Boris Johnson: does this look like the kind of person who would use coercion to get his own way?

Nobody should be surprised by this, considering Boris Johnson’s record of dishonesty.

It means this article is now very different from what it was going to be. After learning that MPs had reportedly decided to wait for Sue Gray’s report before deciding whether to submit letters of “no confidence” in Johnson, I was going to excoriate them for being mice when they need to be lions.

“Where is the leadership the electorate has expected from the Conservatives?” is what I was going to ask. “It isn’t coming from Boris Johnson and it seems nobody else in the government or among Tory backbenchers is willing to grasp the nettle.”

Well now we have a reason:

The idea that whips blackmail MPs is not new – they’ve been doing it for decades. There’s a scene in the 1990s BBC drama House of Cards in which a “Mr Stoat” is blackmailed into voting for the government because he was caught by police soliciting a prostitute on the street; the whips “disappear” the accusation and Stoat scuttles off to do as he’s told.

Of course, if Tory whips are using knowledge of criminal behaviour to keep their MPs in line, they’re unlikely to go to the police. But in that case, why would the electorate want criminals to be MPs?

The claim here is that MPs are being threatened with the loss of funding for their constituencies. If that is true, there is nothing to stop them from popping down to their local cop shop in Westminster and laying information against Johnson and his thugs.

The big question now is whether anybody will do it.

Remember: these people are mice; they’re not lions.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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