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Dominic Raab is to stand down as an MP. Will the tributes mention these moments?

Disgraced former deputy prime minister Dominic Raab is quitting Parliament at the next general election; he won’t stand for election again.

And it’s just as well, after he was found to have bullied civil servants on two occasions by an inquiry that reported just over a month ago.

The BBC report on his decision does its best to give him a reasonable send-off, covering his career in terms of the jobs he’s held in government.

This Writer feels no compulsion to exercise such restraint. So what shall we talk about?

How about his decision, as Justice Secretary, to refuse an inquiry into the sexual abuse of thousands of (now) men at youth detention centres when they were young boys? We still don’t know why he did that. Will we ever, now he is going?

His failure to get the late comedian and TV presenter Paul O’Grady’s name right while trying to pay tribute to him (and his ill-advised decision to combine this blunder with an attack on so-called ‘woke’ comedy)?

I’ve got a clip of this:

His plan to strip human rights protections from people who have been targeted by police for ‘stop and search’ procedures and/or questioning over their immigration status, which was dubbed racist because ethnic minority groups are far more likely to have been targeted in these ways?

His refusal to accept the facts of unemployment? I have audio of this:

His almost fact-free defence of Evgeny Lebedev’s elevation to the House of Lords?

His hopeless attempt to defend then-prime minister Boris Johnson’s failure to wear a mask during a hospital visit, when rules dictated that everybody should wear masks at all times? Let’s have some video of that as well, shall we?

His fascist claim that his planned overhaul of the Human Rights Act would include a mechanism to “correct” (ha ha!) rulings by the European Court of Human Rights?

His rejection of calls to treat misogyny as a hate crime – despite the fact that he didn’t know what misogyny is?

His speech to a Tory Party conference in which he used a hypothetical situation that it is doubtful any judge would allow to happen as an excuse to justify removing human rights from all of us?

His admission (as Foreign Secretary) that the evacuation of Afghanistan was a shambles because the UK’s intelligence agencies were outsmarted by a gang of desert-dwelling bandits?

The fact that he was on holiday in Crete when Kabul fell to the Taliban, and at first refused to return to the UK when the emergency was reported to him? He did deny paddleboarding while UK citizens scrambled to escape the new regime; according to Raab, the sea was “closed”.

His failure to realise that much of UK trade relies on the Dover-Calais crossing?

His 2018 tweet about wages rising faster than they had in years – which only brought attention to the fact that wages had fallen drastically under the Conservatives and had never been as high as they were under Gordon Brown?

The list goes on and on. The above only goes back five years!

Raab has been an utter disaster as a member of Parliament and a government minister and his departure will improve the quality of the UK’s leadership. Sadly, though, he isn’t even the worst Tory minister. What will it take to winkle them out?


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The Labour Party has started to fragment – and it’s easy to understand why

Sold down the red river: once-loyal Labour members are throwing away their badges in disgust at Keir Starmer’s abandonment of traditional party values.

The day after former/expelled Labour councillors, standing as Independents, won back their council seats in elections across the UK, against their former colleagues, this happened:

For those who can’t read the lettering in image files, part of the resignation letter states:

“Our views are not radical: surely our party shold look after the interests of working people and the vulnerable, rather than court big business. Public utilities should be publicly owned. The NHS should remain publicly funded, publicly-run and free at the point of use.

“But the Labour Party has drifted far from these principles towards a pro-Establishment position that no longer represents the values, aspirations and dreams we had of a massively transformed society in which everyone would have the opportunity to to a fulfilling life in a peaceful and fairer world.”

You can understand exactly why the group now calling itself the Mid Sussex Left has quit Labour by listening to part of what Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said to Sky‘s Sophy Ridge on Sunday morning (May 7).  I’ve retained the tweet by “Frank Owen’s Legendary Paintbrush” because the opinion it puts forward is valid:

“You don’t go into a general election making promises you can’t keep,” said Streeting. But that’s not quite the issue – it’s the fact that his party leader, Keir Starmer, continually makes promises he has no intention of keeping.

His claim about the public finances is meaningless. Any UK government can do anything it wants, and magic up the money for it by getting the Bank of England to create it. That’s how all UK money is created, by the way. There is a limiting factor in inflation, but the answer to that is taxation and a Labour government should be redistributive – in other words it would tax the rich more than the poor.

So with Starmer’s pledge to end tuition fees, which he ditched last week, we see that there is no financial limitation stopping him from doing it. Just as there is no financial limitation stopping him from doing any of the other leadership election pledges he has since abandoned.

We see no indication from Streeting that his boss Starmer would do any of these things and must conclude that they simply aren’t priorities of these people; their interests lie elsewhere.

Streeting goes on to lie – or at least tell falsehoods about the platform on which Starmer stood for the Labour leadership. Getting Labour electable again after the 2019 defeat might have been a background aim, but it wasn’t one of his 10 pledges.

And is Labour electable again? Well…

I’m sure you take the point. Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was more electable than it is under Keir Starmer – until the people who are now Starmer’s supporters were trying to undermine him. And now Starmer and his cronies can’t get near the same level.

No wonder the principled politicians are leaving.


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Should the Starmer project be over after Labour’s dull local election result?

Keir Starmer: the compressed lips indicate he thought he had said the wrong thing. This seems highly likely, considering his party’s performance in the English local elections.

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is celebrating after it increased its number of council seats in England by 25 per cent (against the number it won in 2019).

But what do his MPs really have to celebrate?

Sure, the Conservatives have lost more than 1,000 seats (1,058, to be precise – so far). But in proportionate terms, Labour trailed the other parties – the Liberal Democrats increased their seats by 33 per cent (with almost as many seats gained as Labour) and the Greens actually more than doubled their number of seats (that’s all in comparison with the number the parties won in 2019, of course).

And has it improved Labour’s chances of winning a general election?

No.

Not according to Sky‘s forecasters, anyway:

The article states:

Based on analysis of change in vote share across 1,500 wards Labour is the most popular party with 36%, with the Conservative share 29%, Lib Dems with 18% and others standing at 17%.

Labour would be on course to become the largest party at the next election.

It would gain 95 seats – to an improved total of 298 in this projection – the highest number since Labour won the 2005 general election, but 28 short of an overall majority.

In other words, no matter what shadow ministers or other party representatives might say, Labour has not won the victory it needed.

And the party’s critics have been quick to point this out:

The result could indicate that voters are tired of living in a two-party state – especially when the largest two parties have many policies that are practically indistinguishable.

Labour didn’t even get a majority of seat gains:

In the article, he stated:

He told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “For me personally, I really hated selling myself to the membership and I much prefer leadership decisions as leader of the Labour Party. I’m much more comfortable in this than I am in the campaign.”

He instantly backtracked, of course – because he realised it isn’t appropriate for a leader to admit he considers himself above begging for votes among his party members:

Asked by the surprised podcast hosts whether he hated the campaign or the members, Starmer said: “Oh no, I didn’t say I don’t like the mem– what I don’t like is selling myself to the membership.”

He clarified: “You’re in your own party and you’re up against colleagues, and very good colleagues, who you like. And it is a very odd thing to do. I’m very glad that that part of it is over, I have to say.”

Hmm. Did he really like those colleagues? He had said he liked former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, but that has turned out to be untrue.

And how well did he like Rebecca Long-Bailey, one of his fellow 2020 leadership candidate who he appointed to the shadow cabinet and then sacked without discussion after she shared on Twitter an interview with Maxine Peake, who said US police had learned from the Israeli security services how to kneel on people’s necks (a reference to the George Floyd killing, if I recall correctly).

In fairness, the claim had been linked to a report by Amnesty International but the organisation said it had not made any such statement. Long-Bailey, after describing Ms Peake as an “absolute diamond” had stated that she did not endorse everything in her interview.

When it became clear that Starmer was planning to take disciplinary action, Long-Bailey claimed, she asked to discuss matters with him before agreeing what further action to take – but “sadly he had already made his decision”.

That doesn’t seem particularly friendly – or the action of a thoughtful, balanced leader.

It is symptomatic of a leadership that is best characterised by its purges of left-wing party members (most often under accusations of anti-Semitism, often of dubious value) and its rejection of the pledges Starmer made in order to “sell” himself to the party members – the same members he has been busily removing.

And what did those members do at the local elections?

Oh, yes…

That’s right – councillors purged by Starmer, who went on to stand as Independents, won resounding victories, including over the Labour candidates in their wards.

And that also feeds back into possible general election results – especially in any poll involving that former party leader mentioned above:

So whichever way you look at it, the local election results have been mostly bad for Keir Starmer and his Labour Party.

You wouldn’t think so, to hear him and his cronies talking.

But then, he promised to continue Jeremy Corbyn’s policies and ditched them – with the most recent being his announcement that he won’t oppose university tuition fees any more.

So we know that Keir Starmer’s words aren’t worth the air he uses to utter them. Perhaps that’s why his support at the local elections was so lukewarm.


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Sharp resigns as BBC chairman after report finds conflicts of interest

Cronyism? Richard Sharp (left) and Boris Johnson.

We all knew this was going to happen; it was just a matter of time.

Richard Sharp has resigned as BBC Chairman after an investigation found he did not mention “potential perceived” conflicts of interest before his appointment to the role.

These include telling then-prime minister Boris Johnson that he wanted to apply for the role before doing so, and arranging a meeting between Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and Simon Blyth, a distant cousin of Johnson’s who wanted to provide financial support to the then-prime minister (the sum of £800,000 has been mentioned in the past). It seems that meeting did not take place.

The investigation did not pass judgement on whether Sharp had any intention to influence the former PM. This would be impossible to gauge unless Sharp actually admitted it.

The report by barrister Adam Heppinstall found “there is a risk of a perception that Mr Sharp was recommended for appointment” because he sought to assist the PM in a private financial matter “and/or that he influenced the former prime minister to recommend him by informing him of his application before he submitted it”.

It is likely that the conclusion is phrased in this way because it is impossible to say for certain whether either act influenced Johnson without Johnson admitting it, and that was never likely to happen.

The report notes that Sharp did not accept the first finding but has apologised for the second. He has called the breach of public appointment rules “inadvertent and not material”.

The problem is, he did not mention either matter to the appointments panel during the scrutiny process that took place before he took up the role as BBC Chairman, so its members did not have an opportunity to consider for themselves whether these matters were inadvertent and immaterial.

And he should have mentioned them, because it is specifically demanded in the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code: “If you have any interests that might be relevant to the work of the BBC, and which could lead to a real or perceived conflict of interest if you were to be appointed, please provide details in your application.”

Instead, the potential conflicts of interest were revealed by The Sunday Times in January, triggering a wave of speculation and condemnation.

No other applicant was able to indicate an interest in the job to Boris Johnson in advance, remember. And it seems a pre-briefing in October 2020 sought to influence other potential candidates not to apply for the role because Johnson had Sharp in mind for it.

Sharp’s claim that he knew nothing of Boris Johnson’s financial affairs when arranging the meeting between Mr Case and Mr Blyth rings false; how would he have known Johnson might want a loan otherwise?

And it seems unrealistic that a man with years of experience in the business world would not realise there would be a perceived conflict of interest because of his having been involved in facilitating a possible loan to the then-prime minister.

Sharp was questioned strongly about the matter by the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee – one of whose members, SNP MP John Nicolson, said afterwards: “It leaves the impression so much of this is deeply ‘Establishment’; it’s pals appointing pals, donating money to pals.

“It rather leaves the impression that it is all a bit… ‘banana republic’ and cosy.”

The committee’s conclusion was that Sharp’s conduct showed serious errors of judgement.

In that case, it is right that he should go. He might commit similar errors as BBC boss.

The question is: what happens next?

The Sharp affair has raised serious questions about cronyism in public appointments.

Until the public can be reassured that no such ‘Establishment’ or ‘banana republic’ behaviour is taking place, it seems unlikely that we will ever trust the terms on which any other such public appointment takes place.

Who’s going to be the next BBC chair – Owen Paterson?


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Former Grenfell MP quits Labour, saying she’s ‘not welcome here’

Emma Dent Coad: even when she was the Labour MP for Kensington she said, ‘We’re feeling marginalised and neutralised.’

The woman who represented the residents of Grenfell Tower after an entirely-preventable fire involving flammable cladding gutted the building and killed 72 people has quit her political party, saying she feels “not welcome here”.

This Writer remembers Emma Dent Coad as being absolutely committed to the well-being – and, indeed, protection – of the survivors of the Grenfell blaze.

She was a Labour MP, and in the 2019 general election that was presented to the public as a huge defeat for that party, she was one of those who lost their seats – but in her case it was by a tiny margin of 150 votes. That probably reflects her commitment to the community, even in a Tory landslide.

And in her absence, how has the Labour leadership treated the Grenfell survivors?

Well, here’s what she had to say about it:

with many North Kensington residents acutely aware of the nationwide cladding scandal, and indeed in contact with campaigners around the country, we were shocked to read that the Labour leader had accepted over £1000 worth of tickets to a football game, from Mullaley, a contractor fined over £10m for works on high-rise buildings in Portsmouth in a case very similar to Grenfell, using flammable insulation and very poor construction standards. For many it was a slap in the face, the kind of antics we expect from senior Tory Cabinet members, not the Labour leader.

It gets worse, though:

When our Group of Councillors refused to allow publication of a public statement challenging this outrage, as it would upset the leader, I saw that sadly they were right. We could, as a Labour Group, be suspended, and London Region would be delighted to do so.

This realisation has been just one more straw in a very long line of last straws for me.

She was saying that the Labour group on Kensington and Chelsea Council is unable to represent its constituents properly for fear of saying something that will provoke the anger of party leader Keir Starmer – and precipitate one of the purges for which he is becoming, rightly, infamous.

That’s no way to represent people.

So you can understand why she said the following:

After a great deal of soul-searching, I decided to resign from the Labour Party as of today, 27th April 2023. I’ve been a member for nearly 40 years, and in that time I’ve been a critical friend, but have always felt part of the broad church of the labour movement. I have campaigned for every leader, London Mayor and parliamentary candidate. That is loyalty.

Sadly I no longer feel welcome in the party. Members who campaign for peace, against nuclear weapons, in support of refugees, for equity to reduce inequalities, for an end to the persecution of Palestinian civilians by Israeli military forces, are being hunted down and forced out or expelled.

When a million people protested against the Iraq War, no one was suspended or expelled from the Labour Party. Our MP at the time was Karen Buck, and I know she had a difficult conversation with Blair, but he didn’t force her out.

Today, no more broad church. No more armies of inspired students to help door-knocking. Not welcome here.

It is simply incomprehensible that the Party which created the world’s first National Health Service is now complicit in destroying it, while some senior members of the Party are accepting funds from the private health care industry – and hospitality from contractors involved in the cladding scandal. How can the Party of the workforce refuse to stand by the right to strike? How can the Party that set up the welfare state penalize benefit recipients?

We have video of the next bit:

I doubt that Keir Starmer could care less.

But he should.

The criticisms Ms Dent Coad voiced above will hit home for many people reading this article – and could be relevant to many, many more if they have a chance to hear them.

“No more broad church. No more armies of inspired students to help door-knocking. Not welcome here.

“The party which created the world’s first National Health Service is now complicit in destroying it.

“Senior members of the party are accepting funds from the private health care industry – and hospitality from contractors involved in the cladding scandal.

“How can the Party of the workforce refuse to stand by the right to strike?

“How can the Party that set up the welfare state penalize benefit recipients?”

Those are all relevant today, but Starmer seems complacent. He thinks left-wingers simply have nowhere else to go.

He might be proved right next week. I guess it depends on how many people hear what Emma Dent Coad has said – and stop to think about it.

Source: Not welcome here – Labour Hub


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Fiona Bruce quits as Refuge ambassador over Stanley Johnson ‘one-off’ comment

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:

So she hasn’t learned any lessons either.

Source: Fiona Bruce to step down as Refuge ambassador over Stanley Johnson comments | Fiona Bruce | The Guardian


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Why are these Tory MPs queuing up to stand down?

On her way out: Dehenna Davison.

The answer to the question in the headline is obvious: they don’t think they’ll be able to win an election when their party is struggling to regain its popularity.

Dehenna Davison has become the latest Conservative MP to announce she won’t be defending her seat at the next general election, bringing the running total to eight.

The others are Chloe Smith, William Wragg, Gary Streeter, Nigel Adams, Charles Walker, Crispin Blunt and Adam Afriye.

Several of the quitters are young(ish) – Davison is 29, Wragg 34 and Smith 40 – prompting speculation that the Tories are losing their younger talent.

Davison is quoted as saying she is leaving because she hasn’t “had anything like a normal life for a 20-something”. But nobody really believes that excuse – do they?

Some may have a shadow hanging over them; William Wragg, vice-chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, was among the most influential MPs to voice their lack of confidence in the leadership of Liz Truss.

Gary Streeter was among the first to demand Boris Johnson’s removal from the role of prime minister.

Charles Walker has said the Conservatives cannot possibly win the next election.

And others may be aware that they have harmed their own public profile; Chloe Smith was the Minister for Disabled People who, confronted with the story of a disabled man who said he expects to be dead by this time next year because he will not be able to afford the increased cost of energy, told him to get a job.

This is good news for the UK. Eight fewer Tory incumbents re-contesting Parliamentary seats mean eight improved chances for other parties to take those seats instead.

Source: Two more Tory MPs announce they are stepping down at next election

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Jacob Rees-Mogg is out of the government. Good!

Almost before Rishi Sunak could consider himself prime minister, the Cabinet resignations began – with some of the quitters leaving ahead of the boot, one suspects.

First among these was former Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had described Sunak as a “socialist” during the summer, when he refused to commit himself to the kind of tax cuts proposed by his then-leadership rival (subsequently prime minister) Liz Truss.

And now we have seen the result of Truss’s former Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, merely announcing those tax cuts: an economic disaster.

In his resignation letter, Rees-Mogg backtracked on his “socialist” comment and said he would do all he could to support Sunak from the back benches.

Here’s a news clip:

I’ll try to produce an article on Rees-Mogg’s career, just to remind us all of the kind of man he is.

The fact that such a leading figure in the European Research Group (ERG) – the arch-Brexiter wing of the Conservative Party – is out should not give any of us cause for comfort; the government is still riddled with these politically and economically illiterate headbangers.

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Suella Braverman quits as Home Secretary

Suella Braverman has resigned as Home Secretary, in part because she shared secure information on a private phone.

Here’s Sky News:

(Stick out the video through to Yvette Cooper’s speech because the first part of it really is an excellent takedown of the Truss administration.)

What was the second reason she had to go?

This Writer would like it to be her loose-lipped rants in the Commons chamber and media interviews.

Only yesterday, she accused Labour, the Lib Dems, Guardian readers and people who eat tofu of conspiring with Just Stop Oil against the government’s draconian attempts to crack down on protest:

Previously, she spoke about her “dream” of putting refugees and asylum-seekers onto planes to Rwanda.

These outbursts are not acceptable behaviour for a UK government minister; they belong more closely with some of the totalitarian governments of the first half of the 20th century.

But I don’t believe they are the second reason the lunacy of Braverman has been banished to the backbenches.

I look forward to finding out what it really was.

In the meantime, I note that in her resignation letter Braverman has attacked Liz Truss for reversing the insane economic policies that created so much economic instability over the last few weeks – and more.

She wrote: “I have concerns about the direction of this government.

“Not only have we broken key pledges that were promised to our voters, but I have had serious concerns about this government’s commitment to honouring manifesto commitments, such as reducing overall migration numbers and stopping illegal migration, particularly the dangerous small boats crossings.”

Braverman is the second Cabinet loss for Truss within a week and becomes the shortest-serving home secretary since World War Two, having lasted only 43 days in the job.

Her replacement is Grant Shapps.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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If this is Boris Johnson’s excuse for refusing to quit, how can he be allowed to stay?

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?

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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The Livingstone Presumption is now available
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