Boris Johnson raises a glass at Lee Cain’s leaving party, surrounded by glasses and bottles of alcohol: he says he didn’t know it was a party at the time.
Boris Johnson wants us to believe he did not “intentionally or recklessly” mislead Parliament about the parties he attended in Downing Street while the UK was in Covid-19 lockdown. Why should we?
The inquiry into what happened has a threefold purpose. It intends to find out:
What Boris Johnson said to the House of Commons
Whether what he said was correct or whether it was misleading
How quickly and comprehensively any misleading statement to the House was corrected
We know he said no parties took place and that this was not true.
So the question is about how quick he was to correct his misleading statements.
He says he did this at the earliest opportunity, which was after Sue Grey’s report was published and a police investigation into the parties had ended (and he had been fined). He says he didn’t want to give a “half-baked account, before the facts had been fully and properly established”.
But he knew the facts, didn’t he – after having participated in what happened?
I’m listening to Politics Live while I’m writing this, and have just been reminded of his words at one such event – that it was “the least socially-distanced” event at the time. He knew the rules because he announced them. Is it credible for him to claim innocence?
This is what the inquiry will have to decide.
More booze on the table, and no social distancing: Boris Johnson reckons he didn’t realise this was a Christmas party at the time.
More sinister is Johnson’s attempt to impugn the motives of the Commons Privileges Committee, stating that he considers it to be “partisan” and not to have done all it could to ensure “fairness”.
This is nothing but a smear.
It makes him look like a guilty man, flailing, trying to find anything that could call a verdict against him into question.
In that sense, it seems highly ill-advised.
He doesn’t know what the inquiry’s decision will be. But now he has already turned public opinion against him.
Boris Johnson: his evidence to the Partygate inquiry might be quite short – after all, his inquisitors really have only to show him this image of himself at a party he said he never attended and ask him if he was there.
This is one to put in your diary:
Boris Johnson will give public evidence about whether he misled MPs over Partygate on [Wednesday] March 22, the Privileges Committee has confirmed.
The former prime minister will be questioned by the cross-party committee from 14:00 GMT in a televised session.
But Mr Johnson has rejected this and said he believes the process will “vindicate” him.
I’m looking forward to this one, very much!
In fact, I might have a ‘Partygate party’ and invite friends to watch it with me. Wanna come along?
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Fiona Bruce: would she have been better-off staying with Refuge and quitting the BBC?
Neither Fiona Bruce nor the domestic abuse charity Refuge wanted this; it seems to have been prompted by the sense of betrayal felt by domestic abuse victims – over words the BBC obliged her to speak.
Ms Bruce has quit as an ambassador for Refuge after saying on the BBC’s Question Time last week that it’s understood an incident in which former PM Boris Johnson’s father broke his wife’s nose was “a one-off”.
The charity has said survivors of domestic abuse have been in touch over the weekend to described how “devastating” Ms Bruce’s words had been to them.
Refuge’s position has always been that “domestic abuse is never a ‘one-off’; it is a pattern of behaviour that can manifest in a number of ways, including but not limited to physical abuse. Domestic abuse is never acceptable.”
Ms Bruce should have known that – but it seems that she was caught between a rock and a hard place, because she was “legally obliged” by her contract with the BBC to say the words that were given to her during the recording of the programme on March 9.
The BBC explained this in a statement on March 10: “When serious allegations are made on air against people or organisations, it is the job of BBC presenters to ensure that the context of those allegations – and any right of reply from the person or organisation – is given to the audience, and this is what Fiona Bruce was doing … She was not expressing any personal opinion about the situation.”
So it seems the BBC was at fault for telling Ms Bruce to speak words that were at odds with accepted facts about domestic abuse.
That certainly seems to be Refuge’s take on what happened: “While we know the words were not Fiona’s own and were words she was legally obliged to read out, this does not lessen their impact and we cannot lose sight of that.”
Contrast this with the Corporation’s attitude to Gary Lineker, who has been reinstated as host of Match of the Day after (rightly) refusing to retract his comparison of Suella Braverman’s words about Channel migrants with the rhetoric of Germany in the 1930s.
In both situations, the presenters knew (or should have known) what was right, but their bosses wrongly thought they knew better.
The BBC still hasn’t learned its lesson; Lineker is back in his job while an “independent” review of its social media policy takes place. This Writer can guess right now that it will demand stricter restrictions on presenters’ rights of free speech on other platforms.
And Suella Braverman is still othering and demonising Channel migrants.
In her latest Parliamentary appearance, she blamed vulnerable refugees for the supply of illegal drugs in the UK:
Suella Braverman says police chiefs have told her "that drug supply… is now connected to people who came here on small boats illegally" pic.twitter.com/62XtYBhb70
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Stanley Johnson: if he really did break his wife’s nose, why does son Boris think he deserves a knighthood?
Serial nepotist Boris Johnson has apparently disgraced the Honours system by nominating an alleged wife-beater for a knighthood: his own father, Stanley.
Johnson has previously made his brother Jo a peer, and unsubstantiated reports have previously suggested he wanted to give honours to his wife Carrie and sister Rachel.
The nomination has triggered a backlash – not just against the nomination but against the whole system of giving titles to individuals who are favoured by people who happen to have been in government. For example:
🙄Of course he has 🤷♂️. “Titles” of Sir, Lord, Lady, Baron, Baroness, Prince, Princess, King or Queen are all made up by entitled 😳people who originally stole property & land from YOU, the people, & still feel they should RULE you!https://t.co/q5iOSDslBF
Stanley Johnson was also once accused of “inappropriate touching” against Tory MP Caroline Nokes, and against political journalist Ailbhe Rea, in another example of the privilege that high-powered members of the Establishment have over the rest of us; if he had been you or me, the claim would have been “sexual assault”.
What happened about that?
Nevertheless, brace yourself for Johnson Senior to receive the honour.
After all, they gave a knighthood to Tony Blair and an MBE to Rachel Riley.
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File this under: evidence that Boris Johnson is an asset of the Russian government.
Four Russian-born oligarchs have raked in $423 million in dividends on shares in Russian companies on the UK stock exchange, after the UK imposed sanctions on Russian firms.
How were Roman Abramovich, Alexander Abramov, Aleksandr Frolov and Alexander Nesis able to have the payouts from Evraz and Polymetal? Simple.
Those firms weren’t on Boris Johnson’s list of those to be sanctioned.
In total, the four named billionaires have received $4.5billion (£3.4billion) in payouts from the FTSE100-listed Russian commodities giants since the Tory government of the day failed to act decisively on them after Russia annexed the Crimea in 2014.
None of the four billionaires have been sanctioned either.
It seems Boris Johnson – and his government – deliberately pretended to be imposing heavy sanctions while doing nothing of the sort… wouldn’t you agree?
I’m still calling for comments on this new way of summarising articles, so please let me know what you think, in the comments.
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They really were lying: I never thought I’d get to use this image again.
Here’s some video evidence supporting what This Site said about Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages on Covid-19 testing in care homes during early 2020.
It shows both Hancock and then-prime minister Boris Johnson later denying that they knew anything about asymptomatic (the person with the disease didn’t have symptoms of it) transmission of Covid-19 at the time.
And then it demonstrates that both of them did know:
Now is a good time to take a look at claims made by Matt Hancock & Boris Johnson that they were not told about the asymptomatic transmission of covid – watch in disbelief pic.twitter.com/lx0Oupdth4
This supports what I said in my article – that they had been shown scientific evidence that people in care homes were being infected as early as February 2020 (in fact they received information from care homes about deaths there, as early as March 2) and simply ignored it.
Let’s hope this is picked up by the inquiry into the way the government handled the pandemic. We need to see major players in this fiasco receiving proportionate punishments.
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Boris Johnson (right): apparently he wasn’t at a Christmas Party in this image – notwithstanding the bottle of bubbly and the tinsel.
MPs investigating whether Boris Johnson knowingly misled Parliament over the so-called ‘Partygate’ scandal have said he may have done so on four occasions, and breaches of Covid-19 rules should have been “obvious” to him.
An initial report by the Commons’ Privileges Committee stated that Johnson “did not correct” misleading statements he made in the Commons at the “earliest opportunity”, as would have been expected from an MP.
He had “personal knowledge” about lockdown gatherings in No 10 which he could have disclosed to MPs, the committee said.
“Evidence strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Mr Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings,” the report stated.
And there was “evidence that those who were advising Mr Johnson about what to say to the press and in the House were themselves struggling to contend that some gatherings were within the rules”.
Furthermore, the inquiry had been held up by a “reluctance” from Mr Johnson’s government “to provide unredacted evidence”. Some material “had been redacted even though it was already in the public domain”.
The unredacted disclosure of all relevant material was finally made by Rishi Sunak’s government on November 18 last year.
Johnson himself is still saying there is no evidence that he knowingly misled Parliament or failed to update Parliament in a timely manner. He’s sticking to his story that when he said the rules and guidance had been followed, that was his honest belief.
But he is also saying that the findings of an investigation by former Cabinet Office civil servant Sue Gray should not be trusted because she has now joined the Labour Party as its chief of staff. There is no evidence to support his claim that she was politically biased.
Johnson is due to give evidence to MPs later this month – and the session is likely to be televised.
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We were told Boris Johnsons would criticise parts of Rishi Sunak’s ‘Windsor Framework’ for Northern Ireland but would not oppose it outright.
We were told he had significant concerns and stood by his warning that the Government should keep the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in place, and get rid of all legislation covering the movement of goods across EU borders.
And what did he say?
Here he is, speaking at a Global Soft Power summit:
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Bojob the Brexit Clown: Boris Johnson has nothing worthwhile or interesting to say about Rishi Sunak’s new framework for trade in Northern Ireland. He won’t even be amusing.
Some news outlets reckon Boris Johnson will break his silence on Rishi Sunak’s ‘Windsor Framework’ for Northern Ireland – but nobody seems to know what he’ll say.
And does it really matter?
Isn’t he yesterday’s man – flinging a dead cat around?
Some say he’ll criticise parts of the deal but will not oppose it outright; others say he has significant concerns and stands by his warning that the Government should keep the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in place, and get rid of all legislation covering the movement of goods across EU borders.
I say he’ll generate only as much interest in his opinions as his client media can drum up – and it’s better for all of us if we don’t take any notice.
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Northern Ireland: what will Rishi Sunak’s replacement for the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol of Brexit achieve?
Arch-Brexiteer Steve Baker seems very happy about whatever deal Rishi Sunak has secured with the European Union over the movement of goods into and through Northern Ireland:
"The PM is on the cusp of securing a really fantastic result for everyone involved" says Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, ahead of the PM's meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the NI Protocol.https://t.co/WUnquWvHqf
He’s got a particular viewpoint, very strongly asserted over the last eight years, more or less.
The Democratic Unionist Party, which is refusing to take its place in the Northern Irish Assembly at Stormont until a deal is struck that it supports, may feel differently. It is currently the second-largest party in that assembly and may wish to continue finding fault because the longer it stays out, the less time Sinn Fein – the largest party – will have as nominal leaders (NI is ruled under a power-sharing agreement but appearances seem to mean a lot to the DUP).
And Boris Johnson is lurking in the background in Westminster. He’s likely to be stirring up dissent against anything Rishi Sunak does because he wants to be prime minister again. And there are a lot of Tory MPs who reckon they owe him a debt for getting them into their Parliamentary seats.
Finally, there’s a question of democracy. The deal is likely to be debated in Parliament, but will there be a vote on it? If not, then can it really be heralded as the panacea Baker claims it is?
Why shouldn’t there be a vote? Is Sunak’s deal really that shaky?
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