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Pincher resigns after losing suspension fight; that’s where the parallel with Boris Johnson ends

Chris “Pincher by name…” has resigned as an MP after losing his appeal against suspension for groping two men in a club.

His decision parallels one by Boris Johnson earlier this year – the former prime minister who was pitched out of that job after being found to have dishonestly claimed he did not know about Pincher’s misbehaviours.

Johnson had been found to have broken Parliamentary rules over the Partygate scandal and resigned in a fit of petulance, rather than suffer the indignity of his then-constituents petitioning for a by-election to get rid of him.

Pincher will also avoid the further embarrassment of a recall petition – but it seems that is the only parallel between his resignation and that of the PM his sexual shenanigans brought down.

According to the BBC, he said he came to the decision after talking with his family and staff:

He said: “I do not want my constituents to be put to further uncertainty, and so in consequence I have made arrangements to resign and leave the Commons.”

It is set to be the ninth by-election since Rishi Sunak became prime minister.

Good for Pincher; at least he has managed to do one thing in the right way.

Of course, the announcement make it possible for me to repeat the saga of how Pincher brought Johnson down – partly because many of you probably didn’t get to see it when I published it earlier this week… but mostly because I enjoy it:

Initially, he was best-known as the one who hid behind other Tories in order to shout abuse at then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during Prime Minister’s Questions:

But on July 1, 2022, he resigned as a Tory whip after it was alleged that he groped two other men at the private Carlton Club.

In his resignation letter to Johnson, he said he “drank far too much” and “embarrassed myself and other people”.

But the apparent double sexual assault was not investigated by the Conservative Party, nor were the police, apparently, contacted.

New claims against Pincher stacked up in the following days. The BBC listed them in the following way:

The Sunday Times reported Mr Pincher had placed his hand on the inner leg of a male Tory MP in a bar in Parliament in 2017.

The newspaper reported Mr Pincher also made unwanted advances towards a different male Tory MP in 2018 while in his parliamentary office, and towards a Tory activist in Tamworth around July 2019.

The Mail on Sunday carried allegations he had made advances against an individual a decade ago, and that a female Tory staffer had tried to prevent his advances towards a young man at a Conservative Party conference.

The Independent carried allegations from an unnamed male Conservative MP that Mr Pincher groped him on two separate occasions in December 2021 and June this year.

The Sunday Times reported that the MP involved in the alleged incident in 2018 contacted No 10 before Mr Pincher was made a whip in February, passing on details of what he said had happened to him and voicing his concerns about him being appointed to the role.

Former Johnson aide Dominic Cummings was said to have claimed that the then-prime minister referred to him as “Pincher by name, pincher by nature”. But Johnson himself was said to have considered the matter closed after Pincher resigned as deputy chief whip.

This raised concerns about unequal treatment of MPs who are accused of inappropriate behaviour (or, in this case, sexual crimes). Pincher was subsequently reported to Parliament’s independent behaviour watchdog and an inquiry began.

The controversy – and Boris Johnson’s failure to act in a timely way – led to renewed speculation over his fitness to continue as the UK’s political leader. This intensified after it was stated that he had indeed known of Pincher’s behaviour before appointing him to the Tory whips’ office:

The revelation came from the BBC:

Boris Johnson was made aware of a formal complaint about Chris Pincher’s “inappropriate behaviour” while Mr Pincher was a Foreign Office minister from 2019-20, BBC News can reveal.

It triggered a disciplinary process that confirmed the MP’s misconduct. Mr Pincher apologised after the process concluded, BBC News has been told.

BBC News understands the PM and the foreign secretary at the time – Dominic Raab – knew about the issue.

The Prime Minister’s office claimed that “no official complaints [about Pincher] were ever made”.

McDonald of Salford, a crossbench peer who was formerly (as Simon McDonald) Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, blew that – and subsequent li(n)es out of the water.

In a letter to Kathryn Stone, then-Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, he stated: “This is not true. In the summer of 2019, shortly after he was appointed minister of state at the Foreign Office, a group of officials complained to me about Mr Pincher’s behaviour. I discussed the matter with the relevant official at the Cabinet Office. (In substance, the allegations were similar to those made about his behaviour at the Carlton Club.) An investigation upheld the complaint; Mr Pincher apologised and promised not to repeat the inappropriate behaviour. There was no repetition at the FCO before he left seven months later.”

The letter added that a BBC website report stated: “Downing Street has said Boris Johnson was not aware of any specific allegations when he appointed Mr Pincher deputy chief whip in February,” then added: “By 4 July, the BBC website reflected a change in No 10’s line: ‘The prime minister’s official spokesman said Mr Johnson knew of “allegations that were either resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint”, adding that “it was deemed not appropriate to stop an appointment simply because of unsubstantiated allegations”.’

“The original No 10 line is not true and the modification is still not accurate. Mr Johnson was briefed in person about the initiation and outcome of the investigation. There was a ‘formal complaint’. Allegations were ‘resolved’ only in the sense that the investigation was completed; Mr Pincher was not exonerated. To characterise the allegations as ‘unsubstantiated’ is therefore wrong.

“I am aware that [it] is unusual to write to you and simultaneously publicise the letter. I am conscious of the duty owed to the target of an investigation but I act out of my duty towards the victims. Mr Pincher deceived me and others in 2019. He cannot be allowed to use the confidentiality of the process three years ago to pursue his predatory behaviour in other contexts.”

He didn’t say Boris Johnson had been lying in his letter, but in a subsequent interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he might as well have: “I think they need to come clean. I think that the language is ambiguous, the sort of telling the truth and crossing your fingers at the same time and hoping that people are not too forensic in their subsequent questioning and I think that is not working.”

The peer’s revelations triggered a slew of new accusations against Boris Johnson and his administration.

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “The prime minister knew about the seriousness of these complaints but decided to promote this man to a senior position in government anyway. He refused to act and then lied about what he knew.”

It became apparent that Downing Street had not even provided the government’s spokesperson-of-the-day with the facts, when Dominic Raab tried, on the Today programme, to push the line that Boris Johnson had not been briefed about disciplinary action against Pincher.

Himself a former foreign secretary, Raab said he had spoken with Johnson over the last 24 hours and had been assured that the prime minister had not been briefed.

Then Lord McDonald appeared on the same programme and categorically stated that Johnson had been told everything at the time.

So Raab’s story changed by the time he got to LBC radio: “There was a review, an investigation if you like … to decide whether a formal disciplinary action or an investigation and process was warranted.

“The review, conducted under the auspices of Sir Simon – now Lord – McDonald was that disciplinary action was not warranted. That doesn’t mean that inappropriate behaviour didn’t take place. We were clear that what happened was inappropriate, but we resolved it without going for a formal disciplinary process.”

Raab said he told Pincher “in no uncertain terms” that his conduct had been unacceptable.

So Raab was saying that the complaint against Pincher had been upheld, but that did not mean he was guilty – even though Raab himself had told the MP that his conduct had been unacceptable.

Does that make any sense to you?

It didn’t make sense to Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain, who grilled Raab over his misuse of language:

It seems this cack-handed handling of a serious matter was the last straw for many backbench Tory MPs, who said Johnson had “learned nothing” from Partygate and “the same mistakes are again being made“.

They called for a change to the rules of the 1922 Committee to allow another confidence vote to take place against him.

Later that day – July 5 – Johnson’s Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, quit – along with several junior ministers who were Parliamentary aides to Cabinet ministers: Jonathan Gullis, Saqib Bhatti, Nicola Richards, and Virginia Crosbie.

Tory vice-chair Bim Afolami was also out – he quit on TalkTV’s The News Desk show:

Andrew Murrison resigned as Johnson’s trade emissary to Morocco, as did Theodora Clarke, trade emissary to Kenya.

Ms Clarke said in her resignation letter: “To learn that you chose to elevate a colleague to a position of pastoral care for MPs, whilst in full knowledge of his own wrongdoing, shows a severe lack of judgement and care for your Parliamentary party.

“I was shocked to see colleagues defending the Government with assurances that have turned out to be false. This is not the way that any responsible Government should act.”

Attorney General Alex Chalk threw in the towel late that evening. His resignation letter stated: “To be in government is to accept the duty to argue for difficult or even unpopular policy positions where that serves the broader national interest. But it cannot extend to defending the indefensible.

“The cumulative effect of the Owen Paterson debacle, Partygate and now the handling of the former Deputy Chief Whip’s resignation, is that public confidence in the ability of Number 10 to uphold the standards of candour expected of a British Government has irretrievably broken down. I regret that I share that judgement.”

Then came a flurry of resignations, intended to fit in before Prime Minister’s Questions.

First to go on the morning of July 6 was another Parliamentary Private Secretary, Laura Trott. Her resignation letter, posted on her Facebook account, said trust in politics was of the “upmost [sic] importance”, adding “but sadly in recent months this has been lost”.

Next was Children’s Minister Will Quince, who said he was left with “no choice” after 10 Downing Street sent him out to defend Johnson with “inaccurate” lines. He said: “I accepted and repeated assurances on Monday (July 4) to the media which have now been found to be inaccurate.”

In media interviews, Quince had said he had been given assurances that Johnson had not been aware of complaints against Chris Pincher. It later emerged this was not true.

Robin Walker, Minister for School Standards, quit saying the government has been “overshadowed by mistakes and questions about integrity”.

Lee Anderson, the Red Wall Tory who was ridiculed for saying it was possible to cook nutritious meals for 30p, quit at around 10.30am. On the Pinchergate lies, he stated: “I cannot look myself in the mirror and accept this… Integrity should always come first and sadly this has not been the case over the past few days.”

Also quitting were Treasury Minister John Glen and another PPS, Felicity Buchan.

Oh – and Justice Minister Victoria Atkins.

And key backbencher Robert Halfon also announced that he had lost confidence in Johnson. In a letter, he said he was “previously against any leadership change… during Covid, a cost-of-living crisis and the war in Ukraine. However, after the events of the past few days and the resignation of Cabinet members, I feel that the public have been misled about the appointment of the former deputy chief whip [Chris Pincher].

“The parties at Number 10 Downing Street were bad enough but the appointment of this individual and the untruthful statement about what was known is unacceptable to me.”

Also withdrawing support were Chris Skidmore and Tom Hunt.

Later that day, “Levelling-Up” secretary Michael Gove publicly called for Boris Johnson to give up and go gracefully, and a delegation of Cabinet ministers attended 10 Downing Street to beg him to see sense. So Johnson sacked Gove.

This triggered a new wave of Cabinet resignations. Key among them was Michelle Donelan, who was only appointed as Education Secretary two days previously, after Nadhim Zahawi was promoted to become Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Zahawi himself appeared to have been moving to slip a knife into his boss’s back – because he was urging Johnson to quit by 8.45.

Also out was Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis, while the total number of resignations from the government climbed towards 50.

By lunchtime on July 7, Johnson finally gave in to the inevitable and resigned as prime minister.

All that, just because he could not admit making a bad decision about one of his MPs.

And now that MP is following in Johnson’s footsteps, triggering a by-election that is likely to erode the Tory landslide of 2019 even further.

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Nadine Dorries resigns – at last! – with a SEARING poison-pen letter to Rishi Sunak

Nadine Dorries with the social media message that will always be associated with her [Image: The Prole Star].

Finally, she’s taken the hint.

After a calamitous Parliamentary and Ministerial career, promising to resign and then failing to do so, prompting campaigns and a petition for her to be ejected, Nadine Dorries has thrown in the towel.

She has finally resigned, relinquishing the House of Commons seat that, we’re told, she hasn’t occupied for more than a year.

But she had one last shot to fire – at her own government’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

This Writer would go as far as to say it is one of the few poison pen letters to actually have a signature at the bottom of it.

Would you like to read it?

Here’s the lot, in all its grim glory:

It has been the greatest honour and privilege of my life to have served the good people of Mid Bedfordshire as their MP for eighteen years and I count myself blessed to have worked in Westminster for almost a quarter of a century. Despite what some in the media and you yourself have implied, my team of caseworkers and I have continued to work for my constituents faithfully and diligently to this day.

When I arrived in Mid Bedfordshire in 2005, I inherited a Conservative majority of 8,000. Over five elections this has increased to almost 25,000, making it one of the safest seats in the country. A legacy I am proud of.

During my time as a Member of Parliament, I have served as a back bencher, a bill Committee Chair, a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State before becoming Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care during the Covid crisis, after which I was appointed as Secretary of State at the department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. 

The offer to continue in my Cabinet role was extended to me by your predecessor, Liz Truss, and I am grateful for your personal phone call on the morning you appointed your cabinet in October, even if I declined to take the call.

As politicians, one of the greatest things we can do is to empower people to have opportunities to achieve their aspirations and to help them to change their lives for the better. In DHSC I championed meaningful improvements to maternity and neonatal safety. I launched the women’s health strategy and pushed forward a national evidence-based trial for Group B Strep testing in pregnant women with the aim to reduce infant deaths. 

When I resigned as Secretary of State for DCMS I was able to thank the professional, dedicated, and hard-working civil servants for making our department the highest performing in Whitehall. We worked tirelessly to strengthen the Online Safety Bill to protect young people, froze the BBC licence fee, included the sale of Channel 4 into the Media Bill to protect its long-term future and led the world in imposing cultural sanctions when Putin invaded Ukraine.

I worked with and encouraged the tech sector, to search out untaught talents such as creative and critical thinking in deprived communities offering those who faced a life on low unskilled pay or benefits, access to higher paid employment and social mobility. What many of the CEOs I spoke to in the tech sector and business leaders really wanted was meaningful regulatory reform from you as chancellor to enable companies not only to establish in the UK, but to list on the London Stock Exchange rather than New York. 

You flashed your gleaming smile in your Prada shoes and Savile Row suit from behind a camera, but you just weren’t listening. All they received in return were platitudes and a speech illustrating how wonderful life was in California. London is now losing its appeal as more UK-based companies seek better listing opportunities in the U.S. That, Prime Minister, is entirely down to you.

Long before my resignation announcement, in July 2022, I had advised the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, of my intention to step down. Senior figures in the party, close allies of yours, have continued to this day to implore me to wait until the next general election rather than inflict yet another damaging by-election on the party at a time when we are consistently twenty points behind in the polls.

Having witnessed first-hand, as Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss were taken down, I decided that the British people had a right to know what was happening in their name. Why is it that we have had five Conservative Prime Ministers since 2010, with not one of the previous four having left office as the result of losing a general election? That is a democratic deficit which the mother of parliaments should be deeply ashamed of and which, as you and I know, is the result of the machinations of a small group of individuals embedded deep at the centre of the party and Downing St.

To start with, my investigations focused on the political assassination of Boris Johnson, but as I spoke to more and more people – and I have spoken to a lot of people, from ex-Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers both ex and current through all levels of government and Westminster and even journalists – a dark story emerged which grew ever more disturbing with each person I spoke to.

It became clear to me as I worked that remaining as a back bencher was incompatible with publishing a book which exposes how the democratic process at the heart of our party has been corrupted. As I uncovered this alarming situation I knew, such were the forces ranged against me, that I was grateful to retain my parliamentary privilege until today. And, as you also know Prime Minister, those forces are today the most powerful figures in the land. The onslaught against me even included the bizarre spectacle of the Cabinet Secretary claiming (without evidence) to a select committee that he had reported me to the Whips and Speakers office (not only have neither office been able to confirm this was true, but they have no power to act, as he well knows). It is surely as clear a breach of Civil Service impartiality as you could wish to see.

But worst of all has been the spectacle of a Prime Minister demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy against one of his own MPs. You failed to mention in your public comments that there could be no writ moved for a by-election over summer. And that the earliest any by-election could take place is at the end of September. The clearly orchestrated and almost daily personal attacks demonstrates the pitifully low level your Government has descended to.

It is a modus operandi established by your allies which has targeted Boris Johnson, transferred to Liz Truss and now moved on to me. But I have not been a Prime Minister. I do not have security or protection. Attacks from people, led by you, declared open season on myself and the past weeks have resulted in the police having to visit my home and contact me on a number of occasions due to threats to my person.

Since you took office a year ago, the country is run by a zombie Parliament where nothing meaningful has happened. What exactly has been done or have you achieved? You hold the office of Prime Minister unelected, without a single vote, not even from your own MPs. You have no mandate from the people and the Government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?

And what a difference it is now since 2019, when Boris Johnson won an eighty-seat majority and a greater percentage of the vote share than Tony Blair in the Labour landslide victory of ’97. We were a mere five points behind on the day he was removed from office. Since you became Prime Minister, his manifesto has been completely abandoned. We cannot simply disregard the democratic choice of the electorate, remove both the Prime Minister and the manifesto commitments they voted for and then expect to return to the people in the hope that they will continue to unquestioningly support us. They have agency, they will use it.

Levelling up has been discarded and with it, those deprived communities it sought to serve. Social care, ready to be launched, abandoned along with the hope of all of those who care for the elderly and the vulnerable. The Online Safety Bill has been watered down. BBC funding reform, the clock run down. The Mental Health Act, timed out. Defence spending, reduced. Our commitment to net zero, animal welfare and the green issues so relevant to the planet and voters under 40, squandered. As Lord Goldsmith wrote in his own resignation letter, because you simply do not care about the environment or the natural world. What exactly is it you do stand for?

You have increased Corporation tax to 25 per cent, taking us to the level of the highest tax take since World War two at 75 per cent of GDP, and you have completely failed in reducing illegal immigration or delivering on the benefits of Brexit. The bonfire of EU legislation, swerved. The Windsor framework agreement, a dead duck, brought into existence by shady promises of future preferment with grubby rewards and potential gongs to MPs. Stormont is still not sitting.

Disregarding your own chancellor, last week you took credit for reducing inflation, citing your ‘plan’. There has been no budget, no new fiscal measures, no debate, there is no plan. Such statements take the British public for fools. The decline in the price of commodities such as oil and gas, the eased pressure on the supply of wheat and the increase in interest rates by the Bank of England are what has taken the heat out of the economy and reduced inflation. For you to personally claim credit for this was disingenuous at the very least.

It is a fact that there is no affection for Keir Starmer out on the doorstep. He does not have the winning X factor qualities of a Thatcher, a Blair, or a Boris Johnson, and sadly, Prime Minister, neither do you. Your actions have left some 200 or more of my MP colleagues to face an electoral tsunami and the loss of their livelihoods, because in your impatience to become Prime Minister you put your personal ambition above the stability of the country and our economy. Bewildered, we look in vain for the grand political vision for the people of this great country to hold on to, that would make all this disruption and subsequent inertia worthwhile, and we find absolutely nothing.

I shall take some comfort from explaining to people exactly how you and your allies achieved this undemocratic upheaval in my book. I am a proud working-class Conservative which is why the Levelling Up agenda was so important to me. I know personally how effective a strong and helping hand can be to lift someone out of poverty and how vision, hope and opportunity can change lives. You have abandoned the fundamental principles of Conservatism. History will not judge you kindly.

I shall today inform the Chancellor of my intention to take the Chiltern Hundreds, enabling the writ to be moved on September the 4th for the by-election you are so desperately seeking to take place.

It’s dynamite, isn’t it? Okay, it was written by someone whose nickname is “Mad Nad”, so you have to take it with a pinch of salt, but as far as all its claims are concerned – let’s hope for the best!

Thanks to the Daily Mail for finally supplying us with something we want to read.

The general consensus is that resigning is the best thing Dorries has ever done (be warned – the first message below contains extreme language):

What, “Whinge moan, point finger, spit, rage, narcissism, ineptitude, whinge, moan, grr, Sunak yuk, whinge, narcissism, working class don’t make me laugh, whinge moan, now where’s my money”?

Do you really think that will help, Chris?

Best of all, Mad Nad isn’t wrong about Fishy Rishi.

His latest wheeze is to avoid attending the United Nations’ general assembly, leading to this commentary (and probably many others):

 

Peer accused of trying to interfere with Partygate inquiry resigns. What about the others?

Zac Goldsmith: apparently he owes his peerage to Boris Johnson.

There’s almost as much murk in this as in a glass of drinking water from Thames Water.*

Lord Zac Goldsmith has resigned from his job as an environment minister, just one day after he was named by the House of Commons Privileges Committee as having tried to interfere with its determination on Boris Johnson and Partygate.

But his reason for resigning, if you read the article, is the Tory government’s failure to tackle climate change properly. He says prime minister Rishi Sunak is “simply uninterested” in the issue.

(And he has repeated this assertion – strenuously – after Sunak claimed the resignation came after he had asked Goldsmith to apologise for the apparent interference. He reckons his resignation had been coming for a long time – but that raises one obvious question: why submit it the day after being accused by the Privileges Committee if that had nothing to do with it?)

But who cares about Goldsmith? He’s yesterday’s man now.

What matters is, nine other MPs and peers have also been accused by the Privileges Committee:

The Privileges Committee has published the evidence on which it has based its claim:

Given all of the above, one has only one question left to ask:

What are the other nine named MPs and peers going to do?

*Joke. I don’t honestly think the quality of Thames Water’s product is quite so bad… yet.

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Something for the weekend: Jonathan Pie on Boris Johnson’s resignation [STRONG LANGUAGE]

Those of you who are familiar with Jonathan Pie will not have expected him to let this one pass without comment.

Here he is in full flow – mixing excellent points that seem to have passed beyond the understanding of senior Tory MPs with the kind of vitriol that might burn your ears off. So be careful:

One point: while Harriet Harman certainly could not have removed Boris Johnson from Parliament by herself, and there was no recommendation for him to be removed at all, it is not true that his constituents were the only people who could force him out; MPs could have done it is a motion to change his punishment to expulsion were supported by the House of Commons.

Any argument about that is entirely academic though, because – as the estimable Mr Pie has observed – Boris Johnson quit of his own accord.

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Johnson ally resigns as an MP. Who’s next?

Nigel Adams: he’s said to be a Boris Johnson ally – at least, that’s the reason we’re being given for his sudden resignation as an MP.

So it is an exodus, then.

Here‘s the BBC:

Nigel Adams, MP for Selby and Ainsty, has stood down but did not say why.

Mr Adams, a Cabinet Office minister without portfolio under Mr Johnson’s government, had previously announced he would not be standing at the next general election – but has now brought that decision forward.

In a tweet announcing he was going immediately he said Selby Conservatives had selected a new parliamentary candidate on Friday.

It means there will be another by-election. That’s three the Tories have to manage since the beginning of Friday, including Johnson, Nadine Dorries, and now Mr Adams, who is said to have been a Johnson ally.

The Conservatives can ill afford to waste time, money and effort on by-elections when they’re struggling with the economy, the cost of living, and public opinion.

And who knows how many more resignations there will have been by Monday morning?

 

Getting his retaliation in first: Boris Johnson takes to the attack in resignation letter

Tantrum: Boris Johnson’s resignation letter makes him look like a petulant child. Where’s Nanny to tell him to take his medicine?

It was probably the best thing he could think of doing.

After receiving notification from the Commons Privileges Committee of its decision in the Partygate Inquiry, and realising that he was going to be suspended for the 10-day period required to trigger a recall petition and possible by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency, Boris Johnson decided to pre-empt it and resign immediately.

This gave him the opportunity to attack the decision, the committee that made it, and anybody else he felt like in what comes across as nothing less than an epistolary tantrum.

“The Privileges Committee… are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of Parliament,” he wrote. “They have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons.”

Of course, that would be a very hard thing to do, if Johnson himself wasn’t willing to admit it – and he clearly isn’t. Committee members would have had to weigh up what Johnson had said he knew, against what could be concluded from his actions at the times of the parties in Downing Street, his comments at those events, and his behaviour in Parliament thereafter.

Clearly they have decided that it is unreasonable to believe he did not know that they were parties when he attended them and when he discussed them in the Commons chamber. That is all the committee members needed to do.

In that light, much of the rest of Johnson’s letter comes across as the sulking of a spoilt boy who hasn’t been allowed to have his own way.

Also in that light, though, his comments about the Privileges Committee and its individual members may be taken very seriously indeed.

To say, “Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court,” is to call into question the honesty and integrity of the committee’s members – his then-fellow MPs. He has no right to do that.

His comment, “It was naïve and trusting of me to think that these proceedings could be remotely useful or fair,” falls into the same category.

… as does his attack on individual committee members and opponents in the Tory Party: “Most members of the Committee – especially the chair – had already expressed deeply prejudicial remarks about my guilt before they had even seen the evidence… there are currently some Tory MPs who share that view… there is a witch hunt under way.”

Already leading Parliamentarians – foremost among them Chris Bryant, the former Privileges Committee chair who recused himself from proceedings after passing comment on Johnson’s behaviour – are saying action may justifiably be taken against Johnson over these ill-chosen words.

But Johnson may face reprisals from other quarters as well. His letter also attacked Sue Gray, who chaired Johnson’s own inquiry into Downing Street parties and who is now set to become Labour leader Keir Starmer’s designated Chief of Staff, along with her chief counsel, Daniel Stilitz KC.

The letter went on to attack the Conservative Party in general, along with Rishi Sunak’s government. Remember: this was a resignation letter – there was no call for any of this material (it amounts to nothing less than a rant) to be included.

And he claims multiple successes that are either not his to claim, or are not successes. The Elizabeth Line was approved by Tony Blair and it was former London Mayor Ken Livingstone who made sure it happened.

Brexit has been a hugely costly failure for the vast majority of people in the UK. Johnson should not mention his conduct during the pandemic as it led to more than 200,000 unnecessary deaths. And while it is right that the UK should support Ukraine against invasion, did we really lead that support internationally?

Put it all together and Boris Johnson appears to have suffered some kind of breakdown. This letter seems, at best, deranged.

Does he honestly believe his statements? Well, yes he probably does – but that doesn’t make them true; it makes him unbalanced, as economist Richard Murphy argues in a Twitter thread today:

Then again, there were definitely some in the Conservative Party who supported Johnson all the way. In the interests of balance, let’s hear from one:

If you’re wondering why Ms Jenkyns would say that, see this:

One good thing about Johnson’s letter is that it means the Privileges Committee doesn’t have to wait two weeks before concluding the inquiry and publishing its report.

But that won’t be the end of the affair.

Many people – some of them in positions of considerable power and responsibility, will be taking this weekend to consider their response to Johnson’s rant.

He may find that his tirade has cost him not only his future in Parliament, but also any future at all.

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Nadine Dorries quits the Commons – at last! If it’s to become a Lady, we foresee difficulties

Nadine Dorries: is she soon to become Lady Dorries of window-licking trolls? [Image: The Prole Star.]

This seems an extremely mixed blessing.

At long last, Nadine Dorries is dragging her carcass out of the House of Commons – despite spending considerable effort telling us she wasn’t going to do anything of the sort until after the next general election.

It means there will be a by-election. Let’s hope the people of Mid Bedfordshire have the sense to give both the Conservatives and Labour a wake-up call and vote for somebody else. Will the Green Party be putting up a candidate?

Dorries is doing this, conspicuously, right before details of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list are published, in which it was alleged (but she strenuously denied) that she might be ennobled.

That’s right – we might be facing the prospect of Lady “Window Licking Trolls” before the end of the month.

It was bad enough with Michelle Mone flouncing around the Lords in her vermine ermine. Who next – Esther bloody McVey?

They could all gather around the Woolsack, chanting, “When shall we three meet again – to persecute, swindle or just act vain?”

It’s bad enough that Rishi Sunak is so weak-willed he’s willing to accept Johnson’s choices of honours. They were always bound to elevate his vile cronies – and McVey is certainly among those.

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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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Sunak has FAILED. When is his resignation?

Sunak’s gamble: he should have resigned after losing more than 1,000 council seats in the local elections – but hasn’t. He may be hoping the other political parties fail to inspire voters, because he knows very well that he can’t.

Whatever you want to say about the other UK political parties in this year’s local elections, one thing is clear: the Conservative Party has lost – badly.

How many other times has a UK political party lost more than 1,000 council seats in a single election (1,058 in total)?

I’ll tell you, thanks to information from a lovely AI-powered search engine: None.

But that’s what happened on Thursday, May 4, 2023:

Tory leader and UK prime minister Rishi Sunak seemed remarkably unconcerned when he was interviewed about the extent of his party’s losses. Admittedly, at the time the full extent of those losses wasn’t known – but his decision to harp on about what the public wants him to do was also strange.

This is because of two reasons. Firstly, the local election results show quite clearly that the public doesn’t want its government to do what Sunak claimed; and secondly – as Peter Stefanovic explains below – his plans are b*ll*cks!

Those clever people who use local election results to project the result of the next general election have worked out that, if Thursday’s result was replicated, the Conservatives would suffer their second-worst defeat in history.

According to the prediction by Sky News,

the Tories would lose 127 MPs – dropping from 365 to 238.

This would be the lowest total for the Conservatives since the 198 seats it won in 2005.

That prediction, together with the solid result of Thursday’s poll, should be enough to eject Sunak from Downing Street, for the simple reason that it is clear he does not have the support of the voting public.

But he’s hanging on.

This Writer can only surmise that he is hoping the election result indicates that the public is not enamoured of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party either, and he has more than a year in which to try to regain the trust of the electorate.

He could also be hoping that the public won’t support independents and the Green Party at Westminster, polarising to the two main parties again. He may be mistaken in that!

But let’s be honest with ourselves: these are forlorn hopes.

Sunak doesn’t have the policies to win the public over, and his party doesn’t have the talent to replace him.

The best he can hope to do is limp on until he can’t put off a general election any longer (January 28, 2025 is the latest date available to him), and hope his government can do so much damage to the UK’s infrastructure by then that no incoming government will be able to sort out the mess.

Whichever Tory then replaces him will be able to claim that any such failure is the fault of the new party of government – not theirs – and hope to use that lie to win the following general election.

That’s UK politics for you. As far as the Tories are concerned, it isn’t about public service – it’s about holding on to power – or regaining it as soon as possible.

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Something for the weekend: let’s laugh at Dominic Raab

Dominic Raab: he was trying to justify himself to the Commons Foreign Affairs committee in this shot; he’s been trying to justify himself for years.

He’s gone; good riddance.

For clarity, let’s have a reminder of some of the events leading up to Dominic Raab’s departure from politics:

Some of us have been making fun of him since the allegations were first made:

But the best take-down This Writer has seen – so far – was by James O’Brien on LBC:

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