Labour has accused Boris Johnson of corrupting the standards of public life expected in high office. (See 3.50pm.) The shadow Cabinet Office minister, Rachel Reeves, made the comment in the Commons as she launched a particularly strong attack on Johnson for reportedly saying he would rather see “bodies pile high in their thousands” than order a third lockdown. Johnson denied making the comment, first reported by the Daily Mail, but there are multiple reports from reliable news sources (eg here and here) confirming the Mail story. Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, defended Johnson robustly in the Commons, but even his denial seemed to be so carefully worded as to be consistent with the detail of the allegation being true. (See 4.41pm.) Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, told MPs that he was not ruling out a leak inquiry into the story - implying the story was well founded. (See 2.32pm.)
Case was unable to deny suggestions a Tory donor played some role in paying Johnson’s flat refurbishment bill. Downing Street says Johnson met the cost (reportedly £58,000) himself, but there are reports that the money was initially paid by a donor. At the committee hearing Case was unwilling or unable to say exactly what happened. (See 3.03pm.) He did not make a good impression. This is from Politico’s Alex Wickham.
And this is from ITV’s Robert Peston.
The size of the Conservative lead over Labour has halved over the past month, a new poll for Ipsos MORI suggests.
The drop in support for the government has coincided with multiple sleaze allegations dominating the news.
Johnson has urged the public to be “realistic” about the prospect of the UK being hit with another wave of coronavirus infections in the future. On a visit to Wrexham he said: The numbers of deaths, the number of hospitalisations, are currently very low. That doesn’t mean that we have got it totally licked, it doesn’t mean that Covid is over. We have got to be realistic about that. Unfortunately there probably will be another wave of the disease. The UK has recorded just six further coronavirus deaths. Johnson must push rich countries meeting in Cornwall in June to come up with tens of billions of dollars more in aid for poor countries to deal with climate breakdown, or face the failure of vital UN climate talks to be hosted by the UK in Glasgow in November, according to leading climate experts. That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here.