Bruised British PM 'will come out fighting'

Minister's 'Muslimness' claim sparks new storm amid 'Partygate' scandal

British deputy prime minister Dominic Raab says Boris Johnson "has taken a few hits but he'll come out fighting" as the weekend political conversation continued to be dominated by fresh allegations against his governing Conservative Party.

Last week Prime Minister Johnson, who has been accused of overseeing a culture at his Downing Street office where pandemic lockdown rules were broken on a regular basis, the so-called Partygate affair, saw one of his Conservative members of Parliament defect to the opposition Labour Party, and came under increasing threat of facing a vote of no confidence in his leadership.

On Friday, it was alleged that some Conservative MPs had faced pressure from party whips to vote in certain ways, and Christian Wakeford, who switched to Labour last week, said he had been told funding for a school in his constituency would be withheld unless he obeyed orders.

Writing in the Sunday Mirror newspaper, Wakeford accused Johnson of "living on borrowed time" having "poisoned the party from top to bottom".

Chris Bryant, the MP who chairs the House of Commons Standards Committee, said he had spoken to "about a dozen" Conservatives who alleged that they had either faced threats or bribes from whips about their Parliamentary behavior, which he said should be referred to the police.

Defending Johnson in an article in the Sun on Sunday, Raab wrote: "In less than three years in office, the prime minister has faced two of the nation's biggest challenges in our postwar history: Delivering Brexit and getting us through the worst pandemic in living memory.

"It has not been easy. He has taken some knocks. But the thing about this prime minister is that he never stays on the ropes for long."

Meanwhile, the latest storm to engulf the government came from an interview in the Sunday Times where former transport minister Nusrat Ghani said that when she was sacked in a reshuffle in February 2020, a government whip told her it was because her "Muslimness" was a problem for some colleagues.

"It was like being punched in the stomach. I felt humiliated and powerless," she told the newspaper.

"I was told that at the reshuffle meeting in Downing Street that 'Muslimness' was raised as an 'issue', that my 'Muslim women minister' status was making colleagues uncomfortable and that there were concerns 'that I wasn't loyal to the party as I didn't do enough to defend the party against Islamophobia allegations'."

Conservative chief whip Mark Spencer replied with a tweet saying he was the person being referred to and utterly rejecting her allegations.

"To ensure other Whips are not drawn into this matter, I am identifying myself as the person Nusrat Ghani MP has made claims about this evening," he said

"These accusations are completely false and I consider them to be defamatory. I have never used those words attributed to me.

"When Ms Ghani raised them she was invited to use the formal (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) complaints procedure. She declined to do so," he added.

Sky News also reported that she had not lodged a formal complaint.

"After being made aware of these extremely serious claims, the prime minister met with Nusrat Ghani to discuss them," a Downing Street spokesperson said.

"He then wrote to her expressing his serious concern and inviting her to begin a formal complaint process. She did not subsequently do so."

Raab backed this position, calling her allegation "incredibly serious" but highlighting the lack of follow-up.

"If there are any claims like this, they should result in a formal complaint which allows a formal investigation to take place, and as the Chief Whip has pointed out, Nusrat has not made a formal complaint. She was asked to do so," he said.