Keir Starmer: he has bored most of us away from Labour and now he wants his boring friends to finish the job if he can’t.
It seems Keir Starmer is determined to steer Labour into disaster – from behind the scenes, if he has to.
After handing in his questionnaire about possible breaches of Covid-19 lockdown rules at an online campaigning event last year, it seems he has contacted the people he sees as potential successors, instructing them to prepare for a leadership contest.
These include Lisa Nandy, Yvette Cooper, and even Wes Streeting. God help the Labour Party if any of them get the top spot!
Apparently he has told friends, “I will not let our hard-won gains be squandered so we will need to be ready in the unlikely event that the worst comes to worst.”
What “hard-won gains”?
Under Starmer, Labour has haemorrhaged party members and, if it hasn’t lost seats, it has certainly failed to gain them. He has struggled to gain even a polling parity with the most overtly corrupt Tory prime minister of our lifetimes.
Starmer’s time as Labour leader has been an abject failure. Any leadership by his anointed successors will certainly continue the trend.
Nadhim Zahawi: it seems the co-founder of YouGov intimidated the polling firm into changing its methods – falsifying poll results – to make it seem the Tories were more popular than was true in 2017.
This is shocking and Nadhim Zahawi should be made to answer some hard questions.
It seems polling in 2017 showed Labour overtaking the Conservatives – until the Conservatives (Zahawi in particular) intimidated leading pollster YouGov.
A whistleblower on Dorset Eye explains:
The first thing I would do every morning is download the overnight data, and each day the gap just kept getting smaller and smaller. On the morning of the Manchester bombing, we actually had Labour pulling level, although the poll got spiked because the campaign rightly paused.
And then we released the MRP*. This was probably the worst possible idea. The MRP was actually showing exactly the same thing as our standard polls would have, but it was the first time anybody had said “hung parliament”.
Nadhim Zahawi called up the CEO and said he would call for his resignation if he was wrong.
This meant our polling and coverage was a lot worse for the rest of the campaign. We did a fantastic debate poll in the hours following the debate that Corbyn took part in. The results were stark – Corbyn won by a country mile, and one in four Tory voters thought he was best. But despite having written the story and designed the charts, we were banned from releasing the story because it was too positive about Labour.
Similarly, there were a few “minor” methodology changes for the final poll which increase the Tory lead. This was done after pressure from high-ups (and despite protests from those of us who thought it wasn’t ok).
Was the 2017 election rigged because people were influenced by falsified opinion polls?
The evidence here suggests it was. We might never have had Tory Brexit, Boris Johnson and all the horrors of the last five years if YouGov’s founder had left its employees to do their job. And will you ever trust an opinion poll again?
*MRP stands for multilevel regression and post-stratification. This is a statistical method that produces predictions for small geographic areas even if a poll had few respondents from that constituency. Instead, census data, such as the age and income distributions of voters in that area, is put into the model with the national survey data.
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Paranoia: Boris Johnson isn’t receiving a message about who’s submitting letters of ‘no confidence’ against him, new Tory MPs. Feel safe to hand them in – or get a senior Tory who has already voiced opposition to Johnson to do it for you.
It seems some Conservative MPs – particularly those from the 2019 intake – are reluctant to submit letters of “no confidence” in Boris Johnson because they fear Tory whips will be spying on the process and will victimise them in the future.
They worry that the Tory whips will be spying outside the office of Sir Graham Brady, the 1922 Committee chair who gathers the letters, and do not trust emails not to be accidentally shared or viewed by staff who have access to the accounts.
But some senior Tories who have already voiced opposition to Johnson in public have offered to act as conduits, carrying letters to 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady – so there’s no problem, is there?
Perhaps these Parliamentarians haven’t considered what might happen to them if their constituents find out they could have helped kick the corrupt Partygate prime minister out but instead are allowing him to remain – and do worse – because of their own cowardice?
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Boozy Johnson: this is not an image of him at the Downing Street garden party on May 20, 2020 (it was actually taken in 2019) but it serves to suggest his behaviour there quite adequately.
The easy answer to the question in the headline is: no, he should have known his parties broke the law.
I say “his” parties because they were parties at 10 Downing Street, his home and place of work, taking place directly under his nose and that he attended in many instances. They were part of a “party culture” created during his watch.
And I say he should have known they broke the law because he announced to all of us what the law was – and it didn’t allow for social gatherings in a work setting, by the way. Furthermore, evidence in the Sue Gray report shows that his aides certainly did know that these events were legally questionable because they took steps to prevent the press from finding out about them.
Let’s discuss the party in the Downing Street garden on the evening of May 20, 2020 when Covid-19 regulations stated that “participating in a gathering of more than two persons in public was prohibited except where the gathering was ‘essential for work purposes'”, but had been amended to allow “meetings outdoors for exercise or recreation with one person from another household”.
Clearly an after-hours drinks event in the garden of 10 Downing Street, with more than 200 people invited to socialise with each other – even if socially-distanced – would have been a flagrant breach of these regulations.
It would have been a gathering of more than two persons in public that was not essential for work purposes, and it would have been a meeting outdoors between multiple people from more than one other household.
This did not stop Boris Johnson’s principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds, from advertising it by email, while other officials requested that tables be put out by the “Internal Events” team – which This Writer would have thought clearly marks this out as an illegal social occasion.
Alcohol was available at the event – both supplied by officials and also via a request for attendees to “Bring your own booze!”
In total, around 200 staff were invited although it is believed attendance was around 40 – still a massive breach of the regulations at the time.
Here’s the punchline: those arranging the event – including Reynolds – knew it was against the rules because they went to lengths to hide it from members of the media who attended a press conference just before it was due to take place.
According to the Gray Report, a Number 10 special advisor sent this message to Reynolds:
Just to flag that the press conference will probably be finishing around that time, so helpful if people can be mindful of that as speakers and cameras are leaving, not walking around waving bottles of wine etc”.
Martin Reynolds replied:
“Will do my best!….”
The report continues:
A No 10 Director declined the invitation and told the investigation that they had raised with either Martin Reynolds or his office that it was not a good idea.
Lee Cain, the then No 10 Director of Communications (a special adviser), also
received the invitation. In response, he emailed Martin Reynolds, No 10 official (1),
and Dominic Cummings at 14.35 on 20 May 2020 stating: “I’m sure it will be fine –
and I applaud the gesture – but a 200 odd person invitation for drinks in the garden
of no 10 is somewhat of a comms risk in the current environment.” Lee Cain says
he subsequently spoke to Martin Reynolds and advised him that the event should
be cancelled. Martin Reynolds does not recall any such conversation. In addition,
Dominic Cummings has also said that he too raised concerns, in writing. We have
not found any documentary evidence of this.
Referring to the event itself, it is clear that – once again – Boris Johnson attended and participated fully:
The Prime Minister attended at approximately 18.00 for around 30 minutes to thank staff before returning to his office with Martin Reynolds for a meeting at 18.30.
So he was there with Martin Reynolds, who knew it was an illegal gathering. He should have known himself that it was an illegal gathering, being the government representative who had explained the rules to the rest of us. But he not only allowed it to happen but attended and spent 30 minutes with the 40 staff there.
The excuse that he only stopped by to thank staff for their work during the Covid crisis doesn’t make sense because it does not take 30 minutes to make a brief speech of thanks. It seems clear that Johnson was himself socialising with staff, adding his own household to all the others that should not have been mixing at that time, according to the rules that he had put in place.
How strange that the Metropolitan Police who investigated this event, and must have known that it was an illegal party attended by the prime minister, chose not to fine him for this flagrant law-breaking! How convenient for them that their Acting Commissioner was able to dismiss this omission simply by declaring that, as far as he was concerned, all the decisions were above-board!
Reynolds, who subsequently had a meeting with Johnson inside 10 Downing Street, sent a WhatsApp message to a special advisor later in the evening, which appears to be about a story in the press:
[Martin Reynolds] [19:36] “Best of luck – a complete non story but better than them focusing on our drinks (which we seem to have got away with).”
In the light of all this evidence, it is not credible for Boris Johnson to claim that he had not fallen foul of rules in the Ministerial Code because he had not broken the law on purpose.
He should have known himself that the event broke his rules because he was the one who laid them down for us all.
His principal private secretary certainly knew that the event broke Johnson’s own rules, and attended the event with Johnson. Considering the contents of his electronic correspondence, it seems extremely unlikely that he did not mention to Johnson that the event was illegal.
Also, if the event was not against the rules, why was everybody involved so tight-lipped about it, to the point of hiding it from the media?
And this is just one of many such parties.
It doesn’t matter what Johnson says – the evidence exposes him as a liar.
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Shireen Abu Aqleh: it’s hard to see the justification for killing someone with the word “PRESS” emblazoned across their jacket.
The death of Shireen Abu Aqleh has been referred to the International Criminal Court as part of an investigation into whether Israeli security forces have been targeting Palestinian journalists in violation of humanitarian law:
The case originally submitted in April by Bindmans had focused on four Palestinian journalists wearing press helmets and vests, two of whom were maimed and two shot dead. It also covers alleged attacks on Gaza media infrastructure in May 2021.
Lawyers from Bindmans and Doughty Street Chambers announced the addition of the death on 11 May of Abu Aqleh to the existing claim at a press conference in London.
They said the case was vital owing to the repeated failure of the Israeli security forces to investigate such incidents and the inability of Palestinian reporters to secure reparations in Israeli domestic courts.
There will also be issues of jurisdiction… Israel itself is not a party to the ICC, raising issues of enforcement of any eventual ruling.
Why isn’t it? Why does Israel get away with this kind of unaccountability?
This comment from one of the solicitors involved is extremely telling:
Tayab Ali, the Bindmans solicitor in the case, said “evidence was not lacking, but the political will”, adding “Israel in the past has been gifted immunity”.
He said: “Israel has enjoyed a devastating impunity against accountability for the actions of its armed forces, and has repeatedly demonstrated that it is a bad faith investigator. It has not managed to hold anyone to account for the tens of Palestinian journalists that have been killed or maimed so far”.
The Palestinian Authority announced the results of an investigation into Abu Aqleh’s death, saying that it revealed Israeli forces deliberately shot and killed the reporter.
Israel’s defence minister, Benny Gantz, said, “Any claim that the IDF intentionally harmed journalists or noncombatants is a blatant lie.”
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Boris Johnson: the prime minister is pictured participating in a party to mark the departure of Lee Cain from his Downing Street communications job – but according to Acting Met Police Commissioner Sir Stephen House, there is “no clear evidence” that he took part in the rampant Covid-19 rule-breaking there.
A police officer who witnessed “a large number of people” at a “crowded and noisy” party, where “some members of staff drank excessively” did not immediately take action over Covid-19 rule breaches because he was there for security and not to “police what goes on inside the building”, according to Met Police Acting Commissioner Sir Stephen House.
Have you ever read such nonsense? Police officers are sworn to uphold the law at all times, no matter what their stated duties are said to be. Would he have turned a blind eye to burglary, or rape, because he was assigned to “security”?
Apparently the same officer did not feel that a large number of drunken people in a crowded and noisy room breached Covid-19 regulations that strictly prohibited such social gatherings.
It’s no wonder this “acting” Commissioner’s other comments are also shockingly inadequate in the light of this.
House told the London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee there was “no clear evidence” that Johnson had breached Covid-19 rules many times in Downing Street, despite the very clear photographic evidence of him participating in a party to mark the departure of Lee Cain from Downing Street on November 13, 2020.
This was not a “works gathering”. Far too many people were present and they were socialising and drinking alcohol – as was the prime minister, who gave a speech. The amount of time he spent there was immaterial because the rules in place at the time prohibited all such social events from taking place at all.
At least one attendee was fined for being at this event but there was “no clear evidence” that Boris Johnson was there or took part, according to House.
House also suggested that it was difficult for his officers to work out which gatherings were work-related and which were not. How daft! If alcoholic drinks were visible in the room, then they weren’t work-related. And in any case, if the room was packed with people, meaning they were not at least 2m away from each other in accordance with social distancing rules, they were breaking the law.
House said he was personally involved in the decision-making and was confident in the outcome of the police investigation. That should be enough for us to demand that he surrender his badge.
Is he selling us down the river so he can gain the favour of the top Tories?
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Boozy Johnson: it seems he spent most of the Covid-19 crisis drunk, along with many of the staff at Downing Street – and the Met Police, together with Sue Gray, have been trying to cover-up his wrongdoing.
Isn’t it a shame that Sue Gray’s report into the drunken party culture that prevailed at Downing Street from early 2020 until late 2021 (at least) is so uneven.
Parts of it are thoroughly researched, but other parts – especially, it seems, where Boris Johnson is concerned, are amateurish.
Consider the report’s entry about a gathering in the Downing Street flat on the evening of November 13, 2020.
Ms Gray states that after the announcement that Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain were leaving, a meeting was held in the Number 10 flat to discuss the handling of their departure.
It started at 6pm, involving five special advisors, and Johnson himself turned up at 8pm. Food and alcohol were available and the “discussion” continued into the evening with people leaving at various points.
This was not a works gathering – it was a party.
If it had been a works gathering, then it would have taken place in an office – not the flat. Alcohol would certainly not have been available – have you ever been to a work meeting where booze was being served up to all and sundry? I haven’t! People attend work events to work – not to drink. And everybody would have stayed until the meeting was closed by its chair, if it were a works gathering.
Johnson was getting drunk with his mates in his flat and they simply pretended it was a works gathering to diddle the rules, or so it seems to me. Doesn’t it look that way to you?
Ms Gray’s report states she had to halt her investigation because the police inquiry began, and did not re-start it when the Met had finished their dog’s dinner of a probe because she did not think it was “appropriate or proportionate” to do so.
Is this because she feared that she would expose her boss’s lawbreaking further than it already has been?
I’ve looked in detail at just three events so far. All were parties, and Boris Johnson participated fully in all of them. At those times, he was drunk in charge of the nation – and these were times when the nation needed a sober hand at the helm.
It was a flagrant abuse of power that both the Met Police and Ms Gray seem to have been doing their utmost to cover up. Shame on them – and shame on all of us if we allow them to get away with it.
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Minister for inhumanity: Priti Patel’s “Hostile Environment” policies have involved Home Office staff in illegal activities in the past. Now she is being challenged in court to prove her plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda is not also against the law.
10 years after the launch of the ‘Hostile Environment’ policy, representatives of Home Office staff are challenging the government in court over things they are being asked to do.
The Public and Commercial Services Union and the Immigration Services Union are challenging Priti Patel’s policies to “pushback” small boats in the English Channel and to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda.
They have strong justification: the “pushback” policy is likely to break international law on asylum while the idea of deportations to Rwanda copies a previous policy by Israel – that didn’t work and was abandoned.
And the Conservative government has a record of “Hostile Environment” criminality.
We all know – don’t we? – about the Windrush Scandal that illegally targeted for deportation a generation of people who had the right to live in the UK but whose documentation had been destroyed.
The Home Office has also wrongly accused 34,000 international students of cheating in English language tests and failed to ensure that innocent people were not wrongly deported.
An Institute for Public Policy Research report in 2020 concluded the hostile environment policy had fostered racism, pushed people into destitution, wrongly targeted people who were living in the UK legally, and had “severely harmed the reputation of the Home Office”.
In the wake of the Windrush scandal the Home Office committed to introduce a total transformation of the department, including a review of the hostile environment policies – and failed to complete it.
So it should be no surprise that civil service representatives are trying to protect workers from having to take part in Priti Patel’s potential crimes.
One glance at comments on the “Hostile Environment” policy by Nazek Ramdan, the director of the charity Migrant Voice, should make the reason crystal clear:
“Perhaps no other policy in living memory has left such a malign mark, a stain like an oil slick. It is racist, xenophobic, immoral, illegal, unfair, punishing, divisive, mean-spirited, discriminatory and counterproductive.”
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‘All the lawbreaking happened after I left’, says Johnson. Look at him, participating fully in Lee Cain’s leaving party in Downing Street. He actually gave a speech, while drinking alcohol at this social event in flagrant breach of lockdown laws that were then in force. Now he’s lying about it AGAIN. He treated you with utter contempt. He MUST be flushed out of Parliament like the excrement he is.
Clearly Sue Gray disagrees with the Metropolitan Police about Boris Johnson’s participation in Lee Cain’s leaving party on November 13, 2020.
Images of Johnson at the party were published by ITV News on Monday (May 23) and you can read This Writer’s article about it here.
In her report, Ms Gray states: “There was a leaving speech and drinks in No 10 for Lee Cain later that day, which the Prime Minister attended.
“A number of press office staff and media special advisers gathered in the Press Office area of No 10 to mark the departure of Lee Cain, the No 10 Director of Communications.
“The investigation was informed that this was not pre-planned. It did occur at around the time that ‘Wine Time Friday’ would normally be taking place.
“The Prime Minister attended on his way to his Downing Street flat, having left his office at 19.17. He went to the Press Office area, joined the gathering and made a leaving speech for Lee Cain.
“Wine had been provided and those attending, including the Prime Minister, were drinking alcohol. There are a number of photographs of the event.”
He joined the gathering and those attending, including the prime minister, were drinking alcohol.
Clearly it was a social gathering – a party. Clearly Johnson was there. Clearly he participated fully, including imbibing alcohol.
This belies his own claim to fellow MPs in the House of Commons. As I stated yesterday: “Questioned in Parliament on whether a party had taken place on that date, Johnson said, ‘No but I’m sure that whatever happened, the guidance was followed, and the rules were followed at all times.'”
As I write this, Johnson is telling his fellow MPs, once again, a load of nonsense that any wrongdoing happened after he had left. This is clearly untrue as the pictorial evidence shows.
He did attend these events and participated in them fully. He did lie to Parliament about it.
This corrupt crook should resign. But we can see from his behaviour today that he absolutely will not.
It is up to his fellow Parliamentarians – the MPs that he deliberately and corruptly deceived – to force him out before he drags the UK’s Parliament into any more disgrace.
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Boris Bull****: it seems the prime minister will try to fool us that he has “learned” his “lesson” after receiving a small fine for being at a single Downing Street party, being let off the hook for all the other events he attended, and lying brazenly to Parliament about what was going on. He is simply the most corrupt crook to have infested the highest office in the UK – and that’s saying a lot!
If Boris Johnson hoped the end of the Met Police investigation into parties at Downing Street during Covid-19 lockdowns would take the heat off him, he was mistaken. It has been turned up.
For a start, doubt has been cast on the police inquiry after images emerged of the prime minister taking part in events for which he was not fined. Were the police protecting Johnson because he is the prime minister, or giving him privileges not afforded to low-level civil servants because he could afford expensive lawyers? If so, then they were defying the basic principle of UK law that everybody should be treated equally. London Mayor Sadiq Khan has demanded a detailed explanation.
And former Met Police deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick has weighed in, stating that the public will want to know what more evidence the police needed to give the prime minister a fixed penalty notice, when the photos appear to show beyond reasonable doubt that he should have been issued with one.
People who attended the parties (and were presumably fined for doing so) have told the BBC and others about the party culture at Downing Street during the Covid lockdowns – a culture endorsed by Boris Johnson, they said, suggesting he “wanted to be liked” and for staff to be able to “let their hair down”, and that they felt they had the prime minister’s permission to socialise even it meant breaking the rules because “he was there.”
It’s not surprising that civil servants are starting to speak out: as is now normal in Boris Johnson’s regime, it is the staff and special advisors who have taken the blame for Partygate rather than the politicians who permitted and participated in the parties. A large majority of the 83 people fined by the police were officials, and Johnson’s backroom team has also suffered a “brutal purge” over the last six months.
Cabinet Secretary Simon Case – a close Johnson ally – is safe, though, despite speculation on his future. It seems that after Johnson’s ministers withdrew permission for him to give evidence on Partygate to a committee of MPs, his job is not in danger.
Meanwhile, not a single politician has lost their job. Rishi Sunak simply decided he didn’t feel like stepping down after being fined, and Johnson seems determined to corruptly give himself the all-clear for lying to Parliament, if he is a accused of breaking the Ministerial Code. You see, as prime minister, he is in charge of deciding whether anybody has broken it, including himself.
Tory MPs seem split, though. Environment Secretary George “Useless” Eustice has said he expects “nothing new” to come from the report and that he hopes its publication will allow the government to put the scandal behind it, despite all the loose ends that are still dangling about the lies told by Johnson, the possibility of a Met Police cover-up, and the fact that the Tory government tacitly, if not openly, endorsed the party culture.
But critics are said to be relaunching their bid to oust Johnson by triggering a leadership contest with letters of “no confidence” in him.
And Johnson himself?
According to BBC political editor Chris Mason, he actually has the bare-faced cheek to trot out the tired old lie that “We have learned our lesson”.
What utter Boris Bull****.
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