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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Team Biden now says he won’t be announcing his VP choice until just before the convention
The screengrab from CBS news above includes just about all the women who have been been linked with being Joe Biden’s running mate for the November 3rd presidential election.
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Mark Spencer, the chief whip, is understood to have decided not to take immediate action against the MP until the police investigation was concluded.
Last night the alleged victim criticised the party’s failure to take action despite being aware of the allegations. “It’s insulting and shows they never cared,” she told The Times.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/tory-mp-will-not-be-suspended-over-rape-allegation-85g652l6x
As far as Mr P's comment is concerned, it's fortunate for the Tories that Parliament isn't sitting, although of course, that may not be coincidental. We won't know which 'senior Conservative MP' is keeping his head well down, whereas if Parliament were sitting someone doing so would, even under Covid, be more easily identifiable.
I do agree though that it seems more than a bit weird that the person who has gone to the police has now also gone to the Times. Bloody stupid too, as a clever defence counsel now has ground to argue her actions have prejudiced a fair trial.
Unless the Times has invented it, of course, which seems improbable but can’t be entirely ruled out, or been hoaxed.
i expect they called her for a quote after the events of yesterday
How did the Times know who she was?
https://twitter.com/Robert___Harris/status/1289921418109440002?s=09
But if a GNU is former, top trolling would be to offer first refusal of PM’s role to Theresa May.
After all, she has the second highest vote share of any PM since 1997, and even more amazingly, she is such a brilliant campaigner she even managed to push a complete loser like Corbyn to over 12 million votes.
She is therefore the most successful leader of both the Tories and Labour for the last 50 years.
Somebody is at the very least being very, very badly advised here.
What’s interesting for me is that Spencer didn’t originally realise it was a sexual assault that was being reported to him
She works in Parliament. She went to Parliamentary authorities before the police. We don't know who told The Times about it.
But the instant he *is* named, the stream of innuendo that’s been coming out is going to make a fair trial very hard indeed. It’s not impossible the CPS will decide there’s insufficient prospect of a conviction to pursue charges on this basis.
That however is separate from the fact that the whip should have been suspended while a police investigation is underway. As it was with Elphicke, for example. Unfortunately, the failure to do so, even symbolically (which is all it would be at this moment given Parliament is in recess and there is therefore no need to name the MP concerned) has now led the story to snowball.
At this moment, as an outsider looking in, I would say the whole thing has been grossly mishandled by just about everybody.
She comes across as wanting him shamed rather than allowing due legal process to take its course. Revenge, as opposed to justice. The MP's lawyer is certainly buying all the papers from today and yesterday.
There have been long debates about whether accused rapists should have anonymity until *conviction*. This is an extension of that principle
If he is indeed guilty of rape, then fairly punished will mean jail time.
But that is not the current point of debate.
The complainant thinks the Tory party did nothing, when she informed them originally. She thinks they did nothing when the story was reported. She thinks they did nothing when the MP was questioned by Police.
She is perhaps entitled to think they could have done more, at every stage.
The Parliamentary authorities, her employers, are the Speaker and his staff.
What failing to suspend the whip has done is made sure there is a nice juicy hook for the papers to hang a story on, and that’s one of the reasons things are spiralling damagingly out of control.
That will lead to a lot of people thinking he is guilty of something regardless of any court process.
That sort of damage to his reputation is unjust unless there is sufficient evidence to charge/convict
I agree it’s damaging to the Tory Party not to have suspended the whip. I’m impressed they’ve chosen to do the right thing rather than the politically expedient thing
That way it would be down to only a handful by now, and he wouldn't be about to upset most of his party so close to the convention.
It is ironic that for years we placed our hopes on German car makers pressuring their government to accommodate Boris, but forgot about British industry calling for a deal.
bet there was plenty of chumocracy over the weekend.
Is that your argument?
Edit: the above is not a quotation, but nor is it my opinion, just to be clear.
There is a route to a possible GNU, but it ain' through Brexit:
The 2nd spike is really serious
The economy tanks even more badly
One section of society gets the blame for that second spike/tanked economy
People start getting burned out their homes
Police/army are barely able to restore order
And note, I'm not saying that he should be named, what I'm saying is that this isn't going to go anywhere because I suspect while in all likelihood the guilt is there,the evidence isn't.
Did the Alex Salmond trial teach you nothing?
How do you know this?
Your reaction is why his name should not be made public.
I think we all need to be very careful in our comments on this subject
If he goes to court, regardless of the outcome, he will suffer reputational damage.
https://twitter.com/paulhutcheon/status/1290184678452813825
We also know that most get away with it as well, an odd few falsely accused but majority get away with it. Unless you believe 97% of women who complain are accusing falsely perhaps, is that your argument.
The fact that it is one person’s word against another is why it is so hard to get convictions: proving two people had sex is not usually enough so physical evidence may not help.
We also have had a significant number of high profile victims of false accusations in the past few years, so when you talk about the victim’s rights don’t forget that in a rape case the accused may turn out to be the victim as well. Just ask Alex Salmond.
She has no hope of getting justice.
The thing is that neither option of (anonymity or naming) of sexual assault defendants is great, one protects people from unfair accusations at the risk of missing other victims, the other as you state results in guilt (by as a very minimum) association
But if you had read my posts I don't think I've even said anything about whether the MP should be named, just gave reasons why the victim would want him to be.
One issue is that I think there was a recent change to prevent the name of someone under suspicion being released until formal charges are bought: there was a comment on a previous thread to the effect that t had gone through Parliament with only one MP voting against. I don’t know if that only applies to MPs or what offences it covers, but if it applies in this case then withdrawing the whip would have to be done without saying who had lost it: I’m not sure how that would work.
Equally the statement could be "We are aware of the allegation, and while we have withdrawn the whip we won't be revealing the name until it's revealed by the police"
It's just an example of how things aren't be thought through.
I suspect if this was a finance company both the accused and accuser would be instructed to work from home unless being in the office was unavoidable.