Tag Archives: Bryant

Chris Bryant undermines his own book by supporting scandal-hit MP

Chris Bryant: he seems to have shot himself in the foot, verbally.

The politician who chairs the House of Commons’ committee on Standards has written a book about how MPs can regain public trust after a series of scandals – but undermined himself by speaking in support of the first MP to cause such a scandal after the Tories took office in 2010.

Here’s Chris Bryant, talking about his book Code of Conduct on the BBC’s Breakfast News today (August 8, 2023):

In the clip, he mentions Liam Fox, praising his work regarding Down’s Syndrome and saying people should focus on the good work done by people in Parliament.

But Dr Fox had to resign as Defence Secretary in October 2011 over his friendship with Adam Werritty. Here’s Wikipedia on what happened then:

Werritty made visits to Fox at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in Whitehall on 22 occasions in 16 months; Werrity was not security-cleared with the MoD. Additionally, over a 17-month period, ending October 2011, Werritty was present at 40 of Fox’s 70 recorded engagements. The uncertain nature of Werritty’s relationship with Fox led to an investigation by senior civil servants, initially the MoD’s Permanent Secretary, Ursula Brennan and latterly the Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell. Fox claimed that Werrity had never worked for him either in an official or unofficial capacity despite allegations that he was using a source of advice outside the Civil Service, paid for by private funds. Disclosure of increasing amounts of detail of their contact, funding and explanations of their relationship led to Fox’s resignation on 14 October 2011 in advance of O’Donnell’s report of his investigation.

So he fled from office in disgrace over allegations of impropriety. Any good work he has done since then cannot be used to disregard that.

But Bryant wants to give him a free pass.

It’s a highly surprising misstep that – sadly – calls into question his judgement and raises questions about the validity of any observations he makes in his book. Right?

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Can we trust Jeremy Hunt to fix the UK economy? [VIDEO]

UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said “eye-watering” decisions on tax increases and public service cuts will be made in his Budget on Thursday. But can we trust him to make the right choices?

Labour’s Chris Bryant doesn’t think so. On the BBC’s Politics Live, he pointed out just a few of the financial disasters inflicted on the UK by a Conservative government and raised fears that Hunt will demand more from the people who have the least.

Watch out for the party political nitpicking from Conservative Siobhan Baillie, who doesn’t have a leg to stand on but still tries to undermine the solid points Bryant makes.

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Bryant sticks to his guns over bullying in Parliament

Unrevealing: Chris Bryant took this image in an attempt to show bullying in the voting lobbies – but it did not demonstrate such behaviour clearly enough. Should he have taken video? And would it have mattered, knowing that photography is forbidden there in any case?

After a woefully inadequate ‘investigation’ ruled that there was no bullying during the controversial ‘fracking’ vote that led to the downfall of Liz Truss, whistleblowing MP Chris Bryant has insisted that the verdict was wrong.

He has tweeted the following:

The prohibition of photography in the voting lobbies must be a gift to anybody wishing to intimidate MPs. Elsewhere on the Twitter thread, Bryant agreed that CCTV cameras would be welcome:

The answer, of course, is to modernise the system with electronic voting, as is used in the devolved governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Doesn’t the reluctance to introduce such a system smell of corruption to you?

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#ForeignOffice admits it was wrong to deny #BorisJohnson authorised Afghan animal evacuation

The Foreign Office has admitted misleading MPs over whether Boris Johnson authorised the evacuation of Pen Farthings dog rescue charity Nowzad from Afghanistan last year.

But you won’t realise that from looking at the BBC report!

Foreign Office boss admits error over Afghan animal evacuation reads as though Johnson had nothing to do with it.

And you have to read a long way into the story to discover that Sir Philip Barton, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, was saying that he had not seen emails sent within his department, indicating that Boris Johnson did indeed authorise the evacuation.

If he did, then he lied about it to the media afterwards, when it was suggested that he had prioritised animals over human beings.

People the UK abandoned in Afghanistan when the Taliban took over have since tried to reach this country via the refugee route – crossing the Channel – and this has led to at least one death.

Appearing before the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday, the prime minister’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Nigel Casey was asked if he knew whether the PM had intervened “in the evacuation of Nowzad staff or animals” and replied: “Not to my knowledge.”

In  written evidence to the committee, published on Wednesday, Sir Philip denied that Mr Casey had received “any correspondence referring to the prime minister’s intervention in the Nowzad case”.

This was contradicted in leaked emails published by the committee subsequently.

And BBC Newsnight’s Sima Kotecha has seen two emails with the subject heading “Pen Farthing and dogs”, showing the Foreign Office and Mr Casey sought guidance from No 10 over the issue.

So now Sir Philip has had to write back to the committee, apologising for misleading its members.

But he stuck to the part of the story covering his involvement:

“As Nigel said to the committee on [Tuesday] he has no recollection of having seen emails in which staff attributed this decision to the prime minister. Nor do I.”

Downing Street is saying that the decision may have been interpreted as coming from Johnson when that was not the case – but it has provided no evidence to support this claim.

So Labour’s Chris Bryant, a member of the committee, is well within his rights to say (as he did on BBC Breakfast News): “All I want to know is who made the decision?”

We all want to know that, Chris. At the moment it seems clear that Johnson has lied again and our civil servants are disgracing themselves in their haste to cover up for him.

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If #Partygate #blackmail claims are false, why is this man taking them to the police?

William Wragg: he’ll soon be talking to the police about blackmail in Parliament.

The MP who claimed Tory whips were blackmailing other MPs to withhold letters of “no confidence” in Boris Johnson is taking his allegation to the police.

William Wragg reckons he has evidence that will justify a police investigation, despite claims from 10 Downing Street that it has seen no such information, and from Johnson loyalists that the scandal is nonsense.

Mr Wragg said he will see a police officer on Monday because he wanted to leave any investigation to “experts” rather than Number 10. His faith may be misplaced – consider the way the Metropolitan Police has ignored allegations that parties happened in Downing Street when officers were standing guard at the door.

Chris Bryant, chairman of the Commons Committee on Standards, said he had spoken to about a dozen Tory MPs who claimed whips threatened to withdraw funding for their constituencies, including for campaigning and infrastructure such as bypasses and schools.

He said some had alleged that Johnson himself has been doing this, describing such behaviour as “misconduct in public office”. He agreed with Mr Wragg that is was a matter for the police.

He also said the allegations seemed to be part of an erosion of standards that had been taking place over a period of years.

Nusrat Ghani would probably agree with him, although This Writer isn’t sure anybody has asked her.

She lost her job as a transport minister in a mini-reshuffle in February 2020 and has now said she was told it was because her religion – she’s a Muslim – was “making colleagues uncomfortable”.

This seems likely in a Party that has been riddled with accusations of Islamophobia for years – including allegations against Johnson.

Apparently chief whip Mark Spencer has claimed this accusation relates to him but is false.

Well…

“I had to listen to a monologue on how hard it was to define when people are being racist and that the party doesn’t have a problem and I needed to do more to defend it.

“It was very clear to me that the whips and No 10 were holding me to a higher threshold of loyalty than others because of my background and faith.”

said Ms Ghani.

I think she should join Mr Wragg’s interview with the police officer early next week.

And Mark Drakeford, Wales’s First Minister, whose Covid-19 policies have safeguarded the population here so much better than Johnson’s have in England, has said Johnson’s plan to ease ‘Plan B’ health protections (you may call them restrictions) is probably a distraction tactic.

“Everything that goes on in Whitehall and Westminster at the moment for the UK government is seen exclusively through the lens of, how does this make a difference to the efforts that are being made to shore-up the position of the prime minister,” he said.

“This is a government that at the moment is simply not capable of doing the ordinary business of government in a competent and sensible way because it is overwhelmed by the headlines that surround dreadful events that went on in Downing Street.”

He also said:

“The prime minister is someone who’s been sacked from two previous jobs for not telling the truth.

“I think The Times wrote an editorial on the eve of the December 2019 election pointing to the many flaws in the prime minister’s record and in many ways, I think what you see is his history catching up with him.”

There’s a lot of accuracy in that, I reckon.

Even if he slithers out of the Partygate accusations, it seems Johnson may be sunk by his efforts to avoid being backstabbed by his own MPs.

Source: ‘History catching up with’ PM, Wales first minister claims – as more details of No 10 parties are revealed

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Chris Bryant’s Peruvian nightmare: Labour centrist owned by Latin America lecturer

Chris Bryant: He still hasn’t learnt that careless tweeting can cost careers.

What an embarrassment for entitled Blairite Starmerite Chris Bryant!

He wanted to make a point about those damned lefty Marxists and ended up being humiliated by somebody who actually knew something about the subject matter.

Bryant came to grief after tweeting about the Peruvian presidential election, that was won by left-wing teacher Pedro Castillo. He promptly selected Marxist Guido Bellido as his prime minister.

Bryant tweeted: “Perú is a wonderful country but it’s depressing that voters were left with a choice between Fujimori and Castillo. Sadly the new cabinet looks set to take the country down a failed Marxist route.”

A what?

Which “failed Marxist” route is that?

A nonexistent one.

Marxism is not a social/political system – it is a critique of Capitalism. Bryant was probably groping for a reference to Communism – which is a global political/economic model. Marx didn’t expect it to work except on a global level (anything smaller and the surrounding Capitalists would crush it), so it’s unlikely that Castillo is likely to try it.

It is astonishing, not only that a member of the Labour Party doesn’t know this, but that a Labour Parliamentarian is this ignorant.

It suggests that the party’s recruitment/selection process has gone seriously awry – as Alan McLeod stated in a response to Bryant.

Who’s he? Well, we’ll all know momentarily but for the time being let’s just say his Twitter bio told us he “mostly tweet[s] about US and Latin American politics”.

This time, he tweeted, “It is truly extraordinary that a Labour MP in south Wales could say such a thing. It goes to show how bought out the party has become.” Living in Wales as This Writer does, I can only take this as a reference to the fact that south Walians are, generally speaking, socialists – and that it is therefore amazing that Bryant – not a socialist – ever managed to get selected.

From what I can see, it seems this former Conservative was parachuted in by the Blair leadership. So it may be unsurprising that his understanding of Marxism is so poor.

Indeed.

It seems Bryant was stung. He responded by demanding to know his interlocutor’s credentials – and that’s where he really came unstuck:

“I’ve got a PhD in Latin American politics, lectured about it in universities, and have produced a book and five peer-reviewed journal articles on the topic.”

Even then, Bryant wouldn’t let it lie. He thought of a comeback – and came even more unstuck:

So now Chris Bryant’s credentials as a Labour representative are utterly shattered.

Postscript: This isn’t even the first time Bryant fell foul of Twitter!

Back in August 2018, social media users descended on him like a pack of wolves after he accused someone of anti-Semitism for using the slang term “gammon” to refer to Mike Gapes.

He tried to protest that he thought it was a reference to Jewish people not eating meat from pigs when in fact it was an insult against middle-aged or older white men with conservative, traditionalist views, stereotypically characterized as having a red or flushed complexion.

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Bryant admonished by Hoyle over ‘face-pulling’ during PMQs. Shame it was nothing to do with Johnson

Chris Bryant: what did he do?

Politics has come to a pretty pass when Chris Bryant pulling faces at the Speaker is more interesting than Prime Minister’s Questions!

That’s what appears to have happened today (December 9).

During the weekly exchange between Boris Johnson and Labour leader Keir Starmer, Speaker Lindsay Hoyle halted proceedings and addressed Bryant:

It seems Bryant had left the chamber but returned later, standing next to the Speaker’s chair for a hushed discussion, at the end of which, Hoyle was heard saying, “Mr Bryant I think we need this conversation later.”

Bryant shrugged. Some say he was heard saying, “Fine.” And then he left the chamber.

Speculation about what it was that Bryant actually did to cause such ire in the Speaker has been rife:

Some of the news websites are claiming that Bryant’s offence was simply standing in front of a door.

According to Politics Home,

One backbencher who was sat in the Commons said the row was about where Bryant was standing, allegedly in front of a door that had been left open for ventilation.

The MP said: “The speaker told him to move and he wouldn’t. They then had a face pulling and finger pointing contest.”

If true, it is a shame. Bryant’s reputation would have soared if he had been pulling faces at Johnson, as this now-deleted tweet indicates:

It reads: “Good to see Chris Bryant chased out of the House by the Speaker for pulling a slightly quizzical face which was clearly putting the Prime Minister off from telling his intergalactic lies.”

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