assault? Why would you keep running to defend people in these situations, which actually puts you,

once again, in contempt of Parliament, where it's trying to overturn the Ethics Committee

over Owen Patterson, whether it's trying to ignore the findings of colleagues over Chris Pinscher,

and now it's the House of Lords' Appointment Committee, we know that he has overwritten

it himself in the past with the appointment of Peter Crudus, trying to put pressure on Rishi

Sunak to do the same for him. And it's a really easy win for Rishi Sunak here. He doesn't have to

do very much. He just has to say no. He just has to say no, because that breaks with precedent.

And that's the thing. I mean, as ever with these people, we're always constantly told,

and they constantly told us that what they cared about was restoring the honour of Parliament,

the integrity of Parliament, parliamentary sovereignty. And yet, each and every turn,

Johnson has abused Parliament, and its procedures, and its institutions, and its mechanisms,

and has done so even in the manner of his departure, so have his allies. The weird thing is, in terms

of where this leads Sunak, is it's, I think it's a potentially quite important moment for him

stepping into the role of Prime Minister and stepping away and out of Johnson's shadow.

Today, that clip is going to get played, and we've just played it, it's going to get played

everywhere, it's going to get played on the news headlines, it's going to get played on the

six and ten o'clock news. And it's potentially one of the most important things he said, because

up to now, he and his allies have been performing this, this delicate dance, where they've always

sort of paid homage to Johnson. They've always said yes, there were difficulties, but you know,

I think he was a fantastic Prime Minister, you know, he had so many achievements to his name,

etc. They were trying to have it both ways. Today, and we saw the glimmers of it with the Grant

Shaps interview at the weekend as well, where he said the world has moved on. I think in the last

24-48 hours, we've seen the first real attempts by Team Sunak and the people around him to quite

consciously put distance, political distance, between him and Johnson. Now, in a way, because

of the turn of events, they probably didn't have much of a choice, they've kind of been forced

into it, they're making the best of a bad situation. One of the critiques that's often

levelled at Sunak is this idea that he's brittle, or that he's weak, or that he's not his own man.

This is the clearest attempt yet to try and move away from that. But nonetheless, it is,

I think, important for him. The other thing in terms of the parliamentary kind of mechanics of

it, this is a really weird attempt to destabilise Sunak, right? Because on the one hand, yes,

they're destabilising him. These by-elections are going to potentially destabilise him in a

significant way. But as plots go, it is deeply fitful, because all they can do with this is

wound but not kill. By resigning, they are taking themselves out of the arena, where politics and

the leader of the Conservative Party is decided. Sunak may well be exchanging three Conservative

MPs for three Opposition MPs, but in reality, these three Conservative MPs, what Opposition MPs anyway?

So although it is going to destabilise him, yes, although it's potentially going to be a very,

very difficult day if he loses two or three of these by-elections, and we're told they are going

to be on the same day sooner rather than later, yes, he has also lost his principal opponent

within the Commons, and at least two people who are now out of the picture cannot rally around

an alternatives for candidate, cannot plot or scheme from within. So as attempts to destabilise

an incumbent go, it is a novel one, and I suspect not an especially effective one.

Yeah, I think that's right, because actually, having real enemies as in from opposition parties

are probably going to be less of a headache to Rishi Sunak than having enemies within your own

party who you know would like to see you fail just as much as they would like the opposition

leader to fail, maybe more in fact. Just in terms of the sequence of events this morning, we think

that the Privileges Committee are right now looking over that final report before the rest of us get

to see it in the next, I don't know, 24 or 48 hours. But one of the things that they are now

considering on top of the whole question of whether Boris Johnson knowingly misled Parliament

is actually his own statement on Friday in which he accused them of being a kangaroo court.

They are likely to consider further sanctions for contempt of Parliament, not just of Boris

Johnson, but also possibly for his supporters who we understand have been trying to petition

the Privileges Committee to change their language. So this whole question of whether he had knowingly

misled Parliament has now turned into another dive into the whole question of whether he has

had contempt for Parliament by calling to question the impartiality of the actual committee.

This is the man who loved believing in the sovereignty of Parliament. Don't forget that

was what it was all meant to be about. You know, the whole of Brexit was about waving goodbye to

Brussels, waving goodbye to these undemocratic, unelected leaders that were lauding over it

with their rules, giving the power back to Parliament. It just turns out that when Parliament

says the wrong thing about you, you don't like it so much and suddenly Parliament's the kangaroo

court. Joining us now is Lord Nicholas Somes. Lord Somes, what did you make first of all if we just

take you back to Friday of that resignation letter by Boris Johnson? Well, I thought it was

a bit over the top to tell you the honest truth, but obviously at the time Boris Johnson would have

felt very, very, very strongly about what he had been told about the report. I have to tell you

that I don't think it was a letter that carried a great deal of power or strength because of its

mere hyperbole. You sound slightly sympathetic towards him. Well, I don't really ever like a

big beast falling over in politics. I didn't like it when Margaret Thatcher fell over.

I don't like these very public occasions, which are quite often for good reasons, and it's not

that I'm sympathetic to him. I think I'm afraid he is entirely the architect of his own misfortunes,

but I think it's a mistake to pretend that he won't be considered to have been

for all his myriad failings, and we all have failings, but his were, his are written bigger

than most. He will be marked as a prime minister of consequence. You're a committed parliamentarian.

It's run in the family. When you hear Boris Johnson calling the privileges committee a kangaroo

court, I wonder what your sense is of his respect for that body? Well, I think it's a really stupid

thing to say. It is not a kangaroo court. It's created by parliament to examine very,

very serious, very serious matters, very serious allegations. It was the right place to do it.

I mean, I think to call out the committee in the way he did was extremely foolish on his part,

and I really wish he hadn't done it because it means that people will have a chance to

believe that this isn't what it really is, which is a part of the high court of parliament

rightfully assembled to deal with this matter. It really is. It's very, very important committee.

Lotten, you always strike me as someone for whom honor matters in politics. Do you think that

Boris Johnson has acted honorably in this affair? I think it's all run away from him, I'm afraid,

and you read articles by people like Max Hastings and Matthew Said and

Anthony Sheldon yesterday, brilliant article of people who have got to know him much better

than I do, but who really do believe that he pushed all these things to the very limit.

And all I can say is that you look at, I really do think that we've got to get away from this

personality thing. I think the life of our country has to move on from Colonel Boris Manier

and hyperbole as a time of the greatest economic, social, political, and indeed,

possibly military difficulty. And I think you have a prime minister who is by common consent doing

the very best he possibly can under very difficult circumstances. And I think that

Boris needs to, if I was him, go quietly now. You know, I think this is genuinely

no longer for further serious consideration. It is extraordinary to have heard a sitting

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak today telling us publicly that his predecessor, this great beast,

as you said, was basically asking him to do something really shady, really immoral,

and change the contents of the list of the House of Commons Appointment Committee. I mean,

doesn't that strike you as an appalling state of affairs for a party? It's not just for the party,

it's an appalling state of affairs that, to be frank, that Boris feels that it's okay to ask for

that. That is the appalling state of affairs, yes, unqualified, yes. And the Prime Minister refused

to do it because, as he said, it was the wrong thing to do. So he didn't do it and quite right

to him too. So I honestly think this thing is going to come to a, it has to come to a conclusion

now. We must be allowed to get on with our government for Parliament, for the House of Commons,

for the Cabinet, for ministers to get on with their jobs without worrying about this endless

sort of psycho drama going off stage. Boris has decided to stand down from Parliament.

He's made his decision, he is no longer part of this, and he needs, if I may say so respectfully,

he really does need to, I think, moderate, very, very carefully what he says, and just give it

a break and allow a Conservative government to get on with doing what it has to do.

Would you like him to exit politics completely at this point? I mean, if he wanted to stand again,

should Rishi Sunak say no? I don't know what the Prime Minister would feel about that,

but I would just think it's a very bad idea. He is a brilliant journalist, no doubt a newspaper

will offer him, will stuff his mouth with gold, and he'll be given, you know, very highly paid

journalist jobs. He speaks all over the world. He's going to earn himself a great deal of money,

and it sounds to me as though in building his new family at home and getting himself organised,

he's going to need to be able to earn money. And I think that Parliament, to be frank now,

needs to get over the Boris Johnson saga and get on with being the government.

Lord Sames, your relationship with Boris Johnson was pretty complicated. You were suspended as an

MP over the whole question of the Brexit debate, really. You were then reinstated. You were then

made a peer last year. I wonder how you see this current honours list. I mean, do you feel that

those people on it, sanctioned by Boris Johnson, who is being investigated, who may have been found

of willfully misled Parliament, should go through? That is a matter of the House of Lords commission.

I'm very grateful to have been nominated as a peer every year ago. I did fall out with Boris.

I mean, he withdrew the whip, and he was incidentally, as you and I discussed before, actually perfectly

entitled to draw the whip from me and 21 others, because we were not going to vote for his landmark

legislation. And you can't have people in your party who are not going to vote for the main

piece of business. But we made it up. And I'm just so sad to see someone like Boris

condemned to look like this now, really very, very shabby. And to talk of Parliament as being a

kangaroo court is just absolute rubbish. And if I was him, I really would go a little bit

quietly now, and let the government get on with it. Nicholas Sames, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. You know, what I think is really fascinating about that, and you can hear it

in a lot of conservatives, and we've already talked about up to now the kind of ambivalence

of Sunak and how this delicate dance that they've tried to perform. I think Boris Johnson

does occupy a very unusual place in the psychology of the Conservative Party, right?

It truly is love hate, in the sense that this is a guy who everyone knows, he doesn't care about

the Conservative Party very much in the way that, say, Theresa May did. It's sort of her family.

It means so much to her. And other Conservative leaders are like that as well. It's always been

a vehicle for him. It's always been a vehicle for him to achieve power. You can totally imagine

if some other vehicle came along, sort of Berlusconi-like, and we can talk about that later,

he would absolutely alight on it. If he thought that he and Farage could set up some outfit,

particularly if we had Piase that would lead him somehow to be a kingmaker or prime minister again,

he'd do it. It's a means to an end. And they know that, and they know he's going to spend the next

how many years in a telegraph column or a mail column or whatever, sending hand grenade after

hand grenade into the government and into Sunak. And yet, they are strangely sort of grateful to him,

because they do look at that period of 2019 where the Conservative Party had been brought so low,

he did break the Ampass, albeit highly imperfectly. We know with what happened with Northern Ireland

and so on. They are still sort of in awe of his political alchemy, even though, as we know,

in reality, it's faded so much. But this is a guy who I think is going to forever occupy a very,

very unusual place within the hearts and minds of the Conservative Party, much like Thatcher.

They're going to be talking about him and comparing themselves to him for years, if not decades to come.

Yeah, I think it's really interesting to hear that tenor from Lord Soames, and it took me right back

to 2019 when I interviewed him, he referred to it. And he was suspended. I mean, can you imagine

taking the whip, the Conservative whip away from Winston Churchill's grandson? This is Boris Johnson,

who always tried to pretend, you know, really weirdly that he was the incarnation, the re-embodiment

of Churchill, couldn't be further from the truth. Taking the whip away from Nicholas Soames and 20

others purely because they believed in the integrity, the sovereignty, actually, of parliament at a time

when Boris Johnson was involved in, you know, not least in trying to prorogue the whole body.

And yet even then, Nicholas Soames told me he was quite phlegmatic. He was like, well, you know,

he's the Prime Minister and if you can't get your people to do what you want, then you have to suspend

them. And then, of course, he was brought back as a Lord, as a peer. And so there is this endless sense,

I think, of forgiveness and a sense of sort of wanting it all to be fine. You know, they want

these icons. They want Boris Johnson to be Thatcher, not an Andrew Johnson. They don't want

him to be a Nixon. They don't want him to be even a shabby Trump. They want him to be someone whose

picture hangs on the wall of 10 Downing Street. And they can all point to him and go, oh, you know,

one of our brightest and best. Not, oh, my God, what a tawdry end to that awful little man.

We should just explain Andrew Johnson was a failed president in the United States,

not one of the many Johnson siblings who easily could. They're probably,

there probably is an Andrew Johnson out there somewhere. I'll get sued.

Anyway, we are going to leave one political psycho drama in London and just talk about another one.

It just happens to be in Edinburgh, where I am, right after this.

This is the news agents.

Welcome back. So the news gods were smiling on journalists, if not crying on politicians over

the weekend. I mean, Lenin once said, right, that there are years where decades happen. I'd

like to see him, what his assessment is of a weekend in British politics in the early 2020s,

because it was just extraordinary. If not one, three conservative MPs resigning over a 48 to 72

hour period. But then we find out yesterday afternoon that Nicola Sturgeon has been arrested

as part of the ongoing Police Scotland investigation into the Scottish National

Party's finances, which has already led to the arrest without charge, has to be said,

of both her husband, Peter Murrell, former longstanding chief executive of the SNP,

and the former SNP party treasurer as well. And the same pattern occurred yesterday,

where Sturgeon presented herself in this case. She was with police for about seven hours,

arrested at 10 o'clock, and then released at five o'clock without charge, pending further

investigation. And this has shocked not only the Scottish political world, but the British

political world as well. There was a sense that perhaps this investigation into the party's finances

was in abeyance, that Sturgeon herself had not been arrested and perhaps was going to escape that.

She had started to re-emerge on Twitter and within Scottish politics as well. Humza Yousaf

talking about her only yesterday in a prerecorded interview on the BBC, saying that he'd been in

close contact with her. And then lo and behold, this arrest comes. And of course,

it has been ever since Sturgeon resigned, and this scandal had exploded. It has been the introduction

to the nation from hell for Humza Yousaf, the Scottish First Minister, who was of course one

of Sturgeon's protégés, who owed so much of his political rise to her, who was her preferred

candidate. And again, we've been talking about a merry political dance for Rishi Sunak, and even

finer dances had to be performed by Yousaf. And now the big question has been whether or not Yousaf

is going to suspend Sturgeon as long as this investigation is ongoing and this arrest has

been made. And until such time, if they do, the police say that they're going to cease the inquiry.

And Yousaf, of course, was asked about this today on a visit to Inverness, and he's not going to do

it. This is what he said. No, I won't be suspending Nicholas Sturgeon. I'll be treating her exactly

in the same way as I treated, for example, Colin Beattie, both released without charge,

and therefore there's no reason for me to suspend them. It's been pretty personally

painful, if I'm honest. I think people know and have heard me talk about my personal friendship,

my mad admiration for Nicholas Sturgeon, so I know how difficult a day would have been,

not just for her, but the entire party and for the SNP, and as I say for many of us personally.

But I've got to separate out that personal, one of those personal feelings that may be

a bit of a feeling, but the job is not just the SNP leader, but importantly,

as First Minister. And that's why, of course, as you'd expect, I couldn't comment on a live

police investigation. So there you are. And obviously, the cry of hypocrisy has already

gone up from his political opponents, because Nicholas Sturgeon herself, when she was past

the leader of First Ministers, suspended a whole array of different politicians for offences

which were far less grave in nature. And one other thing, Emily, which is absolutely mind-blowing

to consider, which is there have been three SNP First Ministers now, and two of them have ended

up arrested at some point in their post First Minister career. Obviously, what happened with

Alex Salmond, he eventually obviously went to trial and was acquitted. And now we have this

situation with Nicholas Sturgeon, very different sorts of offences potentially involved. But my

word, absolutely extraordinary, of course, the SNP are now reeling. So we're joined now by Douglas

Ross, who is the Scottish Conservative leader. We're slightly in the wrong place, Douglas,

I'm in Hollywood, you're in Westminster, you're still at MP though, of course, so I suppose

that makes sense. Yeah, and the Scottish Fear Select Committee meets on a Monday, so I'm always

down here for that. There you go, fair enough. You shouldn't tell us things like that, you'll be in

here to write it. So we should kick off, shouldn't we, with everything that's going on in Edinburgh.

The First Minister has said that he won't be suspending Nicholas Sturgeon. What do you make

of that? What's your response to that? Well, he has to suspend Nicholas Sturgeon, and it's just

weak if he refuses to do so. And quite frankly, Nicholas Sturgeon would have suspended Nicholas

Sturgeon because when she was leader of the party, she suspended a number of MPs who were under

investigation by the police. And this is the exact same situation. So I really don't understand why

it was good enough for her when she was leader of the party. And now her continuity candidate is

refusing to do the same now that he's in charge. So I'm very clear that Nicholas Sturgeon should

be suspended from the SNP, and it is a sign of great weakness that Hamza Yousef has now refused

to do so. Do you think she should stand down from Parliament? Yeah, I mean, look, there is obviously

innocent and total proven otherwise. But Nicholas Sturgeon, when she was leader of the SNP, took

a very clear approach that when her elected members were under police investigation, we know that

Nicholas Sturgeon was arrested yesterday. She was released without charge after seven hours of

interview by officers from Police Scotland. And therefore, as a very minimum, she should

be suspended. It does seem extraordinary that given where the SNP is now, and obviously innocent

until proven guilty, and we haven't seen anyone charged, and we have to remember that, that the

Tories in Scotland still don't really have a leg to stand on, Douglas, that all the gains appear to

be going to Stammer on the other side, and the independence actually in polling hasn't shifted

at all. But neither of those things are true. Actually, the most recent opinion poll in Scotland

had Labour down four points and the Conservatives up four points. So there is a change throughout the

political process in Scotland, and we are seeing a number of different areas where

the Scottish Conservatives are the key challengers to the SNP. And indeed, we are the only party that

can stop the SNP. You don't really believe that. Well, I absolutely do. If you look at my seat,

for example, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are so far behind, they could never win in Murray. So

if the Conservatives didn't win my Murray seat, then the gain would go to the SNP. Likewise,

in many SNP held seats, Labour and the Lib Dems are far too far behind to actually defeat the SNP.

So we've got a very sophisticated electorate in Scotland, and I think they understand that in

many parts of the country, the best way of getting the SNP out of power, and certainly at the next

Westminster election, out of their local seat is by supporting the Scottish Conservatives. And we've

seen that in repeated elections. I was just going to say 2016, we defied all the polls and became

the largest opposition party. And in 2021, we did the same again, had our best ever election result,

when no disrespect journalists like yourself were saying, we didn't have a right to stand on,

and we wouldn't be doing very well. Well, we've shown in the past that we can do that.

The electorate presumably sophisticated enough to look right now at the Conservatives and say,

what a basket case of a party. Well, I think what they're seeing in Scotland, because, you know,

I'm representing a Scottish constituency, and also serving the Scottish Parliament.

Just look more widely at the party, because I think that still plays into what you're standing

for. And you're standing for a party that has just seen Boris Johnson resign, calling a privileges

committee a kangaroo court, triggering by elections, and putting pressure, we understand,

on the current Prime Minister, to change the House of Lords appointment committee's mind.

And look at the contrast there. The current Prime Minister said, Boris Johnson asked him to do

something that he thought would be totally wrong, and he refused to do so. And he said this morning,

if you disagree with that, tough. And I think that is a very strong message from Rishi Sunak,

in comparison to Hamza Yusuf, who is so weak, he can't even continue with a precedent his

predecessor said, and suspend Nicola Sturgeon, now that she's been arrested and questioned by

the police. Douglas, do you think that there are lots of rumours that Boris Johnson might

try and stand in another seat, whether it's a media or at some point in the future? Do you

think if he tries, that given what he's tried to do, which is destabilise his leader, your leader,

your national leader, anyway, do you think that Rishi Sunak and CCHQ should say no, that isn't allowed?

Well, I think definitely on the immediate question, I don't think that is a possibility,

because my understanding is the nominations to be candidates in these by elections closes at

five o'clock tonight. So the time frame for that, there were some rumours over the weekend or

Friday evening that he might stand down in his current seat and stand for Nadine Doris' seat,

and it was also a master plan. I don't see how that is practically possible. I'm not going to

look too far into the future, because one thing that none of us have seen discussing this at the

moment is the report from the Privileges Committee. But I do believe that that is a report that we

have to pay great attention to and respect, because of course it was Boris Johnson as Prime Minister

who agreed, and his government agreed, there was no division in the House of Commons.

Every MP agreed that we would hand this over to the Privileges Committee to investigate.

Do you understand why Rishi Sunak has okayed the Honour's List without, as you say,

any of us having seen the Privileges report?

Well, I think they are two separate things, because every Prime Minister has as a right

to have this resignation honours list.

When they're being investigated by the police.

Well, he's not being investigated by the police.

Well, he is for further breaches of lockdown of party game.

Well, that is, I think, because of the Cabinet Office material that became available during

the COVID-19 inquiry, and I'm not sure how far that's going to go, and it's fairly recent.

No, I'm just saying, you're having to remind yourself what he's actually being accused of now,

whether it's potentially misleading Parliament willfully, or whether it's potentially contempt

of Parliament for calling the whole Committee a kangaroo court, or whether it's potentially

police investigations.

If you were the Prime Minister right now, wouldn't you pause for a moment and say,

let's not just rush through this honours list?

Well, I don't think it has been rushed, because I think I saw in the documents that it was February

that the House of Lords Commission...

Well, even weirder then.

No, well, the House of Commons Commission looked at this, and it's gone back to the Prime Minister,

and then it goes to the King.

But there is a precedent that is set that incoming Prime Ministers don't interfere

with their predecessor's resignation list, but I think the strongest...

Even if they're a being investigated, even if they've misled Parliament,

are you happy with that, Douglas?

Seriously?

Can you imagine the precedent that would set that if a Labour Prime Minister leaves office,

and a Conservative Prime Minister comes in in the future, should a Conservative Prime Minister

get to manipulate what the previous Prime Minister from a different party had put forward?

Manipulate is quite a strong word.

Well, that's what you're asking for.

When you're looking at a predecessor who actually is standing accused at the moment

of willfully misleading Parliament.

I'm just asking, whether you as Prime Minister would say,

yeah, I know we've got that small issue of misleading Parliament,

but you crack on.

You get your honours anyway.

Well, I think the two are quite separate.

There is an investigation that's almost complete.

We will know, I think, later on today or tomorrow, the outcome of that.

I don't think that will be hidden or be put in a drawer just because Boris Johnson is no longer

Prime Minister.

And I think the most important thing is that we look to what the committee came up with,

the recommendations, and as I say, that was a committee that was tasked to do that by every

single MP in the Parliament.

There was no division.

It was a government led by Boris Johnson at the time that agreed to it.

But Douglas, I assume that if what we assume is correct that the Privilegeist Committee

are going to recommend suspension of more than 20 days,

I assume you would have voted for it, correct?

Yes, I was on record.

I said it just a few weeks ago actually,

particularly when the Margaret Ferrier situation came up.

We as a Parliament nominate people to go on these committees.

I'm nominated to go on the Scottish Fair Select Committee.

And I wouldn't expect MPs if we have significant recommendations like this to vote against it.

So I would have supported the recommendations of the committee.

So on that basis, you would agree with the committee

that Johnson knowingly lied, misled Parliament?

Well, if that's their final outcome, and I'm just couching it because I haven't seen the report.

Of course, I understand that.

If you help me back on tomorrow and I've seen the report and I've read the report,

presumably he wouldn't have resigned unless that was...

That's very likely, but we don't know if it's 10 days, 11 days, 20 days, etc.

and the wording that they use.

And also, I think there are some discussions about, as you were saying,

the most recent revelations as well.

I don't know if they're included or not in this Privileges Committee report.

But that's their conclusion and you would agree with that and then you would vote for it.

So you must see, you say they're separate,

but does it not make you feel uncomfortable or can you not see how the average member of the public

might feel about a man who his own peers have adjudged to have lied to them

and by extension of the country being allowed contemporaneously to appoint his friends

to the House of Lords, his political operatives to the House of Lords for life.

You must see that that's a problem.

So you say, oh, we don't want to set a precedent.

This is an unprecedented situation.

We've never had a Prime Minister who's done this, not in recent history anyway.

Yeah, but these nominations were made, of course, you know,

before certainly he gave evidence to the committee and he gave it.

Yeah, but he'd already lied.

The nominations were made after he lied.

No, but what I'm saying is there was still a due process to go through.

And there has been a process for these nominations to go through as well.

Again, I think you're happy with the Honours List.

No, no, look, what I'm saying is there is a precedent that Prime Ministers,

when they leave absolutely uncharted times,

I'm just asking whether you are happy with the Boris Johnson resignation Honours List.

I accept that there is a precedent there that Prime Ministers,

when they leave office, can nominate people in an Honours List.

And what I think is most important here is the current Prime Minister has been very clear

today that he was asked to do something that would have been inappropriate in his mind,

and he refused to do that.

And I think that is a very strong message from Rishi Sunak,

in contrast to what we're seeing in Scotland,

which is a weak First Minister who is unable to and unwilling to stand up to his predecessor.

Do you think your colleagues tolerated Boris Johnson for too long, Douglas?

I mean, everyone know you all knew what he was like, didn't you?

Because you were one of the most skeptical people throughout.

So do you think your colleagues tolerated him for too long?

I think we've heard over the weekend,

even his harshest critics can also see there were, you know,

points in his premiership where he led the country very well.

And indeed, actually much of the West, if you look at the response to Ukraine,

whatever people think about Boris Johnson or his individual politics,

we as a parliament united around his drive to support President Zelensky.

Again, others may argue this, but I think overseeing the vaccine rollout,

the speed at which we were able to do that here in the UK,

all parts of the UK, including Scotland,

is down to decisions he took as Prime Minister and his government.

You know, we're allowed to do that under the European Medicines Agency, don't you?

But we also know that the rollout was quicker here in the UK than the rest of Europe.

That's unquestioned.

By about 10 days.

Well, you know, that can save lives.

I'm not going to be particularly picky about that.

Others can be.

But I'm saying even his harshest critics can say there were elements

of his time in office that you have to recognise,

but there are other points that were clearly not good enough.

And that's why he left office on the back of double figure

resignations from within his own government.

Douglas Ross, thank you.

Thank you.

You can hear in Douglas Ross the different ways he's being pulled, right?

On the one hand, he's got this tremendous potential political opportunity in Scotland.

He's got this difficulty in navigating what is happening in London,

because he can't really accuse the SMP of overseeing a complete psychodrama, right?

When this is going on in London,

just as Hums Yousef got in trouble for doing exactly the same thing,

the truth is both parties who were hegemonic until only very, very recently.

I mean, when I was last in this building, we were interviewing Nicola Sturgeon.

She was still completely imperial.

Now, here we are, barely six months later.

And not only is she out of office,

but she spent time in the company of his Majesty's police force

over the course of the last 24 hours.

I mean, they said politics was going to go back to normal.

There is clearly no sign of that whatsoever.

One silver lining, I think, for the SMP is this, we should say.

Although it's absolutely true to say this is hugely difficult for them to navigate,

they still remain despite everything, just about first in the polls.

Support for independence according to the polls has taken a bit of a knock,

but it's not a substantial, substantial knock,

which I think adverts to the fact that Scottish politics

over the course of the last 10 years has become so deeply polarised on the constitutional question

that even when the primary vehicle of Scottish independence, i.e. the SMP,

finds itself in such a mire, in such a deep set of political problems,

it doesn't necessarily yield, and we'll see what happens obviously,

but so far it hasn't necessarily yield in massive transference

on that primary constitutional question.

So although the prospect of independence anytime soon seems very distant,

the structural forces which have led to independence being such a dominant mode of thinking

within Scottish politics, that will probably endure,

which means it will be an ongoing structural problem for unionist parties

in Scotland in the years to come.

All I'd say Lewis is that our lot are novices, somebody who's been through 2500

court appearances at a cost of £200 million over 20 years,

been elected three times and fell guilty of multiple felonies.

We're marking the death of Silvio Berlusconi in all his bunga bunga glory.

His death was announced today at the age of 86.

This is The News Agents.

Welcome back, and before we go, I think it's fair to pay our due respect

to the man who made Partygate a thing long before we'd ever heard the term,

once Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's president, elected three times.

And the man who really paved the way in so many ways for the Donald Trumps,

the Boris Johnson's, the Bolsonaro's that were to come.

And I remember at the time seeing this, okay, I'm just going to say it,

he was an Italian stallion.

He was the man that Italian men wanted to be.

He had the veneers, he had the tan, he had the hair transplants.

He always refuted that he'd paid for prostitutes

because he didn't like the idea of money changing hand,

but he never denied that he'd actually slept with them.

He was the one who told David Cameron that he needed to get himself a mistress

to make meetings in Brussels less boring.

He was the one who told Obama that he liked his tan.

And I remember thinking at the time, just looking across at Italy,

and it was in the Blair years, Blair and Berlusconi were weirdly quite close.

And I remember thinking how incomprehensible it was

that a country would ever elect somebody like that.

You could sort of see why he might be a sort of fun person to have on a game show,

but you couldn't imagine him as your leader.

But clearly, Italy was just ahead of the fashion.

They were ahead of us because he set down a pathway

for the people like Donald Trump who were fearless

in rejecting any kind of criticism of their way of life

and Boris Johnson, who actually enacted so many of the Berlusconi traits in his own way,

that fearlessness with the electorate and a real connection with the electorate

that meant he could pretty much get away with anything.

It is interesting that this man who made his money in construction

and in media, who owned AC Milan, Italy's most popular football club,

it is incredible in a way that a man was brought down not through any of the scandals

or the zillion court cases or the multiple felonies,

but because of the economy, because of the way that Italy at one point looked

as if it would follow Greece in the Eurozone crisis.

And he then retired as president, but came back as a senator,

tried to help Giorgio Maloney, the populist president now on the right,

but kept on going on about his friendship with Putin,

which did not help her chances.

Anyway, he was, I guess, the original party gate populist,

Silvia Berlusconi, whose death was announced today.

And we should remind you that tomorrow is a big day for us.

It's the launch of news agents USA.

And to help us along with that launch, Donald Trump has agreed to appear

in a Miami courtroom on indictment charges of stolen documents.

So we thought we'd send John.

This is John and I'm not in news agents HQ.

I'm at Heathrow Airport and about to board a flight to Miami.

Now, you know how much Emily and I love US politics.

And we were all set to launch news agents USA next week.

But there's this bloke who's appearing in court tomorrow called Donald Trump

at the Miami federal courthouse downtown.

And we thought it will be a great idea to be there.

Now, the weekly podcast we're doing is where we unpack everything you need to know

about the state of US politics.

And we were ready to launch next week until we got the news about the Donald

having to appear in court on the most serious federal charges and the extraordinary position.

I mean, extraordinary.

That in two years time, Donald Trump could either be in the White House,

starting his second term, or in a federal prison cell,

because the charges against him are that serious.

He faces 37 felony charges over squirreling away secret documents,

not very well squirreled at Mar-a-Lago.

So I'm about to board the plane.

We're going to be doing a special news agents USA a week early with me in Miami,

Emily in London, and we'll have all the bases covered.

We'll be back tomorrow in the usual feed.

And news agents USA will be marking every step of the way

of that historic federal indictment of Donald Trump.

Bye for now.

This has been a Global Player original podcast and a Persephoneka production.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.