Boris Johnson has pulled out of a planned visit to Lancashire this morning "due to a family member testing positive for coronavirus", Downing Street said.
He was meant to be visiting a vaccination centre as part of the ongoing campaign encouraging Britons to get their booster jabs.
It comes as Tories are at war after Jacob Rees-Mogg branded the leader of the Scottish Conservatives "lightweight" over his calls for PM to resign.
The leader of the Commons made a series of scathing comments about Douglas Ross during interview appearances last night.
Mr Ross had labelled the Prime Minister's position "untenable" after Boris Johnson admitted he had briefly attended a party in the garden of Downing Street on May 20, 2020, claiming he was under the impression it was a "work event".
Speaking to LBC, Jacob Rees-Mogg said: "I don't think it's a surprise that Douglas Ross takes this view. He's never been a supporter of the Prime Minister. I don't think Douglas Ross is a big figure, he's been constantly in opposition to the Prime Minister, [and] he is not somebody you'd ever expect to say helpful things about the Prime Minister."
A further 20 Scottish Conservative MSPs have gone on the record in support of their leader's calls for Boris Johnson to resign from his position.
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Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam will be leaving his role as England’s deputy chief medical officer, reports suggest, although it is not understood to directly relate to parties or coronavirus policy.
Prof Van-Tam became one of the nation’s most familiar faces during the Covid-19 pandemic after he regularly took the podium next to Boris Johnson and Prof Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England.
It comes after he was knighted in the New Year Honours list for his services to public health. Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, said it had been an "honour" to work with Sir Jonathan - or "JVT" - who has been on secondment to the Department of Health from the University of Nottingham for the last few years.
Sam Hall has all the latest on this story here
In the 1980s, Sue Gray briefly paused her stellar civil service career to buy a pub in “bandit country” in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, writes Robert Mendick. If Boris Johnson needed evidence that his inquisitor-in-chief is no pushover, then being landlady of a pub in Newry close to the Irish border shows she is no soft touch.
Ms Gray has the task of investigating a series of alleged lockdown parties held in Downing Street and across government during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ominously for the Prime Minister, an MP once described her as “deputy god”, while Sir Oliver Letwin admitted when in Cabinet that it had taken him “precisely two years before I realised who it is that runs Britain", adding: "Our great United Kingdom is actually entirely run by a lady called Sue Gray. Nothing moves in Whitehall unless Sue says so.”
She does not suffer fools. For six years, she was director-general, propriety and ethics, in the Cabinet Office.
Profile: Gray 'really cares about what goes on in Government'
The Prime Minister will not be visiting a vaccination centre in Lancashire as planned this morning.
Mr Johnson would have been wanting to refocus minds on the success of the vaccination rollout, which as he reminded the Commons yesterday has seen Britain outflank other European countries in rolling out booster vaccines.
Almost 36 million third or booster vaccine doses have now been administered. But due to coronavirus itself, and a case within his own family, Mr Johnson is no longer planning to attend.
It is likely he would have been asked by reporters about the Downing Street party revelations, after Mr Johnson's contrite appearance in the Commons yesterday failed to pacify anger among swathes of the public and some of his own party members.
Boris Johnson will not go ahead with a planned visit to Lancashire today "due to a family member testing positive for coronavirus", Downing Street has said.
More on this story as we get it
Ignore the "doom and gloom", the Prime Minister is "constantly" making the right calls.
That's the verdict of Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, who has doubled down of her defence of Boris Johnson in a Twitter thread this morning.
"More people jabbed, more antivirals and testing than the rest of EU is giving us the most open and fastest-growing economy," she wrote.
"400,000 more [are] back in work than at the start of the pandemic. [We] kept jobs with furlough, self-employed grants and industries standing.
"This despite every doomster and gloomster party political prediction from Labour that decisions taken by Government throughout pandemic would result in mass unemployment and a tanking economy. They were wrong throughout the pandemic at every juncture. They are wrong now."
Ms Dorries was promoted to her post last September as part of Mr Johnson's most recent major reshuffle. Tim Stanley has this take on how, in her new role, the Culture Secretary is giving as good as she gets.
Brandon Lewis clashed with Nick Robinson this morning after he said his focus is always blaming other people for his own behaviour.
"The Prime Minister isn't sorry at all, is he?" Mr Robinson, the Today programme, asked the Northern Ireland Secretary. "We're asking whether his apology's sincere or not."
Mr Lewis said the apology was "very, very sincere" and responded: "I think it is important that we get the details of what happened, that's what this investigation will deliver. It's also giving space, quite rightly, to Sue Gray's investigation... she is also somebody who needs that space and freedom she has been given."
Mr Robinson questioned whether a leader needed telling that they had broken rules they set themselves, leading Mr Lewis to respond that Britons will be able to "see the facts themselves".
Continuing to sing the PM's praises (see 7.56am), Mr Lewis described his leadership as "strong" and "very good", as he sympathised with those who were making sacrifices at the time of the Downing Street event on May 20, 2020.
It came as Stuart Andreson, the Tory MP for Wolverhampton South West and elected as part of Mr Johnson's seismic victory in 2019, agreed with Mr Lewis that Mr Johnson would "win the next general election" for the party.
A former Tory Defence Secretary accused Boris Johnson of "poisoning the brand" of the Conservative Party this morning.
Michael Portillo, who famously lost his seat in a shock result in the 1997 general election landslide, told LBC while there could be forgiveness if an election does not take place for another three years, Mr Johnson has now moved from "the greatest electoral asset to a liability".
"Is there any chance that in three years’ time people will have forgotten?" Mr Portillo asked "Boris, I think, is a poisonous brand and he’s poisoning the brand of the Conservative Party.
"Now people do forget things. [But] the second thing people need to think about is do you just get one of these crises after another, and the evidence since October or November is that he just gets ready to move from one crisis to another."
It is now "pretty difficult" to imagine Mr Johnson will fight the next election, Mr Portillo predicted, suggesting if he will not still be leader in 2024 then the party "would probably do well to get on with establishing a new leader... they have to decide whether Boris Johnson will ever be an election winner again".
He wanted to be King of the World, but Boris Johnson may now have to content himself with being remembered as the shortest-serving British prime minister since Henry Campbell-Bannerman, writes Allister Heath.
The Northern Ireland Secretary doubled down on his defence of Boris Johnson this morning, as he told Sky News he is the "right person to be Prime Minister".
So we're asking for your thoughts - is Boris Johnson still the right man for the job?
Tell us in the comments why Mr Johnson should stay if you still 'Back Boris', or indeed who should replace him if you think he has ran out of road.
The jury is out for now as Sue Gray seeks to get to the bottom of Downing Street party allegations, Sir Christopher Chope reckons - but that didn't stop him calling Boris Johnson "lazy" in his interview with LBC.
No doubt looking ahead to this weekend, when some Tory MPs heading home are likely to get an earful from their constituents and local associations, Sir Christopher admitted: I’m not sure the Conservative Party or the public is in a forgiving mood.
"I think they may get into such a mood if the Gray report comes up with something which is supportive of the Prime Minister and passes more blame on civil servants than the Prime Minister himself. But at the moment the jury’s very much out."
While Mr Johnson is a "proven electoral winner" and "obviously a very intelligent man", Sir Christopher noted: "One of his weaknesses has always been that he’s lazy and I suspect on this occasion he was lazy.
"But the Conservative Party has always been interested in having as leaders who are potential election winners. At the moment I don’t see a potential electoral winner among the alternative runners and riders. But that’s probably another argument for saying let’s see what happened."
The Prime Minister must "come clean" to the British public about the full extent of what happened in Downing Street, the shadow levelling-up secretary urged.
"You don’t need an investigation by a civil servant to tell you if you attended a party or what he knew or whether he was at a party," Lisa Nandy told a BBC Breakfast interview that was beset by technical difficulties.
"He needs to be honest and level with the British public about which parties he attended during lockdown, and which ministers attended parties as well. There are serious questions to answer not just for the Prime Minister but for many Cabinet ministers who appear to have been at the parties but just simply won’t answer simple questions about them.
"It’s about time he was honest with us and he doesn’t need an investigation in order to do that.”
A majority of Tories, including Brandon Lewis, appear to be reserving judgement on the events of May 20, 2020 and any other gatherings during lockdown until the findings of an independent investigation by Sue Gray are published.
Boris Johnson is "the right person to be Prime Minister", the Northern Ireland secretary insisted during this morning's media round.
Brandon Lewis, who has been touring the studios in support of the embattled PM, insisted ministers including Rishi Sunak were supportive of Mr Johnson.
"What I saw yesterday was the Prime Minister acknowledging and understanding and reflecting that he understood the experiences people across the country would have had, before the report came out because obviously there’s a strong sense of feeling about that around the country.
"And that highlights his understanding of where the country is and why he is the right person to be Prime Minister."
He also noted that Downing Street is a "working environment, including the garden itself" and said Mr Johnson thanked staff on account of their "phenomenal effort".
Tories are at war this morning after Jacob Rees-Mogg branded the leader of the Scottish Conservatives "lightweight" over his calls for Boris Johnson to resign.
Here's the front page of your Daily Telegraph ahead of what looks set to be another tumultuous day for the PM:
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