tensions not least. because in the essence of the exchanges that we ve seen between the outgoingl standards ethics adviser and the prime minister, i needless to say, he was rather the adviser i rather keen- on the importance of the ministerial code| and it s his view was that the prime minister was much less so, - and we saw that at the end | of may when, when we saw lord geidt really didn t - like the idea that the prime minister hadn t outwardly, until that point, said - that the ministerial code mattered, in his view i borisjohnson s view he hadn t breached it when he was fined over. the whole partygate thing. and we ve seen it in these i letters of in these exchanges of letters following - lord geidt s resignation. yeah. and that s the thing that s happened today, because vicki, when we were doing the last episode of newscast which is available on bbc sounds, the news broke in the middle of us having a chat about something else and we both were just like, whoa! and st
today, we got the release of the letters that went between lord geidt resigning and borisjohnson saying, ok, thanks, bye . and this is where we ve learned a bit more about what was going on. so, if you look at lord geidt s letter, he says: what do we know about what the government s intention was? well, this is what s so strange because when we talked last night, we said, well, what has happened between him giving evidence to those mps where he was asked about resigning? what s happened between that and now? and although we have a little bit more of a clue, it s not entirely clear but it does seem to be about a trade issue. it seems to be about the government s desire to basically extend tariffs on we think, but we don t know for sure steel imports to protect british industry. now, the question is, does that potentially break international rules trade rules? and if it does, is that breaking potentially the ministerial code or not? so, it s a slightly odd one,
actually, probably not the answer we would have come up with when we discussed it yesterday because, of course, the other things have all been a bit easier to understand about the prime minister s behaviour. there s also a discrepancy - between what he lord geidt is saying in this letter about i what were the government s, to an extent, pre ordained intentions around all- of this and what those in number 10 are saying where they re saying no, we merely asked for his guidance on something | that we are contemplating . and there s clearly a sense from some in number 10 l that they feel he was looking for a pretext to resign, - having 24 hours previously said to the prime minister he wants| to carry on until at least christmas. . well, and let s see what borisjohnson s letter to lord geidt then said, because there s a hint of that there. he wrote: that s the clue that it s to do about tariffs on imports of chinese steel. then the pm goes on: and then there s a later bit