Lord Geidt: he has spoken out to clear up confusion about his reason for resigning as Boris Johnson’s ethics advisor – and the reason is clear: Johnson is determined to continue law-breaking and Geidt wouldn’t be a part of it.
So now we know.
Lord Geidt did not resign because he objected to plans for steel tariffs that might breach international law.
He resigned because he refused to give advanced cover to the prime minister – Boris Johnson – where there is contemplation of doing anything that may breach international (or indeed national) law.
To This Writer, it seems clear that Geidt was concerned that he might be creating a precedent that would give Johnson carte blanche for unlimited law-breaking in the future.
How sad that it has taken three days since his resignation for this to be revealed.
You can find out how the story developed on the BBC by reading articles here…
And here. They reveal much of the way the UK’s government has been trying to break the law while misleading the people about it, it seems.
And Geidt’s resignation confirms that, after Partygate, Boris Johnson is determined to continue breaking the law.
Why aren’t we seeing renewed calls for him to go?
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Lord Evans of Weardale: the standards committee chair is a former chief of MI5.
Boris Johnson’s rewrite of the Ministerial Code is leaving the public with questions to answer about whether standards are being eroded, according to a watchdog chief.
Lord Evans of Weardale, chairman of the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life, questioned Johnson’s decision to relax the rules so ministers no longer have to resign over minor breaches of the Ministerial Code, while refusing to allow investigations to happen independently.
Instead, ethics advisor Lord Geidt must still seek the prime minister’s consent before investigating – and Johnson may veto any such investigation.
Lord Evans said the change, while an improvement on the previous position, meant the adviser was still not “sufficiently independent”.
Lord Evans said:
“I think you’ve got to raise questions when you see the outcome of the police investigations and the Sue Gray report, and one or two of the other issues that have come up – I was outspoken myself in regard to the Owen Paterson business.
“So, there has been a lot of public disquiet about standards over the last six months.
“It’s one of those things that comes up from time to time and it’s really important to reassure people that we want to continue to maintain decent standards in this country.”
He continued:
“In terms of public confidence, I think independent investigation of breaches is critical.
“And that’s why we recommended both that there should be independent right to initiate investigations and also that, you know, when it’s a very minor breach, it might be more sensible to say, well, you don’t have to resign but there are other penalties.
“Our concern is that the Government chose to accept the range of penalties but did not accept fully the recommendation for independent investigation and determination of the facts.”
And he said it is up to Lord Geidt to decide his next move after Johnson insisted his police fine over a Covid rule-busting birthday bash did not constitute a breach of the ministerial code (because he had rewritten the Code to ensure that it did not).
The standards watchdog chief told the Today programme:
“He’s made his position very clear, that he felt in his report that was published this week that it was important that the Prime Minister should recognise that the partygate allegations and the outcome of that do have implications for the application of the ministerial code.
“Of course, the Prime Minister has subsequently written to him explaining why he believed that he didn’t breach the ministerial code in that regard.
“So, obviously, Lord Geidt will be giving consideration to what has been said. But obviously that’s a decision for him, to make up his mind on where he goes with this next.”
It seems Lord Evans is suggesting his fellow peer should protest the prime minister’s conduct in some way.
And why not? One does not prove oneself innocent of rule-breaking by re-writing the rules – nor does one demonstrate one’s own high ethical standards by refusing to allow independent investigation of one’s behaviour.
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Lord Geidt: he has said the only reason he didn’t offer advice to Boris Johnson on how to conduct himself within the Ministerial Code is he would have had to resign if Johnson didn’t take it. This implies that he expected Johnson not to, doesn’t it?
Boris Johnson’s desperation to hold on to power while exercising it in only silly and pointless ways is becoming increasingly blatant with every passing day.
The latest development is a demand by Johnson’s standards advisor, Lord Geidt, for the prime minister to explain why his fine for breaching Covid-19 laws by attending a party does not break the Ministerial Code duty to comply with the law.
Johnson’s only response is the legally illiterate claim that “paying a fixed penalty notice is not a criminal conviction”. Maybe not – but it is a criminal sanction. People don’t get fined if they haven’t broken a law – and the Code’s conventions demand that ministers breaking the law must resign.
In his annual report on ministers’ interests, Geidt said the Partygate fine meant “a legitimate question has arisen as to whether those facts alone might have constituted a breach of the overarching duty within the ministerial code of complying with the law”.
Even if Johnson thought there was no breach, Geidt stated that he “should respond accordingly, setting out his case in public.”
Do you think he will?
This is just the latest evidence that, as a recent Guardian editorial claimed, the UK is “not being governed seriously in very serious times”.
Anxiety that the UK is rudderless while Johnson desperately tries to bail himself out of trouble that he caused won’t be dispelled by current government policy, the writer claims – because it has been formulated purely to distract us from the prime minister’s illegal antics:
There can be no other purpose for the proposal to restore trade in imperial units. The tiny number of people who will be thrilled by the restoration of a right to exclude metric measurements from displays of goods will be hugely outnumbered by the people, including many Conservatives, who can smell the decay in such gimmickry.
Reports of a plan to lift the prohibition on expanding grammar schools belongs in a similar category, although it sounds weightier. This is a zombie policy that staggers on in the Tory imagination as a solution to problems of social mobility, despite ample evidence that selective education has the opposite effect. If Mr Johnson thinks his levelling up agenda will be enlivened by reviving discredited schools policy, he will be disappointed.
The same unoriginal impulse is being brought to ignite a proposed bonfire of EU regulation – the function of the “Brexit freedoms bill” announced in the Queen’s speech. Sunset clauses will be retroactively scattered across the body of retained European law, so that they expire regardless of whether a suitable replacement has been conceived. It is a wildly irresponsible idea, conceived in the delusional realm of Europhobic imaginations where every British economic problem has its origin in Brussels directives. In reality, it means legislating for deliberate uncertainty, as if the goal is deterring investment.
The writer goes on to make this bold statement: “the harder the prime minister scrapes the bottom of the policy barrel, the more desperate he looks.
“But the task of political survival is now consuming all of the energy that should be applied to running the country… Conservative MPs.. can have Mr Johnson as their leader, or they can have a functional government; not both.”
Sadly, even this is not true.
There is no evidence to suggest that a Tory government will function any more adequately without Boris Johnson than with him; considering the alternatives, they all have to go.
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Lord Geidt: has he been fooled by Boris Johnson – twice? Or is it in fact Johnson who is the fool?
“I’ve changed my mobile phone” is fast becoming the Tory government version of “the dog ate my homework”, isn’t it?
What’s amazing is that Boris Johnson’s advisor on ministerial interests, Lord Geidt, has accepted this excuse for why Johnson did not provide important information to the inquiry on funding for Johnson’s Downing Street flat.
We all know the details now, don’t we? If not, just skip past the quoted parts that follow, taken from a previous Vox Political article, giving the story so far:
Johnson was accused last April of having misled Parliament by failing to provide details of funding for the renovations to his official Downing Street flat.
The allegation was that private donations to the Conservative Party totalling £60,000 had been used as part of £200,000 worth of refurbishments to the flat.
If so, it should have been reported to the Electoral Commission, because the Ministerial Code demands that “a statement covering relevant Ministers’ interests will be published twice yearly”. The last such statement (at the time of the investigation last April) had appeared in July 2020, eight months previously.
If Johnson had received the money from other people, this created a potential conflict of interest but Geidt concluded very swiftly that Johnson did not breach the Ministerial Code and that no conflict, or reasonably perceived conflict, of interest arose.
He said that £52,000 had been contributed by Lord Brownlow, but via a blind trust, meaning Johnson seemed unaware that Brownlow had contributed his own money to it.
But the Electoral Commission had launched its own investigation – and this has just concluded that Johnson did approach Brownlow for cash, via WhatsApp – the government’s favoured method of avoiding scrutiny, back in November 2020.
It seems clear that, having requested it from Brownlow, Johnson could not have been unaware of its origin when the bills were suddenly paid.
That was the situation on December 11. Now, Lord Geidt has published a WhatsApp exchange between Johnson and Brownlow, in which Brownlow said there would be no problem finding the cash for the flat refurbishment because he knew how it would be provided.
The intention had been for the money to come from a blind trust, but this did not happen and it was all provided by Brownlow instead.
So it seems incongruous to This Writer that Johnson claims not to know who provided the cash, having gone straight to Brownlow when he needed more.
Furthermore, his excuse that he had replaced his mobile phone and no longer had access to the WhatsApp exchange does not make sense, because his WhatsApp account would, logically, have been transferred to the new phone.
It is a simple process and one that This Writer feels sure Johnson would have carried out – if he didn’t want to lose all of his WhatsApp contacts and all of his chats. Is it the way the Electoral Commission gained access to the Brownlow chat?
Whatever the case, it seems clear that Johnson either lied to Lord Geidt by saying he couldn’t access the Brownlow chat when he could – or Johnson is an imbecile who can’t use a mobile phone properly.
In either case, he should not be the prime minister of the UK.
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Lord Geidt: he may not look angry in this image but he’s probably raging on the inside.
It’s been a while since a furious Lord Geidt announced he was reopening his investigation into the funding of Boris Johnson’s redecoration of the 11 Downing Street flat that is his official residence. But what’s happening with it? Anything?
Geidt was angry because it was revealed earlier this month that Johnson had lied to him, meaning his investigation had cleared the prime minister in error.
I wrote:
What actually happened, it seems, was this:
Johnson wanted to redecorate the flat but his tastes ran to much more expense than the £30,000 per year annual allowance he receives for this purpose.
The Conservative Party then received a donation for £67,801.72 from Brownlow’s firm Huntswood Associates Ltd – but declared only £15,000 of it as a donation. The rest went towards the flat redecoration via a payment from the Tory Party to the Cabinet Office.
This, plus the £30k allowance, was still not enough so Johnson WhatsApp’ed Brownlow for more on November 29, 2020, leading to a further payment direct to contractors of £59,747.40.
The Tories said the £53k they didn’t declare was not a donation, but was in fact “a donation to the Prime Minister via the party”, or “a ‘gift to the nation’”, or “a ministerial matter”, or “the repayment of a loan”.
But the Electoral Commission disagreed, saying the full amount “was a donation and should have been reported to the Commission”; the party’s records of the £53k sum were “not accurate”; and there were “serious failings in the party’s compliance systems”.
As a result, the Conservative Party has been fined £17,800 for failing to comply with electoral law. See information here and here for more details.
That covers the money that went through the Conservative Party but not the extra cash that Brownlow put up himself.
It seems clear that, having requested it from Brownlow, Johnson could not have been unaware of its origin when the bills were suddenly paid.
Johnson said at the time of the original investigation that he had not known the source of the money until February this year, when the evidence now shows he knew in November 2020.
All the information about the case is available and it shouldn’t have taken Lord Geidt long to come to a new decision.
So what is it?
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Okay, it’s not much of a revelation. But the evidence that he lied to an investigation by Lord Geidt, the independent advisor on ministers’ interests, about how he paid for the flat can only harm Johnson at a time when he desperately needs validation.
Johnson was accused last April of having misled Parliament by failing to provide details of funding for the renovations to his official Downing Street flat.
The allegation was that private donations to the Conservative Party totalling £60,000 had been used as part of £200,000 worth of refurbishments to the flat.
If so, it should have been reported to the Electoral Commission, because the Ministerial Code demands that “a statement covering relevant Ministers’ interests will be published twice yearly”. The last such statement (at the time of the investigation last April) had appeared in July 2020, eight months previously.
If Johnson had received the money from other people, this created a potential conflict of interest but Geidt concluded very swiftly that Johnson did not breach the Ministerial Code and that no conflict, or reasonably perceived conflict, of interest arose.
He said that £52,000 had been contributed by Lord Brownlow, but via a blind trust, meaning Johnson seemed unaware that Brownlow had contributed his own money to it.
But the Electoral Commission had launched its own investigation – and this has just concluded that Johnson did approach Brownlow for cash, via WhatsApp – the government’s favoured method of avoiding scrutiny, back in November 2020:
How does No 10 square this:
In May the PM told Lord Geidt that he did not know who was behind No11 flat refurb until Feb 2021
Today the Electoral Commission says Boris Johnson Whatsapped Lord Brownlow in November 2020 asking for more cash for the No11 refurb pic.twitter.com/RoxHbmGi1I
Johnson wanted to redecorate the flat but his tastes ran to much more expense than the £30,000 per year annual allowance he receives for this purpose.
The Conservative Party then received a donation for £67,801.72 from Brownlow’s firm Huntswood Associates Ltd – but declared only £15,000 of it as a donation. The rest went towards the flat redecoration via a payment from the Tory Party to the Cabinet Office.
This, plus the £30k allowance, was still not enough so Johnson WhatsApp’ed Brownlow for more on November 29, 2020, leading to a further payment direct to contractors of £59,747.40.
The Tories said the £53k they didn’t declare was not a donation, but was in fact “a donation to the Prime Minister via the party”, or “a ‘gift to the nation’”, or “a ministerial matter”, or “the repayment of a loan”.
But the Electoral Commission disagreed, saying the full amount “was a donation and should have been reported to the Commission”; the party’s records of the £53k sum were “not accurate”; and there were “serious failings in the party’s compliance systems”.
As a result, the Conservative Party has been fined £17,800 for failing to comply with electoral law. See information here and here for more details.
That covers the money that went through the Conservative Party but not the extra cash that Brownlow put up himself.
It seems clear that, having requested it from Brownlow, Johnson could not have been unaware of its origin when the bills were suddenly paid.
Certainly his former advisor (and now bitter enemy who calls Johnson the “Shopping Trolley”, using an image of one, on Twitter) Dominic Cummings seems to think so:
The 🛒 was told in extremely blunt & unrepeatable terms by me in Jan and summer 2020 that his desire for secret donations to fund wallpaper etc was illegal & unethical. He pursued it throughout the year trying to keep me/others in dark & lied to Geidt/CCHQ to cover it up https://t.co/hyOuQTdvOz
Lord Geidt is said to be furious about it – and has reopened his investigation. Whether he did so at the request of Labour’s Angela Rayner (below) is not known to This Writer:
Lord Geidt must reopen the investigation into the financing of the Prime Ministers flat right now. Either he was misled or he is truly a lapdog not a watchdog. pic.twitter.com/sJ6PTkeQOE
The prime minister’s office at Downing Street has said it will answer any questions Geidt has.
If he finds information that shows Johnson did know the source of the money – or had reason to – then he is likely to have broken not just the Ministerial Code but also the wider Members’ Code, applicable to all MPs.
Any such breach would require his resignation from his job – although as final arbiter on breaches of the Ministerial Code, he could always corruptly dismiss the findings. He’s done that before.
Coming after the allegations about Christmas parties in Downing Street while London was in Tier 3 lockdown, before a by-election triggered by the resignation of a Tory MP amid corruption claims, and while Tory backbenchers debate whether they’ll support new Covid-19 social distancing rules that many believe Johnson is imposing as a distraction, this is another hammer blow to Johnson’s credibility.
If he is found to have known about any of the parties, or the Tory loses the by-election, or Parliament fails to ratify the ‘Plan B’ measures, or he’s found to have broken either of the codes relevant to the flat refurb – or any combination of them – Johnson’s career should be over.
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We all know the Tories think we’re stupid; accept this nonsense at face value and they’ll know it’s true.
A Tory peer, Lord Geidt, has apparently carried out an internal party review of the way refurbishment of the 11 Downing Street flat (occupied by Boris Johnson) was funded and found that Johnson – who is his boss, let’s not forget – was innocent of any wrongdoing.
And nobody should believe a word of it.
Geidt said the Cabinet Office paid the costs and charged them to the Conservative Party, on the understanding that a trust was being set up to provide the funds.
This trust was never set up and the bulk of the cash came from Lord Brownlow, a Tory donor and former vice-chairman of Johnson’s Conservative Party from 2017 to July 2020 – as had been claimed in press reports.
With regards to the flat, [Geidt] said: “It is clear from the record that while a serious and genuine endeavour, the trust was not subjected to a scheme of rigorous project management by officials.
“Given the level of the prime minister’s expectations for the trust to deliver on the objects he had set, this was a significant failing.
“Instead, the prime minister – unwisely, in my view – allowed the refurbishment of the apartment at No 11 Downing Street to proceed without more rigorous regard for how this would be funded.”
In other words, Johnson claimed ignorance of the situation – but ignorance is no excuse.
Besides, he told us he had paid for the works himself, and that is plainly a lie.
He gets £30,000 a year as an allowance for such works – more than most of us earn in full-time work – and it still wasn’t enough. Reports suggest that the changes to the Downing Street flat cost around £200,000 in total.
Still, the Electoral Commission has launched its own investigation.
The commission said it was “satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to suspect than an offence or offences may have occurred”.
At the end of the day, it wouldn’t have matter what Geidt found, as power to decide whether a breach of the ministerial code has occurred rests with the prime minister – Johnson himself.
Knowing how corrupt he is, we know that he was never going to admit an offence that may require him to resign from his job.
We are left with several conclusions:
That Johnson is guilty as sin, that the government is utterly corrupt because he is leading it, and that Geidt and Brownlow have implicated themselves in that corruption by whitewashing their boss.
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