So, the Prime Minister's Private Secretary invites 100 people on the Prime Minister's behalf to a party in Downing Street in May 2020 when anything remotely like such an event was banned by law but the impression given by Downing Street this morning is that nothing can be said about this until the investigation by civil servant Sue Gray into Downing Street parties is concluded.
It would seem that the defence is that the Prime Minister cannot know whether he attended a party, with his wife, in his own back garden until a civil servant tells him that he did, with his hope being that in the meantime people will have forgotten about it. As defences go it has to be one of the worst on record.
It denies that Johnson knows what did and is aware of what is happening in his life and around him.
It demonstrates a total unwillingness to accept responsibility.
It is contemptuous of the law and all who complied with it.
It indicates a desire for power above all else.
Any denial is very obviously a lie. The event happened.
It leads to questions about police corruption. The Met quite literally policed the event.
The time for excuses has ended. Johnson willingly broke law he created, just as Cummings did at around the same time.
Can we really have people with such contempt for all that they are supposed to uphold in office and retain any credibility in government. For the greater good, Johnson has to go now. There is no room for argument left now.
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The key is to watch the gutter press. If the DM and DE run with it, it’s the beginning of the end. Otherwise, not yet.
It indicates to me the bubbles that can exist in executive bodies – whether in Government, local Government and organisations – people who are just not really connected to what they manage or have authority over.
It’s all part of our general malaise driven I’m afraid by money-wealth – wealthy people dominating politics, to too highly paid executives and managers.
While I agree that the way the law was flouted is a disgrace, I am intrigued by the apparent lack of interest in the amount of alcohol that cvil servants appear to consume in the workplace as a matter of course. Having worked in a Home Office department the absolute rule was no alcohol on the premises and no alcohol during the working day. Drinking at desks appears to have been the norm in Downing Street and no-one seems concerned.
1984 starts with Winston Smith burning records that are “inconvenient” to the current narrative.
This situation is analogous with what passes for the current “reality” as defined by The Scum, The Daily Heil and assorted rags, with the government broadcaster reinforcing the message = “If there was a garden party, it was small, Mendacious Fatberg was otherwise occupied if indeed he was there at all”. There will then be a manufactured event (50 immigrants drown in the Channel?) which will facilitate the swivelling of the media searchlight – thus keeping the chateraty gainfully occupied in telling Uk serfs what they should think. 1984 is not a novel, it is a future-looking documentary.
“Can we really have people with such contempt for all that they are supposed to uphold in office and retain any credibility in government”. The objective (for both toryscum and Liebore) , as you have noted previously, is to retain power, the rest is irrelevant. The electoral-representative system has built into it an elective aristocracy, the garden party event is simply an outcome of having an elective aristocracy. Similar things (and similar attitudes – serfs – rulers) happen in other elective aristocracies.
The author of 1984, George Orwell, wrote the Lion and the Unicorn in which he said, if I recall correctly, that England ( not the UK) was like a family with the wrong people in charge. Almost 80 years later, the same self entitled, privileged people still seem to be in charge.
I expect plenty of ‘dead cats’ to be thrown on the table to try to deflect attention from this plus huge amounts of desperate mental gymnastics to attempt to try to show that all of this rule breaking didn’t actually break the rules.
Even if this does nail the Quockerwodger, we still have around 2.5 years of this evil, lying, corrupt, incompetent shower of smelly stuff to endure.
Craig
Headline in the Metro: “Downing it Street”.
You are entirely right about the utter contempt shown to the little people.
It also demonstrates the lack of any checks and balances in what has been described by Peter Hennessey as the “good guy” constitution, depending on individuals doing what is the right thing.
Johnson and the right thing cannot appear in the same sentence.
I’m afraid it no longer matters to me whether Johnson stays or goes. The stench surrounding this Government is overpowering, and no change of the head honcho will make any difference. On a personal level, I hope Johnson stays, because as a supporter of Scottish Independence, he is our greatest asset.
Nothing can be expected of Johnson. He will lie, dissemble and deflect as per usual. It is down to Conservative mps to trigger a leadership contest and thereby remove Johnson. Truss and Sunak probably hoped he could be kept in place until after the local elections where the electorate are likely to punish the Tories as is their wont and their ascent to the sunny uplands and the bright new tomorrow that they will lead us to can’t be marred. The problem facing Tory mps is that the longer they leave Johnson in place the more spineless they will appear. A good leader of the opposition should be able to exploit this to their advantage. Not holding my breath there.
Who will replace him? Sunak, who represents the austerity wing of the Conservative party? Will Sunak and Starmer then compete about who can better fix the ‘fragile’ public finances?
This is small beer. Whether Johnson goes can itself be seen as a dead cat diversion.
The 100,000 or however many – deliberately allowed to die unnecessarily, and the continuing rejection of the science is not only ignorant (in not understanding that keeping infection down allows the economy to flourish – as in S Korea, Tawian, China, NZ, Japan etc ) but also murderous.
If the Opposition fails to challenge – or even colludes, and there is no challenge through the courts against a govt deliberately killing its own citizens – it must be a failed state.
but what do 100 employees actually do in Downing Street ? apart from supporting the party
& did baby bring a bottle as well or was he choosing the nursery wallpaper ?
I am having trouble containing my rage today. Not about the party, which was not unexpected or surprising. Not the hypocrisy of breaking the rules, as many people have done so, even if perhaps they didn’t write them. But the shameless lying, cynical manipulation around the inquiry, and the inability to apologise for something that is so obviously abhorrent. Not to mention the PM’s utter cowardice today of providing a human shield in Ellis, instead of answering any questions himself.
I missed Christmas 2020 with my father, who I avoided seeing during lockdown. He was very afraid of catching covid having mobility issues caused by diabetes. He passed away last January, after I missed a few opportunities to see him before he got ill, because of covid restrictions. We watched him die in hospital during the peak of the covid wave in January 2021. I am just one of many millions of people who sacrificed for covid restrictions, and we sacrificed less than many.
I feel for all the people today who couldn’t visit their relatives in care homes, or couldn’t see their loved ones because they were obeying the law, and trying to do the right thing for their society and country.
I never liked Johnson, but my MP will be getting my ire, now, for not standing up to him. And for having no integrity to challenge his continued lying and recklessness. It’s not Johnson I loathe so much, as the spineless sycophants in his party.
I am really sorry
I have some insight into this
Just organising my mother in law’s funeral took two months because of restrictions
And no one saw her in her last days…
I’m sorry to hear about your mother in law, Richard. That must have been a very difficult time for your family.
I think days like this I realise just how much collective trauma our society has suffered, and it’s sad that the government has not even recognised the impact of that yet, let alone done anything about it.
I am glad for people like you holding the powerful to account. Thanks for your kind words.
I asked my MP, Ruth Edwards to write to the 1922 committee and why she should submit a letter of no confidence about Johnson.
I hope the big pile of letters MPs are getting will make some difference to convincing them to stop backing a losing horse. Not sure I have much faith in the alternatives, but getting rid of the liar in chief is at least forward progress.
Chris
The odd thing was we all thought everyone had these issues
That us one reason for being so angry
Go well
Richard
Sorry for your loss
Many people have been through something similar and far more merely restricted from seeing parents or loved ones over the pandemic
I rather suspect those “ordinary folk” like me will remember this when voting time comes. This will cause major damage to the Tory party. I certainly will never vote for them again (I have voted both labour and Tory in the past) after everything that has gone on and I suspect I’m not alone.
Has it occurred to you that this, all this shambles of a Parliament, a Government and a Prime Minister, IS the dead cat. Anyone who’s made even an amateur attempt to grasp the basics of climate science can surely see that we’re headling for global catastrophe and mass extinction. COP26 was stitched up by the fossil fuel industry proliferating excuses to keep on burning coal, gas and oil. Carbon budget – there is none. Limit global temperature rise to 1.5⁰? We’re already heading way past that. They’re too frightened to admit what’s happening and too weak to even begin to address the problem. So keep on partying, making money….
But we can’t give up
Perhaps we can look forward to a re-run by Boris Johnson of the mea culpa of another dedicated liar, Richard Nixon’s Checkers speech in the 1952 Presidential election in which he skilfully dodged clear substantiated allegations of corruption.
It isn’t just Johnson. The Paymaster General, Michael Ellis was wheeled out in Parliament yesterday to cover the absence of the PM; basically from answering a simple question. What Ellis had to say was disastrous. He was clearly sent out because he was a lawyer. He answered questions like a lawyer; and, although he had a bad ‘hand’, and attempted to use a lawyerly sophistry, he bungled it.
He proposed that, as a lawyer the legal test must be “fairness”. For the avoidance of doubt, the law does not offer fairness, nor do lawyers give advice on fairness; they provide advice on the law. The law offers no more or less than – the law. “Fairness” is a philosophical question, and the Paymaster General is no philosopher. Second, the Paymaster General appeared to believe, as a professional lawyer, that the Sue Grey investigation fell under his area of expertise; but the Sue Grey investigation is not a judicial enquiry.
Who knows what it is. Bizarrely, we have the Civil Service being placed in the position of investigating the PM, to whom it must report with its recommendations. What makes the Paymaster General think that constitutionally that irresponsible positioning of the Executive’s administrative service makes any sense whatsoever? What happens if the conclusion of the investigation is that there has been wrongdoing, and feel are obliged to call in the Met? Then the Government would claim it cannot comment on an ongoing Met investigation; I doubt even a lawyer, some way out of his depth on constitutional matters, would believe that will lead to the survival of the PM, or even at that point, the Government.
Who placed the Civil Service in this invidious position? The PM, the Cabinet, the Government – and effectively the Conservative Party (which is, in reality entirely responsible for the whole mess – it chose Boris Johnson to lead it, with eyes wide shut; and indeed has chosen three dud PMs in a row).
For the Paymaster General’s information, the PM is answerable only to Parliament and Crown (in Parliament); but Parliament is scarcely able to execute its constitutional duty, if the Paymaster General insists in presenting himself (and a spurious investigation) as a shield to protect the PM from his master – Parliament, and Parliament alone.
Agreed
To our relief with hindsight, my mother in law died in her care home not long before th Covid outbreak, otherwise we would have had to go through the same appalling experiences as others. I suspect many of us will know someone who has and their anger and bitterness i completely understandable.
This is not just about Johnson – his behaviour is entirely consistent with how he has behaved throughout his life. Despite that his Cabinet, MPs and the Conservative party selected him, have unquestioningly supported him (with rare exceptions) and have adopted the same behaviour and morality. Corrupt, callous, self-serving, believing themselves to be above the law.
So please, no more carping about Starmer – he may not be perfect but he and his team are a different league from what we are suffering under. That means the opposition parties working together and it means some form of PR to ensure that we are never again put in the position of having an extreme party with a minority of the overall vote, able to ride rough-shod over the country.
My rage, as well as my blood pressure, is increased daily by the reveleations of illegality, mendacity and plain ineptitude of Johnson and his Government. Add to that the fact that the whole lot seems to be so fuelled by alcohol that the PM sees tables in the garden laden with drink and thinks it’s a normal business meeting.
Does anyone really want the UK to be run by a bunch of pissheads?