Mark harper

Boris Johnson’s recent woes have coincided with a renaissance for Jeremy Hunt, the man he pipped to the Tory leadership in 2019. The Surrey MP was quick to put in his letter of no confidence on Monday and has followed that up with a stinging rebuke today to Michael Gove over the Dunsfold drilling development. It follows a string of media appearances for Hunt to mark the release of his much-vaunted new book on how to fix the NHS. Yet while the former Health Secretary now finds himself one of the favourites to succeed Boris Johnson, questions still remain about his role in the Covid crisis. Nadine Dorries has claimed

This is a short story about Mark Harper MP, who is making headlines. These days Harper is probably best known as a backbench critic of Covid restrictions, but he once had a promising career as a minister, including a spell in David Cameron’s cabinet between 2015 to 2016. But that career hit a bump in early 2014 when he quit his post as immigration minister. I was running the Telegraph’s political team at the time. Many ministerial resignations are unmemorable, but Harper’s sticks in the memory. He quit because he learned that a cleaner he paid to look after his London flat did not have legal permission to live and

It never rains for No. 10 but it pours. After both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were last week fined in recess for breaching lockdown laws, the Prime Minister returned to parliament today to atone for his sins. And it’s not been a happy afternoon for Johnson as opposition leader after opposition leader denounced him in the strongest possible terms. Keir Starmer and Ed Davey both won plaudits for their interventions – even Ian Blackford was heard in near reverential silence. Johnson is expected to win the looming Commons vote on an investigation into Partygate but he might not be able to navigate other challenges to his position so easily. While only