This afternoon Keir Starmer demanded that Westminster’s intelligence and security committee should probe the circumstances in which Johnson made Evgeny Lebedev a peer of the realm. The Guardian reports:

The demand came after a fresh report that the intelligence agencies had reframed an assessment that Lebedev’s appointment would pose a security risk following an intervention from the prime minister in early 2020.Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Morning, Starmer said he was very concerned: “There’s at least the suggestion that the government and the prime minister were warned that there was a national security risk in this particular appointment.”

This all follows the Sunday Times splash on the circumstances leading to the controversial elevation to the House of Lords.

ITV’s Robert Peston notes that all this happened in March 2020 when COVID was raging and the first very strict lockdown was introduced. Why at such a time was this such a priority for Johnson?

The revelations come after a period when Johnson has been seen to be doing very well and the betting has moved sharply against a 2022 exit.

The problem of course is that the whole political environment has been changed by Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

Mike Smithson