Boris Johnson latest news: PM ‘can win next election’ as Starmer receives death threats after Savile slur

A cabinet split over UK-China relations has deepened after it emerged Boris Johnson is seeking to boost trade with the Asian superpower.

Boris Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak are looking to form what sources close to them describe as a more pragmatic and balanced approach to ties with Beijing. The tone adopted by No 10 and 11 is at odds with what some cabinet figures view as a mounting threat to British security from the world’s second largest economy.

Foreign and business secretaries Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are among those in cabinet who The Independent understands favour a more guarded approach which reduces the UK’s economic dependence on China, rather than reinforces it, writes our economics editor Anna Isaac.

An update on the post-Covid NHS crisis. Waiting lists are likely to continue growing for longer than government ministers have suggested, even if trusts meet their “very stretching” targets to tackle the backlog of treatment which has built up during the Covid pandemic, a health service boss has warned.

Launching a plan to speed up elective treatments last week, health secretary Sajid Javid acknowledged that queues will lengthen over the coming years as people who held back during the pandemic seek help, but said they were expected to be on a downward trend by March 2024.

But the chief executive of NHS Providers, Chris Hopson, today said that waiting lists could continue to swell beyond that point, even if trusts meet the target of stepping up to 130 per cent of normal levels by 2024/25.

Our political editor Andrew Woodcock has the full report:

Some transport news now. A rail operator was running a limited service on Sunday because of a strike by conductors in a dispute over pay.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union said its members on TransPennine Express (TPE) were solidly supporting a 24-hour walkout. More strikes will be held on the next three Sundays.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “Reports from the ground show that RMT members are solidly supporting the action on TPE this morning in what is a fight for basic pay justice.

“Our members refuse to be treated unfairly and will be continuing with industrial action until the pay discrimination is dealt with. The company need to wake up to that fact and we hope today’s action will shake them out of their slumber.”

The company announced an amended timetable for Sunday, with a “significant” reduction in available services.

The Home Office and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have refused to apologise to at least 12 innocent asylum seekers who were jailed for crimes they did not commit.

The men, from countries including Iraq and Iran, were all prosecuted for “facilitating illegal immigration” by steering their dinghies across the English Channel. Their convictions were publicised by the Home Office in a series of press releases that falsely labelled them “people smugglers”, and it has not publicly acknowledged the quashing of their convictions.

The asylum seekers were jailed for between a year and three years and nine months in a string of cases that started in 2019, but were not reviewed by the Court of Appeal until last year, reports our home affairs editor Lizzie Dearden. Judges have so far overturned 12 cases, with the most recent tranche of seven convictions thrown out on Tuesday.

Police have been asked to investigate a rash of online death threats made against Keir Starmer by right-wing extremists in the wake of Boris Johnson’s false claim that he “failed to prosecute” the paedophile Jimmy Savile.

A dossier of messages from apparently identifiable users of the Telegram app has been sent to police by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, writes our political editor Andrew Woodcock.

Among them were calls for the Labour leader and shadow foreign secretary David Lammy – who were accosted by a mob shouting “paedophile protector” and “Savile” as they walked through Westminster last week – to be “executed”.

There’s more from Brandon Lewis now, who used a Times Radio interview earlier to condemn the Mayor of London for withdrawing his support for Dame Cressida Dick, the former Met Police commissioner.

The Northern Ireland secretary described Sadiq Khan’s position as “rather odd”, asking listeners of the station to “bear in mind this is a man who just a couple of months ago extended Cressida Dick’s contract”.

Mr Lewis added he thought London’s mayor “should’ve been consulting with the home secretary” before he put pressure on Dame Cressida to go following a text messaging scandal in the Met which revealed serving officers making racist, sexist, and homophobic ‘jokes’ to one another.

“For me, yes, I think he should’ve been talking to and working with the home secretary particularly so close to a time he extended a contract himself – it does seem to be a rather odd position for him to have taken,” the cabinet minister said.

Asked if he thought the mayor was playing politics, he responded: “Possibly, to be frank.”

He argued Mr Khan was “very keen” to appoint Dame Cressida but now he “seems to have had a volte face in just the last week”.

On policing, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has accused Priti Patel of being “silent” for the last year.

Ms Cooper said the current home secretary had failed to “defend, stand up for and reform” Britain’s policing by consent model.

“I think [it’s] something we should be proud of … At the moment, there’s been none of those reforms from the Home Secretary. The home secretary has been silent on policing for a year,” she said.

Ms Cooper cited Labour’s plan to carry out reforms, which she said includes “training, including reforms to vetting, including reforms to misconduct, and including at their heart, making sure that violence against women and girls is part of the strategic policing requirement given to police forces across the country by the Home Office”.

She said the government was failing to “challenge any internal culture issues” as well as the “policing of the country to make sure that women and girls can be kept safe, which currently too many feel that they’re not”.

More from this morning’s media rounds now. Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Peter Kyle said the nation’s Good Friday Agreement is under “huge pressure”, taking aim at Boris Johnson for failing to stick to his word.

“We have a prime minister who goes to Northern Ireland, makes an absolute solemn promise there will be no border down the Irish Sea and has no intention of honouring that promise, and in fact breaks it straightaway,” Mr Kyle told Sky’s Trevor Phillips On Sunday.

“This has put a division right down Northern Ireland at a time when politics is already fragile.”

He said the Good Friday Agreement was under even more pressure because “we have a government that doesn’t represent all of Northern Ireland”.

“It only represents part of the politics of Northern Ireland,” he went on, before turning his attention to Brandon Lewis. “We have a Northern Ireland secretary who doesn’t really engage across all of the communities in Northern Ireland … I am afraid this is a government who has played fast and loose with the Good Friday Agreement and all of the measures which have delivered peace, stability and economic growth in Northern Ireland and that is a real worry.”