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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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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Boris Johnson is pictured toasting departing Downing Street comms chief Lee Cain at a leaving party on November 13, 2020, that the prime minister told Parliament he never attended: the Metropolitan Police never fined him for attending this event. Why?
This is highly interesting!
The High Court will hear the first stage of a challenge against the Metropolitan Police over the force’s investigation into former prime minister Boris Johnson’s attendance at Number 10 parties during lockdown.
Mr Johnson received a fixed penalty notice (FPN) over a birthday party in the Cabinet Room in June 2020, but faced no further action over other gatherings covered by the Met’s Operation Hillman inquiry into events in No 10 and Whitehall.
Legal campaign group the Good Law Project (GLP) has launched a legal challenge, alongside former deputy assistant commissioner of the Met Lord Paddick, against the force over its investigation.
The GLP says the Met failed to send questionnaires to Mr Johnson, and has since failed to explain why, or how the force concluded his attendance at other events was lawful.
The group will ask Mr Justice Swift to grant permission for a judicial review of the Met’s handling of the investigation at a hearing in London at 10.30am on Wednesday.
It seems the issue is why Boris Johnson (and others?) seem to have avoided being penalised for attending other parties, besides those for which they have been fined:
Jo Maugham, GLP director, said: “We can’t understand – and the Met won’t disclose – how Boris Johnson dodged fines for going to parties that junior civil servants were fined for attending.
“But what it looks like is special treatment for the powerful.”
I’m hoping a judicial review is granted, and can happen before the Partygate inquiry takes place. I wonder how any decision here would impact on what happens there?
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Boris Johnson not participating in a Downing Street party.
Boris Johnson is to give evidence to the Parliamentary inquiry into whether he knowingly misled MPs about parties at 10 Downing Street during Covid-19 lockdown, in a few weeks.
The inquiry has finally received all the documentary evidence it requested from Number 10 (apparently staff started shredding information and discussing the stories they would tell as soon as the story broke that parties had been happening, so it will be interesting to see what has been received).
ITV’s Paul Brand, who broke the Partygate story back in late 2021, has launched a podcast discussing what happened – and what will happen – and discussed it with the hosts of Good Morning Britain.
It features interviews with people who were directly involved in what was happening and will include new revelations, as he revealed:
It’s interesting that it’s said Theresa May would have been shocked if she had been PM and parties were found to have been going on downstairs.
But Theresa May’s opinions are now notoriously changeable: as PM she forbade ministers from visiting Saudi Arabia because of world events at the time, but as a backbencher she has been happy to rake in the money by giving a speech there.
Also interesting is the revelation that people in Downing Street were shocked that Johnson denied knowledge of the parties – and “started shredding evidence immediately – as soon as those claims started coming out; corroborating their stories; preparing for the Metropolitan Police investigation and Sue Gray’s investigation”.
The podcast – Partygate: The Inside Story – is available (for example) here.
The pundits point out that the investigation could have Johnson removed from Parliament for good – if he’s suspended there could be a by-election. And he won’t come back as PM (to replace Rishi Sunak) because if he does, Partygate comes back with him.
Phil Moorhouse expands on these points on his A Different Bias channel, here:
The really interesting part of this one is that Johnson supporters like Nadine Dorries and the Conservative Democratic Organisation may actually turn other Tories against him with their agitating for him to replace Sunak.
Their timetable is likely to be that, after a major Conservative loss of council seats at the elections in May, they will launch a “confidence” vote against Sunak as soon as they can, which is a year after he became PM – some time in November, most likely.
Sunak would win this vote, but not overwhelmingly, which is fatal for a sitting prime minister. He’d be on his way out, paving the way for Johnson to return…
Unless he is found guilty of at least not correcting the record or of knowingly lying to Parliament and the Privileges Committee (in charge of the inquiry) recommends a punishment.
If that’s a suspension of at least 10 days, there will be a recall petition in his constituency which will be successful. He will lose his Parliamentary seat and there will be a by-election in which he may stand – but will lose.
And then he won’t be able to stand against Sunak because he won’t be a member of Parliament.
I love the part of this clip where Phil says Johnson’s defence is “that he is monumentally stupid and cannot recognise a party when he sees one”!
Whatever happens, it’s looking bad for Boris Johnson.
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Boris Johnson tries to understand how this internet thing works: okay, this wasn’t how the Mumsnet interview was conducted but it conveys our pathetic prime minister’s failure to understand what was going on and that his silly lines wouldn’t work there.
Boris Johnson’s big excuse for refusing to resign in the wake of revelations of a corrupt party culture at 10 Downing Street while the rest of the UK was in Covid-19 lockdown is that it would be “irresponsible” to go in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis that he created and a foreign war that has little to do with him at all.
What?
He said the Partygate revelations had been “a totally miserable experience” for people in government.
What? What’s miserable about partying regularly while everybody else in the country was forcibly separated – according to rules that Johnson himself made but unilaterally decided did not apply to him?
Questioned on Mumsnet, Johnson gave a very poor account of himself. He said,
“I think that on why am I still here, I’m still here because we’ve got huge pressures economically, we’ve got to get on, you know, we’ve got the biggest war in Europe for 80 years, and we’ve got a massive agenda to deliver which I was elected to deliver.
“I’ve thought about all these questions a lot, as you can imagine, and I just cannot see how actually it’d be responsible right now – given everything that is going on simply to abandon a) the project which I embarked on but b)…”
and that’s as far as he got before somebody cut him off.
He said he was “very, very surprised” and “taken aback” that he was fined for attending his surprise birthday party in the Cabinet room because it “felt like a work event” despite Sue Gray publishing photos of him swigging beer from a can at the time.
Let’s remember that the only kind of “work event” allowed at the time was a meeting to discuss business. None of the rules Johnson himself announced to the nation ever said parties involving the consumption of alcohol could take place at people’s place of work.
But then, perhaps we should not be surprised that Johnson tried to wheedle his way out of guilt for attending that party (and all the others for which he unaccountably was not fined) with a false interpretation of his rules.
After all, the very first question in the interview was: “Why should we believe anything you say when it’s been proven you’re a habitual liar?”
For goodness’ sake – this is a man who can’t even string a reasonable argument together to save his own skin.
For the good of us all, he has to be removed from the UK’s politics.
Does anyone have the guts to get that job done?
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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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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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Happier times: Boris Johnson endorsed Andrea Leadsom’s bid to become Tory leader in 2016 and in 2019, after her bid failed, she came out for him. But in the wake of Partygate she has turned against the current Conservative leader and prime minister – and she’s just one among many.
Senior Tory Andrea Leadsom has become the 40th to attack Boris Johnson over the so-called Partygate scandal, it has been claimed.
Johnson has refused to resign after an investigation by senior civil servant Sue Gray found that significant failures of leadership, both political and official, had made possible a party culture in 10 Downing Street at a time when the rest of the UK was in lockdown.
This follows a previous refusal to resign after Johnson himself was fined for having taken part in this party culture, attending a birthday event for himself in 2020.
The Gray report also mentions many other occasions in which Johnson attended parties, but the Metropolitan Police, who investigated crimes, have unaccountably failed to take action against him over these other events.
In a letter to constituents, Leadsom stated,
“It is painfully clear to me that given the extent and severity of rule-breaking taking place over a 20-month period, it is extremely unlikely that senior leaders were unaware of what was going on.
“The conclusion I have drawn from the Sue Gray report is that there have been unacceptable failings of leadership that cannot be tolerated and are the responsibility of the prime minister.”
She added that she and all Conservative MPs “must now decide on what is the right course of action that will restore confidence in our government”.
But she stopped short of saying that she has submitted a letter of “no confidence” to Sir Graham Brady, chair of the Tory backbench 1922 committee. 54 such letters will trigger a vote that could remove Johnson from power.
One of the 2019 intake of new Tory MPs, Elliot Colburn, showed no such reticence on Monday when he became the 27th Conservative Parliamentarian we know to have done so.
Two others also came out in criticism of Johnson.
This means 27 MPs have now publicly called for the prime minister to go – but the total number of letters submitted (known only to Brady) is likely to be much higher.
Before previous Tory leader and prime minister Theresa May faced her “no confidence” vote, only 24 letters were known to have been submitted but in fact 48 had been handed in.
And some MPs have said they would not reveal their own opinions on the matter until after Parliament returns from recess next week, which suggests that they may be gauging public reaction in their own constituencies ahead of submitting “no confidence” calls.
Downing Street is said to be likely to be preparing for a possible leadership vote, with Tory grandee Lord Hague suggesting it could be as early as next week or as late as the end of June.
The developments are coming thick and fast. Is it just a matter of time before the Conservative Czar of Corruption faces a revolution that he has brought on himself?
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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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The bribery brothers: Rishi Sunak has u-turned on his opposition to a windfall tax for fossil fuel companies because he will use the cash to bribe you into supporting the Tory government again, after Sue Gray’s revelations about Boris Johnson’s wild Downing Street parties brought it into disgrace.
It’s a huge u-turn from the Chancellor who couldn’t care less a week ago.
At a time when the government has been enjoying record tax receipts – having raised taxes 15 times since Boris Johnson became prime minister and due to inflation that increases the tax attached to certain commercial items (like fuel) – Sunak had rejected proposals to reduce the tax burden on ordinary people.
Only days ago, Tory MPs rejected calls for a 40 per cent cut in fuel duty and VAT after a petition received more than 102,000 signatures, thereby forcing a discussion in the Commons.
The Government used a false argument that drivers are already saving £1,900 on their annual fuel bills compared with what they might have been paying had a pre-2010 fuel duty escalator remained in place. The pre-2010 rates were altered because times had changed; times have changed again.
And Sunak himself has been dodging the issue, claiming he could not affect the global circumstances driving the crisis. But that isn’t what he has been asked to do.
He had been asked to respond to the crisis in a way that saves ordinary people from impoverishment and prevents a recession and, until today, he had shown no interest in either goal.
George Dibb, in The Guardian, claimed solutions were staring Sunak in the face. He said:
Sunak’s first step should be investing in social security via increases in universal credit and legacy benefits to prevent families falling into destitution.
Second, we need a serious industrial strategy to boost confidence, give long-term business certainty and restore investment in the UK’s productive capacity. Sunak promised to increase private investment with a “super-deduction” incentive, but in fact it fell in the last quarter. To make this long-term vision work, Sunak should break up the Treasury and form a new Ministry for Economic Strategy with the target to drive investment-led, green growth.
Third, rather than continuing to slip on our green ambitions, every home should be insulated and more wind turbines erected across the UK in an investment needed before 2050 anyway. Green power is now the cheapest way of generating energy.
Next, the government must make clear to businesses that just as they were supported in the pandemic, now companies must themselves act responsibly by reducing their profits to keep prices down. Profits have gone up, particularly in uncompetitive, concentrated sectors – so for example petrol stations haven’t passed on the fuel duty cut to customers, benefiting their bottom line at the public’s expense. Evidence from the US suggests that recent rising prices have been disproportionately driven by rising profits, not wages.
Finally, as fossil fuel companies pile up huge, unexpected profits from the crisis that is pushing millions into absolute poverty, it is fair for the government to redistribute these into welfare and income support via a windfall tax.
Well, as I was typing this, Sunak u-turned on his opposition to a windfall tax and will impose a 25 per cent levy on oil and gas firms’ soaring profits, for precisely this purpose.
This isn’t a display of leadership; he has merely caved in to a reasonable proposal that he has previously – unreasonably – rejected.
Sunak is saying that his one-off charge will “tax extraordinary profits fairly and incentivise investments” – so it seems likely he will offer firms a chance to avoid paying the full amount by diverting the money into investment in green – unpolluting – fuel development.
This is another admission of failure, of course. Boris Johnson and others have spent weeks – months? – telling us they didn’t want a windfall tax because they wanted these companies to make the investments on their own initiative. Clearly they have not and, having ignored the carrot, must now endure the stick.
Sunak is using the money to scrap his hugely unpopular and controversial plan to provide £200 to everyone in England, Scotland and Wales in October – and then force us all to pay it back over the following five years.
Instead, he is doubling the amount to £400, which will be non-repayable; we get to keep it.
The poorest households will also get a payment of £650 to help with the cost of living. Eight million households on means-tested benefits will get the money paid directly into their bank accounts in two lump sums – one in July, the other this autumn.
There will also be separate one-off payments of £300 to pensioner households and £150 to individuals receiving disability benefits – groups who are “most vulnerable to rising prices”.
The whole package of payouts will be worth £15 billion – to be partly paid by the windfall tax. We know that inflation is set to increase UK tax receipts by £12.5 billion per year. And of course the National Insurance increase will bring £13 billion into the Treasury.
So the Tory government will still be quids-in and the offer to the people is, to quote Boris Johnson, “chickenfeed”.
But it looks good – and that is all Sunak hopes to achieve.
Remember: prime minister Boris Johnson took a huge hit to his credibility when Sue Gray published her report on the party culture he promoted at Downing Street while the rest of us were enduring Covid-19 lockdowns.
Johnson attended and fully participated in these parties and then lied about them to Parliament and to the public. His claim that he was assured they were permissible because they were “works events” is nonsense because such gatherings were not exempted from lockdown rules when he himself announced them – and he must have known that (otherwise he would be admitting he is too stupid to run the UK).
So Johnson currently stands exposed as unprincipled, untrustworthy and corrupt – a despot who habitually ignores his own laws and treats those he forces to conform to them with contempt. That’s you, by the way.
He desperately needs to bribe the public with an incentive to support him again.
So today, here’s Sunak with a handout for us all. How utterly cynical.
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