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It’s evens that there’ll be by-election in Johnson’s seat – politicalbetting.com
It’s evens that there’ll be by-election in Johnson’s seat – politicalbetting.com
The story at Westminster today and no doubt tomorrow will be Boris Johnson’s appearance before the Commomns Privileges committee which is looking at whether he broke the lockdown rules.
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However only 25% want him to be Conservative leader and PM again
https://conservativehome.com/2023/03/20/our-special-survey-a-majority-of-party-activists-support-johnson-in-all-respects-save-perhaps-the-most-important/
He'll be off.
Yes, you have a cast iron case - "Ultimate Management Team didn't raise an objection, so..."
And you shouldn't have been eating cake while driving.
What a man, what a Christ, what an entertainer.
He squandered it all. Now he whines and wants a second go. Diddums.
On Wednesday the Trolley will answer questions about parties and covid.
I’m in the middle of writing my own statement to the official inquiry and therefore reading a lot about covid again.
So I’ll watch and post thoughts on how he tries to lie his way to safety. (If you’re one of those on top of the details and part of the network that pushed him out, text and I’ll post.)
Generally I think SW1 is overrating the chances of him returning this year even if he manages to escape this inquiry.
Why?
Unless Sunak gets fed up and walks away, he can use the vast trove of material in PET (the part of the Cabinet Office that deals with scandals) to smash the Trolley up. Much remains unpublished.
https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/snippets-10-trolleycovid-aipolitics (c
I was reminded of what I did at the start of the first lockdown. My son was a student at Dundee University and he and his flatmates decided to all go home, giving up their accommodation lease. I read the Scottish legislation and saw that people were allowed to move home - so I relied on the regulations to allow me to drive up and collect my son and all his belongings, ignoring the guidelines that suggested that I should stay at home. I must admit that I was bricking it when followed home for a few miles by a police car on the M90 back to Edinburgh. I think what I did was allowed and would have said so if questioned. I might have been wrong, but it was an honestly held view. So, in a way, I am Boris.
He undermines himself as he just cannot accept fault, by whinging that he was fined unfairly.
The silly thing is he could have done all the above apart from the lie at the end and still have been PM but sorry is the hardest word for him.
*Well, you might be Matt Hancock, but you seem generally nice and sensible.
The difference is, I wasn't the one telling the rest of the country that they had to put their lives on hold in a doomed attempt to control a virus.
[He] sometimes seems affronted when criticised for what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility (and surprised at the same time that he was not appointed Captain of the school for the next half).
I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation that binds everyone else.
The reason it was so potent was that BoJo hasn't grown up a jot since.
As we're now seeing.
Boris Johnson's claim that a party taking place in Downing Street during lockdown was not in fact a party, would be somewhat more believable had he not admitted personally referring to it as a party.
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1638157736159461376
We all fled the forces of the liberal conspiracy till we were finally trapped in a hen coop in Kidderminster. The brave farmers there supported Brexit, and they still believed in a better future. The dark forces will never win, and must not be allowed to ; together we will pray for this man, and follow his example, in all areas of our lives and loves.
He won a vote of confidence, and then was Pinched.
This does deserve consideration and leeway. A lot of things were not done perfectly in extreme situations and thats understandable. But 'follow covid rules properly when working for those setting the rules' is not one which gets leeway.
That he is trying to have his cake and est it too does not help. He 'accepts' rules not followed now, but he also says lack of fines means it was not clear rules were broken.
Its notva wholly unpersuasive document, but any submission should be plausible - like a test match it's the response that matters. His previous legal submission fell apart that way.
Especially as he was the one signing them off.
So, when out for a walk in the countryside, well away from everyone I would sometimes go further than I should from my house. So what?
The line between work events and “parties “ was as clear as mud too. If Boris had said, with hindsight I got this wrong and I’m sorry I would have had a lot of sympathy. But he didn’t. He lied and lied. And that is what the committee are considering.
For anyone who thought lockdown was a good idea just read this and ponder the state of democracy and government powers.
Dear fellow comrades and compatriots of both the masculine and feminine persuasion, I must declare, with uttermost sincerity, that your prodigious and unrelenting efforts have not gone unnoticed! Indeed, I am well aware that the customary libations which punctuate the cessation of your weekly toils have, lamentably, been thwarted.
However, let us consider the possibility that, in light of our shared experiences with the dastardly COVID, a modest quantity of liquid refreshment were to, perchance, extricate itself from the tumultuous fray – well then, my dear chums, I assure you that no inquiries shall be made on my part, nor shall I expect any elucidation from you. Onwards and upwards, to victory and merriment, huzzah!
String him up.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-65011583
...Casey's report found "institutional" racism, misogyny and homophobia at the heart of the Met - but that word "institutional" has been a sticking point for some.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman says she agrees with the head of the Met Police that it's "not a helpful term to use".
"It's an ambiguous, contested, and politically-charged term that is much-misused, and risks making it harder for officers to win back the trust of communities," Braverman argues.
She says what's important is how the police respond to the issues, not whether they accept a label...
If she can't accept there are massive problems with the institution and its management, which go way beyond the behaviour of individual officers, then she's part of the problem.
Regardless of your politics, we really do have the absolute dregs in government right now.
How is Trump's arrest going today - any news yet?
Honestly guv, although I did mislead Parliament a bit, I didn't mean to, and that's obvious. And if you want to apportion blame, point the finger at absolutely everybody at No.10 except yours truly, an innocent bystander. Particularly that Cummings bloke - Christ knows who appointed that lying toad. And excuse my language, but nobody really knew what the fucking rules that we kept announcing on TV were anyway. Really confusing - not my fault. And finally, the parties were rubbish anyway, even though they weren't parties and I wasn't there.
End.
Latter ones however...
Keen to conflate it with everyone working in the organisation must be a bad apple then, when it reality it is de-personalising the issue, and pointing out it is often system and processes that lead to bad outcomes not typically bad apples (people).
Modern ones in red circles it's the law (even if the red circle is broken).
So perhaps there is a more helpful way to think about the problem. I certainly hope so. Not that I think Braverman would know what that would be.
And of course, they will have had near daily meetings like that over the course of COVID. I am sure SAGE didn't meet without some refreshments on hand.
The moral of Boris Johnson's career is an important one, for this great country we live in ; always do what you say, sometimes even in the face of what is popular and easy always live like those who support you, and maybe most of all, always tell the truth.
The US government joins the blob...
Organisations often fail despite the individuals involved. You just need to look at underperforming football teams. And those are much less complex than large institutions with complex incentives and decision making structures.
I agree individuals matter, but they aren't the only thing.
Conservative MPs failed the country by not forcing him to resign earlier.
Put the two together and Britain looks to be a country vulnerable to a culture of corruption and impunity taking hold among its politicians and state bodies. I think there's ample evidence that the process is well-advanced and that the country is remarkably complacent/fatalistic about it.
This is why it is still vitally important that Johnson is nailed for lying to Parliament, and is ejected from Parliament as a result.
The Lords has to go, I think, and just for beginning.
“I’m not racist, the system is. Now excuse me while I beat a confession out of the chap I arrested for wearing a loud shirt in built up area”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/21/president-joe-biden-orders-release-of-us-intelligence-on-potential-links-between-covid-and-wuhan-lab
The amount of lives they ruin is extraordinary.
Not of the disease, but by the sudden totalitarian dystopia into which we had suddenly been thrust, in which police, who apparently had no clearer an idea of the rules than anyone else, were suddenly acting arbitrarily to impose arbitrary rules. No using playgrounds. No sitting on benches. Don't go to, or leave, Leicester. Having to have a story to explain your presence. It was horrible.
I remember late July/early August 2020. There had been some small concessions. After four months of doing nothing, an outdoor holiday club for the kids. Den building, etc. Except on day 2, one of my daughters coughed - once - and we had to collect them all and bring them home and get them covid tested. Said daughter in floods of tears that she'd ruined it for everyone, and that we wouldn't be able to go on holiday the next week. Of course it wasn't bloody covid - and we got the results back 26 hours later, and they did another two and a half days. But then, a sudden announcement of reimposition of rules on Greater Manchester. This was Thursday evening; we were due to go on holiday to Devon on Sunday. We took Friday off, packed in a day, and - I kid you not - fled Greater Manchester in the dusk by minor roads to my mother-in-law's house in Cheshire.
Of course, there weren't road blocks. (Though there had been at various points that year). But that was the climate of fear the government actively tried to create.
We did get away on holiday. Miraculously, the hotel where we spent the first week was still allowing you to walk around unmasked providing you had passed a temperature test to enter (that was stressful - the thought of a disconsolate drive back to Manchester should any of us be a bit hot. We basically rubbed ourselves with a cold pack before we got there). And then the looming threat that the government was about to close all beaches.
It's no wonder I ended up on pills by the end of the year.
It's no wonder there's been a big uptick in mental health conditions in the under 9s.
I don't begrudge Boris a little light levity in the workplace garden. Doesn't seem out of order at all. But I am fucking angry about the misery he and Hancock - deliberately, it turns out - put the country through.
Were the dissemination of SAGE latest findings from Whitty / Valance to the likes of PM / Hancock etc not in person? I thought they were, along with meetings prior to the big press conferences to decide big changes in policy?