Best Of

These Boris leaks in The Guardian today look absolutely toxic. The implication is that Johnson was personally corrupt and enriched himself while in public office. If that story sticks, it's not just the ministerial code that has been breached, but the law. Let's see if the story has wings, but the optics are appalling.

It’s toxic but for another reasons

The accusations are marginal.

They are (from the article)

1. He asked a Saudi official to give a pitch to MbS
2. He was paid a fee by a hedge fund after meeting Venezuela’s PM
3. While in government he met Peter Thiel
4. He hosted an event in Downing Street that seems like it was in breach of lockdown rules and was to “honour” the person that refurbished the flat
5. He earned £5m from making speeches

And in the intro they talk about Greensill (which was genuinely appalling) and complain that he is “publicly subsidised” for claiming the allowance the state pays for office support.

The only ones that might possibly be open to criticism *for the accusation that the Guardian is making* (3&4 could easily be criticised for other things) are 1&2.

Basically they are trying to throw chaff in the air to diminish the damage to Labour caused by Rayner

This sort of journalism is irresponsible and toxic to public trust (such as it is) in politicians.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/08/revealed-how-boris-johnson-traded-pm-contacts-for-global-business-deals

This has nothing to do with a tit-for-tat retaliation over Rayner.

It is completely remarkable that those who cheered Rayner's defenestration are defending this as either lies or "Boris will be Boris". Will the broadcast media take any of this up? No.

I still believe the most egregious act by any post war Minister, Profumo included, was a Foreign Secretary throwing off his minders to attend a party run by a KGB grandee. A story which at the time it occurred barely raised an eyebrow.

I’m not defending this as lies or as “Boris will be Boris”. At best it’s unedifying.

And I didn’t cheer Rayner’s defenestration- I think it was the right outcome but I have a lot of sympathy for her. She didn’t think and she messed up.

I am critical of the way that the Guardian has framed it - these don’t strike me as especially serious transgressions and trying to claim they are undermines confidence in the system. It’s not so much “tit for tat” as “they are all as bad as each other”

Rayner had to go because she broke the Ministerial Code. Johnson drove a horse and coaches through the Ministerial Code. Apparently he still has ambitions to return to Number 10.

AIUI the point about claiming costs for his office staff is that the allowance is specifically for admin costs related to duties as a former PM, not for costs related to his post-PM career. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-duty-cost-allowance/public-duty-costs-allowance-guidance

When one of the first acts of a PM in a national emergency is to suspend procurement processes then I'd say the corruption question is settled.

@KevinASchofield

Lucy Powell to announce she is running to be deputy Labour leader, HuffPost UK understands

Wasn't she the Minister who got justifiably beasted by Nick Ferrari not long ago?

She has been comedy gold her entire career. i think she was Ed Miliband's campaign manager and she was famously inept even then.

EDIT: Her finest hour...

She was heavily criticised for apparently suggesting that Labour's election pledges were liable to be broken: in talking about the EdStone, she commented: "I don't think anyone is suggesting that the fact that he's carved them into stone means that he is absolutely not going to break them or anything like that." She said that she had been quoted out of context.

Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.

Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!

I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?

Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them

Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone

This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.

It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK

As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.

Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss

Get back to the office you lazy scrounger

I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.

Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough

Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££

We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked

Thanks. The problems with your foreign tax documents aren't because people aren't working hard though. There are a lot of things that can be done to reform the Civil Service and make it operate more efficiently. Any party that has the balls to do that without scapegoating staff would have my respect. It would require hard choices from the government that might be unpopular and that they'd have to live with.

Like why is it that you require a physical stamp on your documents at all? However, the person who's job it is to stamp the documents will be working hard trying to clear a backlog of thousands of them. Your document will not be stamped quicker if the person doing it has less pension or feels more insecure in their job. Go after the system not the people who are trying very hard to make it work.

I’d go after the people at the top, first. If we are going to be serious

The Nu10k. The people that run the departments and make the decisions and make £200k a year. Tell them: Make it work and make it work NOW or you will be out of a job and no pension and you’ll be sweeping streets if you’re lucky. No more “failing upwards”

I feel like I'm being unnecessarily argumentative but the people who run departments are Ministers not Civil Servant. I know there are plenty of duffers among the top grades but who is responsible for the effects of a really bad decision by a Minister?

Morning all

On to slightly more serious matters and YouGov continues to tease with a poll which doesn't suggest a nationwide landslide for Reform just yet.

Another poll showing the Conservatives in the high teens - nearly a month since the party was at 20% so a step down. Party Conference season will be interesting - Reform have had theirs already and the Conservatives don't meet until October 5-8 in Manchester.

As for Norway overnight, the "Red" bloc of five parties went from 100 to 87 and the "Blue" bloc from 69 to 82 so progress for the centre right (and in partlcular Progress who had a very strong result to confirm their position as the leading opposition party).

Labour did okay - it was a poor result for the Socialist Left and Centre and on the other side for the Conservatives and the Liberals. As often happens when you have two very different parties at the top of the tree, you get a polarisation around those two (even in multi party systems).

This is why "two-party systems" are so hard to break down especially if the two leading parties are distinctive and why this is such bad news for the little fish (who can survive). Those who argue Labour and Reform will dominate the next GE have a point but smaller parties will survive as the little fish do in the jaws of the sharks.

I wouldn't say it was progress for the centre right. The centre right parties mostly dropped back. It was progress for the Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet), who are not centre right, but hard right populists in a MAGA mould. They want "Norway first" policies, deny climate change, don't like gay marriages, have considered a ban on all "non-Western" immigration.

Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.

Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!

I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?

Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them

Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone

This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.

It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK

As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.

Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss

Get back to the office you lazy scrounger

I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.

Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough

Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££

We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked

And then wait even longer?

The focus on staff numbers is arse about face. Keep the current processes and we probably need more civil servants. Remove some of the pointless process (the stamp sounds like one, from your previous posts) and there will be roles that can be lost without impacting on service.

Focus on streamlining processes, then set the workforce to the correct level for that.

Leon is just being silly, again.

Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.

Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!

I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?

Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them

Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone

This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.

It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK

As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.

Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss

Get back to the office you lazy scrounger

I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.

Checkmate

Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.

Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!

I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?

Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them

Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone

This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.

It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK

As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.

Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss

Get back to the office you lazy scrounger

I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.

Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough

Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££

We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked

Thanks. The problems with your foreign tax documents aren't because people aren't working hard though. There are a lot of things that can be done to reform the Civil Service and make it operate more efficiently. Any party that has the balls to do that without scapegoating staff would have my respect. It would require hard choices from the government that might be unpopular and that they'd have to live with.

Like why is it that you require a physical stamp on your documents at all? However, the person who's job it is to stamp the documents will be working hard trying to clear a backlog of thousands of them. Your document will not be stamped quicker if the person doing it has less pension or feels more insecure in their job. Go after the system not the people who are trying very hard to make it work.

I’d go after the people at the top, first. If we are going to be serious

The Nu10k. The people that run the departments and make the decisions and make £200k a year. Tell them: Make it work and make it work NOW or you will be out of a job and no pension and you’ll be sweeping streets if you’re lucky. No more “failing upwards”

The YG poll is both intriguing and frustrating.

Are greens really on 12%? They’ve had a bit of news coverage because of Polanski. Perhaps the hard left vote is consolidating around them given the ongoing will they won’t they with Corbyn and Sultana.

Why can’t the Lib Dems ever overtake the Tories, even just for one poll? We seem to move in concert with them between pollsters. Perhaps because both voter groups are now demographically similar?

The difference between Reform on 27% and Reform on 33% is vast in terms of FPTP seats. What is YG doing in its sampling that’s so different from so many others?

I’ve not looked at this specific poll but in their recent polls they have a tendency to down weight 2024 non voters which is where a substantial chunk of Reform’s support comes from, other pollsters are a bit more generous.

Before our low IQ posters smear YouGov this is a policy YouGov has followed since their founding in 2000 because outside of plebiscites non voters do not turn out to vote.

GE 2024’s low turnout should be considered when factoring in non voters this time; a lot of 2019 Tories stayed at home and I’d expect the majority of them to be saying they’d vote refute now. I doubt they be habitual non voters

If it’s a policy YG have followed since their foundation, there’s no need to look at this specific poll. We have the answer for YG finding lower Reform scores

These are habitual non voters, the last time this lost voted was in 2016 and haven’t voted in general elections since probably 2001/05.

Hang on, are you saying YouGov are down-weighting those who didn't vote in 2019 and 2024 rather than just 2024. There are no guarantees with turnout, but pollsters need to be careful with looking at 2024 turnout.

You get down weighted more the more elections you haven’t voted in.

So if you didn’t vote in 2024 but did vote in 2019 you won’t get down weighted as much as somebody who didn’t vote in 2024 and 2019.

I wasn't aware pollsters asked about elections prior to the previous one. I wonder what recall is like? People saying they didn't vote in any are probably telling the truth, but we know there are plenty who voted in 2019 but not 2024.

YouGov run an account system so they can go back and look at what you’ve said before.

Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.

Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!

I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?

Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them

Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone

This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.

It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK

As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.

Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss

Get back to the office you lazy scrounger

I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.

Sympathies on your husband. Life is tough

Nonetheless we have to get a grip on the malingering workshy muppets who mainly staff government offices. This attitude of mine might be coloured by the fact I am now waiting ANOTHER YEAR for foreign tax documents to be stamped by HMRC. All they have to do is stamp them. It’s taking a year. And my agent has just told me this is now costing me £££

We need to sack 30% of government staff - literally a third - and halve the incomes and pensions of the rest, and tell them if they don’t like it they too will be sacked

Thanks. The problems with your foreign tax documents aren't because people aren't working hard though. There are a lot of things that can be done to reform the Civil Service and make it operate more efficiently. Any party that has the balls to do that without scapegoating staff would have my respect. It would require hard choices from the government that might be unpopular and that they'd have to live with.

Like why is it that you require a physical stamp on your documents at all? However, the person who's job it is to stamp the documents will be working hard trying to clear a backlog of thousands of them. Your document will not be stamped quicker if the person doing it has less pension or feels more insecure in their job. Go after the system not the people who are trying very hard to make it work.