The evidence was overwhelming before today that Johnson had been to parties when they were barred by his own government’s rules. That’s bad.
With Sue Gray’s report now before parliament and the public, it is clear if it wasn’t before, that Johnson has repeatedly lied about parties and whether he attended any. That’s seriously bad.
Gray’s report has now been published. Thirty-seven pages. Nine photos. Vomiting, red wine on the walls, fighting, sitting on laps, karaoke, pizzas, prosecco, birthday drinks, sleeping in the office, overflowing bins, leaving drunk by the back door to avoid the press pack outside the front door, along with poor treatment of security and cleaning staff. Classic signs of parties but we have been repeatedly told that there were no parties, just meetings, and Johnson did not attend any parties.
Johnson is likely to survive this because Conservatives haven’t got the guts to remove him. Although perhaps the truth is that they have no one to replace him.
He partied while repeatedly telling us the importance of “staying home, protecting the NHS and saving lives”. I have no issues with the laws of the time, as they were necessary to protect the immuno-compromised. What I have an issue with, however, is how we were lied to by our Prime Minister.
He had the gall to stand in parliament and deliver an “unreserved apology”, encouraging us to let the government “get on with the job”. Correct me if I’m wrong, the person giving the apology doesn’t decide when to move on, but rather the recipient of the apology does. I’m sure I speak for the majority when I say, we are not ready to move on.
Our nation’s public office holders are expected to meet the 7 standards of the Nolan Principles:
Selflessness
Integrity
Objectivity
Honesty
Leadership
Openness
Accountability
I honestly cannot give an example of how Boris Johnson has met a single standard.
He is the first sitting Prime Minister to break the law. He has knowingly misled parliament regarding his attendance of the aforementioned Downing Street parties. He frequently uses the Russian Invasion of Ukraine to deflect taking responsibility for his unlawful actions. When the country needed strong leadership, he fled into hiding. He was happy for civil servants to take the fall for his unlawful actions. His ties to the Kremlin, whether it be through his friendship with Baron Lebedev of Siberia or his attendance at Lebedev’s party in Italy, make him a security threat.
Ed Davey has been busy appearing almost everywhere in the media in the last two days. This morning alone, Davey has spoken to BBC R4, BBC 5 Live, BBC Breakfast and Sky News. In this article, Newshound covers the interviews on Radio 4’s Today programme and BBC Breakfast.
On Today, Davey said that he was right to criticise the police originally. They changed their policy on the investigation and have since done the job well. The country is in crisis with the cost of living emergency and Ukraine. The prime minister and chancellor were dishonest. The trust in them that is vital during a crisis has gone. They should resign. The government’s got an appalling record on the economy and now they’ve broken their own laws.
These themes were picked on BBC Breakfast, when Ed Davey also spoke with passion about families not being able to see their families for five minutes when they were dying, yet the prime minister could party for five minutes. Davey also spoke emotionally about the plight of Ukrainian refugees, saying a new leadership could be true to the compassion and generosity the British on refugees rather than imposing paperwork.
Those that had the strength of will to listen to Boris Johnson’s speech to the Conservative Party spring conference yesterday were left gasping and outraged. One of the least statesmanlike prime ministers in British history had the gall to compare the decisions facing the people of Ukraine with those people in Britain made over Brexit:
“I know that it’s the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don’t believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. It’s because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself.”
Lib Dem MPs and many others were quick to attack Johnson for his crassness and insensitivity.
Boris Johnson is a national embarrassment. His buffoonery contrasts with the courageous leadership of President Zelensky. To compare a referendum to women and children fleeing Putin's bombs is an insult to every Ukrainian. He is no Churchill: he is Basil Fawlty.
There’s an event known as “Not the leader’s speech”, which seems to have gained semi official status in the party. While the leader gives their speech at the end of conference, a group of members meet up at a nearby pub. They follow the coverage of the speech on social media, and discuss at what point they would have walked out, if they had been there.
I’ve never attended “Not the leader’s speech”, but I do have a good deal of admiration for the irreverent approach of this group of members.
I don’t think I have ever actually “walked out of” a speech, in a Lib Dem context or otherwise. But there have been many occasions when I have sat through a speech, but could identify the moment at which perhaps I *should* have walked out. I did not actually attend Spring Conference this year, either in person or online, but I have watched the video of Ed Davey’s speech, and read through the text, several times. I certainly know the moment at which I would have felt like walking out.
Ed began by speaking very movingly of the suffering of the people of Ukraine, and of their heroism. Naturally, I have no criticism of this part of the speech, even though (and I hesitated about whether to write this), I did find myself thinking that I would have preferred to have heard these words spoken by someone who had not previously said publicly that he would be willing to personally “press the nuclear button”.
Yet another week where the Prime Minister has floundered, and the country has struggled.
The week started with a Tory former chief whip urging Boris Johnson to withdraw an insinuation about the Labour leader Starmer refusing to prosecute the serial sex offender Jimmy Savile and which saw scenes where Starmer was accosted outside Parliament.
The UK Statistics Authority last week officially rebuked Boris Johnson and Priti Patel for misleadingly claiming that crime had fallen, following a letter of complaint by Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng then claimed this weekend that fraud isn’t something people experience in their day-to-day lives.
Analysis by the Liberal Democrats show there were 100,393 fraud offences referred to the police in London last year, 8,957 fraud offences in Surrey which is home to Kwasi Kwarteng’s constituency of Spelthorne, and 11,829 fraud offences in Essex which includes Priti Patel’s seat of Witham.
Ed Davey used his question to the Prime Minister today to tackle the Prime Minister on the Government’s attitude to fraud:
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey asks if Boris Johnson "understands the hurt he and his ministers" cause fraud victims "when they write them out of the crime figures"
He demanded that Boris Johnson correct the record after misleadingly claiming crime has fallen, and apologise to the four million victims of fraud he has written out of the picture.
Seventy-four-year-old Janet had twenty-five thousand pounds stolen by fraudsters.
The money was my mum and dad’s and I just felt I let them down,” she told the BBC.
For Janet and for the 4 million people who fell victim to fraudsters and online scammers last year, fraud is a crime.
Does the Prime Minister understand the hurt he and his Ministers cause fraud victims like Janet, when they write them out of the crime figures, and dismiss fraud as something people don’t experience in their day-to-day lives?
Will the Prime Minister correct the record and apologise?
I first discovered ‘politics’ when I was about 16. I’d just entered the sixth form, having taken only four years to do my O-levels and had joined the Debating Society (yes, we had them in inner city grammar schools in Leicester back then). It was at the time of the 1959 ‘Life is better under the Conservatives, don’t let Labour ruin it’ General Election, that pitted ‘Supermac’ against the cerebral Hugh Gaitskell at a time when the two main parties were still mopping up around 90% of the votes and, or so it seemed, nearly 100% of the seats between them.
So, my ‘involvement’ goes back a long way and, being a bit of an historian back then, I have experienced at first hand and read about a motley collection of mostly men, who have climbed the greasy pole of Prime Ministership and slid down it again usually into the comforting embrace of a peerage. After their demise, with one or two notable exceptions, few ordinary people have a good or kind word to say about any of them, while many who worked for them still generally paint a favourable picture, even if a few warts cannot be avoided. Do we really think that most of our politicians are really out to screw us? Surely, that says as much about our take on life as it does about the quality or talent on display at any given time.
Alistair Carmichael has tabled a rather niche motion in Parliament – the Ministerial Disclosure Bill. This would force Boris Johnson to admit to any fixed penalty notices he receives for lockdown breaches.
Alistair Carmichael will today be presenting a Bill that would require any Minister of the Crown to disclose that they have been issued with a Fixed Penalty Notice.
On Tuesday No 10 agreed to tell the media if the Prime Minister was fined as a result of the Met Police investigation into Downing Street parties. But they did not extend that to other ministers, nor did they say they would state the amount of any fines, both of which are covered in Alistair’s motion.
The Liberal Democrats are targeting Tory MPs representing the “Blue Wall” in the Southern shires demanding they submit a letter of no confidence in Boris Johnson or face being “sacked by the public”.
In a strong appearance on The Sunday Morning Show, Ed Davey called on the Government to hold a cost of living summit in No 10, a work event, not a party, if you like.
He called for a windfall tax on energy companies and said that if the Conservatives had stuck with the policies he introduced when he was Energy Secretary, our bills would be £2.5 billion. You can watch the whole thing here:
He was challenged by Sophie Raworth on his tweet:
A stitch up between the Met leadership and Number 10 will damage our politics for generations and it looks like it is happening right in front of our eyes.
Ed replied that he had respect for rank and file police officers who put their lives on the line to keep us safe. For them to do their job, the public have to have confidence in them and the way the Met has handled this has undermined that.
He took us through the Met’s actions of the past few weeks, first saying they wouldn’t investigate the Downing Street Parties, then they said they might but wanted to let Sue Gray get on with her report, then they would investigate but Sue Gray’s report could be published in full and then they changed their minds for a fourth time and said that Sue Gray’s report had to wait for their investigation to be completed. “This is chaos, absolute chaos.” It might be cock up, he added, but it could also be something much worse.”
He said that he had called for an investigation by the Metropolitan Police several weeks ago. If they had done that then, they would have completed their investigation and we wouldn’t have the paralysis in Government that we are seeing now.
He said that nobody wanted the Met to make such a hash of this and had a go at Boris.
“We have a Prime Minister who has broken the rules and lied about it to Parliament. No-one trusts this Prime Minister. It’s why I’ve called very strongly that he should resign.”
Just as tactical voting is an unfortunate, but indispensable result of our voting system, trade-offs between the shorter and longer term are often necessary. Here is the choice: putting up with a blustering, lying buffoon as PM for two more years, or the prospect of another seven (or more) years of Conservative governments.
Let’s not forget: Johnson is not the problem, he merely epitomises it. The problem is a Conservative party hardly recognisable to its own traditional voter base, one that ousted its internationalist, rule-based MPs and replaced them with a cohort of spineless, corrupt loyalists.
"This government is in meltdown," says Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, "we got here because the prime minister can't tell the truth, he's lied continually, he's been dishonest to Parliament and to the British people"
He has been stabbed in the back. Stabbed in the front. Stabbed in the arras. Yet, like a Shakespearean character stretching out the last scene of a tragedy, Boris Johnson staggers on, keeping the audience enthralled with his gasping phases, bravado and sense of drama. It is a great drama but is it a way to run a country?
There is a fear, and perhaps it is a reality, that many of the government’s announcements are now all about propping up a prime minister in free fall. A clutch of backbench Tory MPs have joined opposition MPs in calling for Boris Johnson to resign. But as always Shakespeare has wisdom, as spoken by Chamberlain in Henry VIII:
“Press not a falling man too far! ’Tis virtue. His faults lie open to the laws; let them, not you, correct him. My heart weeps to see him so little of his great self.”
There will undoubtedly be more twists and turns in this drama in the next few days. But it is clear there is something rotten in the state of the Tory party.
Wendy Chamberlain made a brilliant start to PMQs today:
“No matter the excuse, there is no excuse for taking the British people for fools. Will the Prime Minister agree – it is now time to resign?”@wendychambLD#PMQspic.twitter.com/OmC6JUiFTa
You could hear the gasps of surprise at his savage denouncement. I was reminded of the blow that Geoffrey Howe struck to Margaret Thatcher back in 1990. She didn’t last long after that.
Earlier, Wendy spoke to Nicky Campbell about the PM’s position:
Writing in the Express, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said: “Boris Johnson is a man without shame, or scruples. That is, in many ways, how he managed to ascend the greasy pole.”
Explaining why he had written to Cressida Dick asking her to investigate Boris Johnson’s involvement in the continuing Partygate scandal, Davey asked how anyone of sound judgement can – let alone the prime minister – think it is somehow okay to get out the party hats and knock back the wine on the very day that the government ordered everyone to stay indoors and avoid all human contact that isn’t strictly necessary.
Ed Davey has said that Boris Johnson must resign over the Downing Street parties. He said:
“Boris Johnson has broken the law and lied to Parliament and the country, and he must now go.
“Millions of people obeyed the lockdown rules, often at huge personal cost. They missed funerals, cancelled weddings and said goodbye to dying loved ones on video calls – some on the very day that Number Ten illegally hosted a garden party.
But we could not let this day go by without mentioning Ed’s question to the Prime Minister, which was not without amusing incident.
Poor Ed has been misidentified twice this week. On the New Year’s Day edition of The Weakest LInk (and isn’t Romesh Ranganathan an inspired choice for that?) Jenni Falconer was asked which Ed was the leader of the Liberal Democrats. “Milliband?” she asked, without much confidence.
Today Speaker Lindsay Hoyle had one of those moments when he introduced Ed at PMQs:
I call Ed Balls—I mean Ed Davey.
People up and down the country are scared to even open their energy bills. People are having to choose between heating and eating.
The Government must act quickly to address this crisis by doubling the Warm Homes Discount and the Winter Fuel Allowance. pic.twitter.com/9Dd9OzVjat
Happy new year, Mr Speaker! I am sure the Prime Minister will want to join me and my Liberal Democrat colleagues in welcoming my hon. Friend the new Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan).
People’s already high heating bills are about to jump by more than 50%, with average energy bills rising by nearly £700 a year. Gas price rises will push millions more families into fuel poverty, when we know many are already afraid even to open their heating bills. Does the Prime Minister accept that he could be doing much more than he is to prevent millions of people from going hungry and cold this year while he remains—for now at least—in the warmth and comfort of No. 10?
Boris Johnson of course took the mention of the word balls and ran with it. Pretty disgraceful when you consider that there are millions of vulnerable people wondering how they are going to heat their homes, disabled people wondering how they are going to pay the extra costs to keep their breathing machines going or charge their stairlifts or scooters, all of which use a whole load of electricity. He just doesn’t care.
Following up on Andy’s great post this morning, readers of a certain age will recall a song called “Three wheels on my wagon” by the New Christy Minstrels. You can listen to it via YouTube below. It’s a cracker.
The singer, in the persona of an American “pioneer”, describes “singing a happy song” as a wheel comes off his wagon, while he is chased by a band of arrow-firing “Cherokees” who are intent on killing the singer and his fellow wagon passengers.
Is Johnson about to book the removal vans and move out of Downing Street? His stint as prime minister over? Yes please. Bring the vans in and bring the tenure of this increasingly hapless “leader” to an end.
At first thought, keeping Boris Johnson is good for us Lib Dems. His incompetence helped deliver the stunning North Shropshire result and get us our 13th MP. But his incompetence is now damaging our country. After Partygate, Peppagate, backbench rebellions and today, the resignation of Lord Frost, he increased looks as though he is up to his neck in Peppa poo.
As Oscar Wilde didn’t say: “To lose one by-election Mr Johnson, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” And there is that sense about Boris Johnson. Carelessness. The sense of not having a grip on the public mood and on the mood within his own party.
The constant drip feed of stories of Government Covid rule breaking continues, most recently with the picture of Boris Johnson taking part in a quiz as the Daily Mirror reports:
EXCLUSIVE: Boris Johnson accused of personally breaking Covid laws by hosting a Christmas quiz in No10 last year – and we've got pictures 👀https://t.co/lzcEnXeHck
After this latest revelation, Lib Dem Health Spokesperson Daisy Cooper said that the Prime Minister was undermining the ongoing fight against Covid and needs to go.
She said:
This slew of rule-breaking revelations leaves Boris Johnson with nowhere left to hide.
Boris Johnson continues to battle his way through the maelstrom of criticism over government partying while most of the rest of the country obeyed the social distancing rules at the cost of a happy Christmas. But as so often happens when one skeleton is found in the closet, another is found under the floorboards.
Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain today called for an independent public inquiry into the refurbishment of Boris Johnson’s flat, after new leaked messages show the PM knew more than previously alleged.
The party believes an independent, statutory public inquiry is needed to get to the bottom of the allegations. The inquiry would have the power to summon witnesses and require them to give evidence under oath, including current and former government ministers and officials, and demand the disclosure of any relevant official documents and communications.
Prepare for an oil price war in 2022. The combatants are OPEC and a consortium of top energy consuming countries including the US, China, UK, Japan, India and South Korea. All of these countries have built up huge strategic oil reserves in case of emergency such as war or another 1973-style OPEC oil embargo. The US has the largest reserves with 638 million barrels tucked away in storage facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. The last two times America’s oil reserves were used was after Hurricane Katrina and during the Gulf War. Biden is depleting them to combat the energy shortage which has pushed up prices to $81 a barrel and is threatening the US and world economic recovery from the pandemic.
The OPEC countries (and Russia), however, like the high prices and they are used to controlling the market to suit their needs by raising and lowering production. They fear that Biden’s move on economic rather than security grounds threatens their historic stranglehold on the market. An OPEC summit is planned for 2 December. The oil ministers were planning to announce a 100 million barrel increase in production from January; not enough to substantially reduce prices, but possibly enough to stabilise them. That is expected to be off next week’s agenda. President Biden also has internal problems in the form of the Republicans who advocate increasing domestic oil production and reinstating projects such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline to reduce reliance foreign sources. But that, of course, runs afoul of climate change promises.
How did it come this? Tens of migrants drowning in the Channel. There is a sense of inhumanity about current events. A sense of unreality. A sense that the horrors of humanity at its worst is lapping up on the shores of the Channel. Alive. But often dead.
There is a sense of unreality about our government’s response. And that of the French leadership.
This is people’s lives. People escaping the horrors of conflict and political suppression. People who want their children to go to school. People who want to set up thriving businesses. People who want to pay their way.
Instead, some of them drown. Their dreams of a better life destroyed by exploitation of modern day smugglers. Not smuggling contraband but smuggling people. There are many echoes of this from our colonial past but this a current emergency, not something you can look up in the index of a history book.
COP26 negotiators have as of this writing (Friday) entered the final stages of a draft agreement. It’s not great news for Planet Earth. So far, the gathered pledges will reduce temperature rises from the current 2.5 degree level to 2.4 degrees centigrade—well short of the 1.5 degree limit which climatologists say is the maximum the planet can bear to avoid worldwide environmental disaster. There are, however, some streaks of silver in this dark cloud. One is that the negotiators have agreed to meet in Egypt next year in a bid to make further progress. Originally it was going be another five year gap. There has also been agreement to stop deforestation. Coal has for the first time been singled for as a main polluter and many countries have promised to end its production and use. Although the US and China, the two biggest users, are dragging their feet.
You can’t lose more credibility than this. Boris Johnson, distracted no doubt by glad handing world leaders at COP26 and his slap up dining with Telegraph grandees at the Garrick, arrived back at No 10 to find that he was swirling towards the black hole of political failure. His attempt to protect North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson from allegations of lobbying on behalf of his food industry paymasters failed. Big time.
Jacob Rees Mogg yesterday cancelled the review of loyal Tory MPs had voted for just hours before. Paterson, back on the hook and facing suspension, resigned.
Dominic Cummings once described Boris Johnson as “a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”. It is a cruel irony that Owen Paterson was shopping in a supermarket when he learnt that the wheels had come off his political career.
Boris Johnson, who had hoped that COP26 would be his finest hour, has perhaps made the biggest mistake of his political career and even his fellow Tories are raging.
Might election campaigns have the foundations of attractive ideas, emotional appeal and a plausible previous record?
This government has/had strong emotional appeal, especially through its leader. Its ideas have the benefit of being based on the currently dominant economic theory of Neo-liberalism. It is supported, directly and indirectly by the mainstream media which, mostly, bolsters the performance of HM Government.
Opposition parties lack the theatrical style of Mr. Johnson. Therefore attack his language techniques. Ratios of jokes to facts? Ditto facts to inaccuracies. Ditto future tenses to past tenses. Which speech has the most metaphors etc.?
By Caron Lindsay
| Wed 15th September 2021 - 8:04 pm
Maturity has never really been Boris Johnson’s strong point.
And so it was today when Jamie Stone used a question to the Prime Minister to highlight the positive development this week which brings space port in North West Scotland a step closer:
Hansard, which is usually pretty accurate, says at the time of writing that Boris Johnson replied to Jamie thus:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind invitation. I look forward to taking it up. What we need is a suitable payload to send into space, and I think the hon. Gentleman would do very well.
But if you watch the video, what he actually said was “the Gentleman Opposite” which could refer to Keir Starmer.
You couldn’t make it up. It’s like reading the cover of Private Eye. Health secretary Sajid Javid gets a positive Covid-19 result. If the Prime Minister and Chancellor, who met with him on Friday, were ordinary mortals, they would have been banished into the self-isolation wilderness for 10 days.
But those at the heart of government live more privileged lives. Driving to Barnard’s Castle to test eyesight. Sneaking a clinch with a mistress, though forgetting to smile for the CCTV. And now Johnson and Sunak, who must not to be confused with the comedy act Laurel and Hardy no matter how tempting that is, are on a trial. They are piloting a stop at work with Covid scheme and testing daily.
cim As far as voting complexity goes, there's two separate bits to that.
1) How difficult it is to understand how to vote? Closed List is exactly equal to FPTP, ...
Iain Donaldson As we are neither a member of the EU, nor likely to be in the near future, I won't comment further on Tom's observations other than to say that with the excepti...
Jennie Tristan: ah, so anyone who has had their ovaries removed or gone through menopause is no longer a woman? Thanks for clearing that up.
It'll blow your mind to...
Simon The Greater Manchester Mayor has devolved powers of the NHS for example than the Greater London Authority and it's Mayor have....
Geoff Reid Two very basic questions for community politics practitioners with respect to Focus leaflets... Does this leaflet leave any space to say, however briefly, why w...
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cim 
Iain Donaldson 
Jennie 
Simon 
Geoff Reid 