Wow. At least 24 civil servants have now complained about bullying by Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, it seems.
Not only that, but there are also inquiries into the behaviour of Nadhim Zahawis (another Cabinet member) and Boris Johnson, a former prime minister.
Rishi Sunak and his Cabinet were apparently having an away day in Chequers to discuss Conservative Party strategies – despite the fact that Parliament was sitting and they were using government property – so one wonders whether he was taking the opportunity to clear the chaff. One suspects not, because he’s too weak.
Enjoy also the pathetic attempt at deflection onto Keir Starmer by Angela Epstein. She reckons he’s not a good leader because he supported Jeremy Corbyn, and brought up the manufactured Labour anti-Semitism crisis as proof. But anti-Semitism in Labour fell under Corbyn – the claims against him were nonsense. Starmer is a rotten leader for reasons entirely due to himself.
As Kevin Maguire points out about her comments: “We’ve got a lousy rotten governent so look over there.”
Here’s a bit more on that Tory strategy meeting, courtesy of A Different Bias:
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She may have run away from public life but she can’t run away from the evidence.
Led By Donkeys, the campaign group that posts billboards contrasting politicians’ current stated opinions with those they have promoted in the past in order to call out hypocrisy, has created a new short film that you should watch.
It’s about Michelle Mone, her connection with the company PPE Medpro, and the way she was apparently paid £29 million for inducing the Tory government, during the Covid crisis, to buy millions of pieces of personal protective equipment that was unfit to be used.
The information is highly revealing, as you can see for yourself:
The doctor presenting the video would be perfectly justified to be angry about this because – as she states in the clip – the waste of money meant it could not be spent on acceptable PPE that would have been used to protect NHS staff and Covid-suffering patients.
There is a high possibility that – because of the apparent avarice of Lady Mone and her associates, and the inadequacy of Michael Gove and the Tory “VIP lane” system of allocating contracts to friends of the Conservatives – many thousands of people died.
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Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak: by giving her a job, has he dropped himself into a morass of trouble?
After watching his former boss Boris Johnson face an inquiry about lying to Parliament, could Rishi Sunak really be foolish enough to let himself go the same way?
It seems possible – and all because he offered Suella Braverman a second chance.
We all know the story here – or think we do – right? Braverman is said to have quit her role as Liz Truss’s Home Secretary voluntarily, after having sent sensitive documents via her personal email. Apparently the wrong person saw them.
Sunak, tackled about it in Prime Minister’s Questions, said, “She made an error of judgment, but she recognised that, she raised the matter and she accepted her mistake. That is why I was delighted to welcome her back into a united Cabinet that brings experience and stability to the heart of Government.”
But then former Conservative Party chairman Jake Berry gave a TV interview that suggested this was not the truth:
So, according to Berry, Braverman did not volunteer any information about this; it was discovered by someone else who raised the red flag. The evidence was then put to her and (we may infer) she was told to resign.
That would certainly explain the amount of vitriol against Truss’s government that Braverman put in her resignation letter.
This indicates, though, that Sunak lied to Parliament by saying Braverman was the one who raised the matter – and it casts doubt on his claim that she resigned voluntarily and deserved a second chance.
It makes it more likely that Sunak offered Braverman – a senior member of the European Research Group (ERG) wing of the Conservative Party – a Cabinet post in order to secure the support of her cronies.
This information is all, now, in the hands of former Director of Public Prosecutions, now leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer.
Phil Moorhouse discusses what Starmer may do with it in the clip below:
Is Sunak storing up a similar fate for himself as that which Johnson is already facing?
Time will tell. But what do you think?
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Jacob Rees-Mogg: he knows how to rave it up with the best of Tories! In fact, there’s no suggestion that he took part in the scandalous Downing Street parties – but there are still good reasons he should not discuss them.
Does Jacob Rees-Mogg think he’s an ‘influencer’ now?
He’s certainly trying to influence opinions over ‘Partygate’ – the scandal of the Downing Street parties that took place during Covid-19 lockdowns, with Tories raving it up in large groups when the rest of us were forbidden even from seeing our relatives who were dying of the virus.
And that’s not acceptable – because, as a member of the Tory government himself, his words represent a conflict of interest; he simply should not be talking about this issue.
For once, he should take a leaf out of his boss Boris Johnson’s book – and I don’t get to say that very often!
Jacob Rees-Mogg has dismissed the row over parties held during lockdown in Downing Street and across Whitehall as trivial “fluff”.
“All of that is shown up for the disproportionate fluff of politics that it was rather than something of fundamental seriousness about the safety of the world and the established global order.”
He’s wrong, too.
‘Partygate’ showed us that our government holds us in contempt.
Its ministers – including Rees-Mogg – are happy to behave in whatever foul and depraved ways they see fit and expect to get away with it, while the rest of us have to labour under the extreme demands they make of us – and use the police to enforce.
I was wrong. His words aren’t unacceptable; they are unforgivable.
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Public opinion is swinging wildly against Boris Johnson over the allegations that a huge Christmas party was held in 10 Downing Street last December. But how far does it have to swing before his Tory colleagues stab him in the back and find another leader?
We all know what’s happened by now: a video clip has been made public, showing Downing Street staff laughing about a party at Downing Street on December 18, 2020, and discussing how to lie about it if questions are ever asked.
The revelation that government officials, and possibly ministers, were whooping it up at a time when the rest of London was in Tier 3 lockdown and people were dying alone because of social distancing restrictions they had helped impose, has provoked a wide variety of responses.
Some have been humorous (be warned that the first clip includes part of the Wham! track Last Christmas, so if you’re playing Whamageddon you may not wish to hear it. The second clip is also based on that track but isn’t the track itself so you should be okay):
Let me get this right. The Cabinet Secretary is going to investigate a party which didn't happen, but which he attended. He will then take his findings to Spaffer, who will decide whether to take the report to the Met – who have already decided not to investigate!!!😂😂
— Sarah Pegg🏴#RepublicofScotland (@sarahpegg9) December 8, 2021
If you’ve got the power to check security tapes and visitor logs
Funny how the media can find Matt Hancock having a fumble in a locked room, yet 50 people can have a party in actual 10 Downing St and not a single lobby journalist hears about it for a year.
John Bercow – "I'm sorry to say it, but I've known 12 Prime Minister's in my lifetime & by a country mile Boris Johnson is the worst… this guy stinks in the nostrils of decent people" #GMBpic.twitter.com/V2PIUAVF6M
This is a reversal of the usual situation, which puts the Tories on around 40 per cent and Labour in the low 30s. Keir Starmer has certainly done nothing to make this happen so the responsibility lies entirely with Johnson.
And with the media full of people in North Shropshire telling us how they’re planning to turn their back on the Conservative by-election candidate because of Johnson, it may be only a matter of days before Tory MPs decide to ditch him.
It’s what they always do, when a leader becomes a liability. And there’s ample evidence that that is what he has become.
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Not just a filthy liar but a craven coward. What a wretched piece of verminous filth the UK has as a prime minister.
I refer of course to Boris Johnson, who is using the birth of his second child with wife Carrie (something like his eighth in total, although even he doesn’t seem sure) as an excuse to run away from all the scandals he has caused.
With people across the nation – including his own backbench MPs – screaming for his resignation over the lies he spat at us about the various Downing Street Christmas parties last year…
With Tory MPs across the board planning to rebel against the so-called “Plan B” Covid-19 restrictions he rushed to announce yesterday in a desperate and failed attempt to distract us from his wrongdoing…
With a by-election coming up next week that is being touted as a litmus test for public feeling on his unsuitability for office, even though it is in a Conservative “safe seat”…
He’s running away to “make time with his family”.
That is not the behaviour of a prime minister.
When a person enters public life, they understand that their personal issues – no matter what they are – must be considered of lesser importance.
That’s why all those Tory MPs who resigned because of legover scandals back in the 1980s always said they were looking forward to spending more time with their family (and why some of us laughed scornfully and asked “which one?”).
Johnson can be prime minister or he can be Mr Family Man. He can’t be both – especially when, as his spokesperson admitted “this is a particularly challenging time for the country”.
If he wants to run away from all the trouble he has caused, then he should resign as prime minister and as a member of Parliament. The UK will be far better-off without him blighting us.
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Breaking: the look on Johnson’s face shows how desperately he’s hoping that this will distract us all from the fact that he’s a serial liar who inflicts stupid rules on us and ignores them himself. No such luck, bullsh*t boy!
Nobody in England is even slightly interested in what Boris Johnson had to say in his Covid-19 press conference at 6pm today.
Commons Speaker Lyndsay Hoyle would have been, if the prime minister – for now – had held the event without bringing the proposals to Parliament – but the information was provided by Health Secretary Sajid Javid, as the broadcast went ahead.
As for everybody else – well, people are being urged to work from home wherever possible, starting on Monday, so that’ll be vetoed by bosses.
Face masks will be required in public settings like theatres and cinemas – except when eating, drinking, exercising or singing – from Friday. People will just walk away and do their own thing. I understand a lot of farmyard barns may be empty this winter, due to Brexit, so perhaps people will party it up there instead of anywhere someone will be checking up on them.
And Covid passports will be required for entry into large entertainment venues. Again, people are more likely to stay away and do their own thing.
Alternatively, the operators may simply refuse to enforce Johnson’s new rules.
Why?
Because nobody has any reason to pay attention to Boris Johnson any more.
As the prime minister’s former colleague, former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, says: trust in Johnson has eroded beyond redemption:
"It's so difficult to extrapolate where truth lies, because trust is completely broken down"
Ex-attorney general Dominic Grieve asks if Tory MPs will keep putting up with a PM "not fit for office"
This means the biggest danger to public health in the UK at the moment is Boris Johnson, not Covid-19 or any of its variants including Omicron.
The measures he has announced today may be sensible, for all anybody knows, but that doesn’t matter.
People will ignore them because he is the one who says they’re necessary, and he’s a liar who just says whatever comes into his head to get him out of trouble like the Downing Street party scandal.
Why else do you think he’s announcing them now?
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Owen Paterson: he quit his job as an MP, but will he – and his corrupt Tory party – be REWARDED for it?
If you’ve been locked away for the past couple of days, here’s the situation:
In case you’ve missed all the twists and turns that led up to a government u-turn and to Owen Paterson’s resignation as an MP, here’s 6 minutes on a busy 24 hours. Produced by Harriet Ridley and Jack Kilbride. https://t.co/RjbD8irHGNpic.twitter.com/m4ToqxvaOi
The primary result of Paterson’s fall is that there will be a by-election in North Shropshire.
Let’s hope there’s a decent anti-corruption socialist candidate to get behind in the upcoming Shropshire North Parliamentary by-election. I don’t think for one minute that it will be provided by Starmer’s Labour Party.
No indeed. It will be an opportunity for Keir Starmer to parachute his ex-Tory trophy John Bercow in (perhaps), but Bercow would not be an acceptable choice for the Labour Left, so such a decision may lead to a further split in that party.
Labour has refused to countenance the possibility of a single Opposition candidate, chosen from among all the non-Tory parties. Presumably Starmer sees no advantage for him, especially if such a candidate – from another party – wins and then reneges on any agreements.
So the Conservatives are likely to retain North Shropshire, even if they put up a shaved monkey for the seat (and they probably will) – because the other parties are squabbling among themselves.
Meanwhile, the Tories who are actually occupying Parliamentary seats have been disgracing themselves all over the place. Here’s Nadhim Zahawi, admitting that he didn’t bother to read the report on Owen Paterson’s behaviour before voting to support him last Wednesday (November 3).
Note his scrabbling attempt to backtrack with a claim that he didn’t take in every detail. It’s nonsense, of course; he didn’t read the report. He was told to support Paterson so he did, without thinking. That’s Fascist Britain for you.
" I haven't read the report" is this government's equivalent of the dog ate my homework…and they think it's ok to use it as an excuse. Deplorable. #Corruptionhttps://t.co/iPiVT9QKsx
Why didn’t any of the interviewers ask Nadhim Zahawi when he realised what they did was wrong. Was it Wednesday evening just after he had voted in favour of corruption or Thursday morning when he read the newspapers.
— Pete @GOVE2.UK #FBPE#3.5% #FBPPR#GTTO#JOHNSONOUT (@HullfcPete) November 5, 2021
The fact is that Zahawi would not have been able to answer, as he would know that either position would be unsafe for him.
Still, his choice seems to have been less difficult than that faced by other Tory MPs who (presumably) were leaning against supporting Paterson.
We are told that they were threatened with sanctions if they didn’t vote the way Boris Johnson wanted:
Corruption. MPs are elected to serve their constituents not individual Tory MPs. Don’t we have bribery laws in this country? We need a total transformation of our political system & parties, and that includes @UKLabour. https://t.co/ycHZ9rtQNL
So much for justice, honesty and decency in Boris Johnson’s Conservative government. Even if you’re on his side, you have to do what you’re told, without thinking, or face sanctions. There’s another fairly recent national government that did much the same but I can’t quite recall where it was…
To prove the point, Tory Angela Richardson was fire from her job as a secretary to Michael Gove, because she stuck to her principles and refused to support Paterson. The following morning, when it had become clear that the Tories would not be able to save him and their plan to corrupt the standards system had failed, she was reinstated:
Government U Turning and trying to deny it. They can’t hide their actions. My god how much longer will we have to put up with these charlatans. #Sleazepic.twitter.com/MeHLEFZ9Xe
One would hope that her stand would put her in a much better position than her blindly line-toeing colleagues (including This Writer’s MP, Fay Jones. I’d like to know her reasons for supporting corruption!) in a general election. But in tribal England, that seems unlikely. Sad.
And what of Owen Paterson himself?
It'll be 'Sir' Owen Paterson in a month or two and then after Christmas Have I Got News for You. Followed by regular slots on paper reviews and Politics Live. And then various idiots tweeting: "he seems like a really nice bloke, he should be the PM.. "
Perhaps we should all lobby the production team of HIGNFY, never to invite a corrupt, disgraced former MP to guest on the show?
As for the knighthood, why stop there?
Boris Johnson’s spokesman repeatedly refuses to deny on the record that the prime minister offered Owen Paterson a peerage yesterday, or plans to give him one in the future.
So it seems he’ll be heading for the House of Lords – which is already bursting at the seams with Tories after previous efforts by David Cameron and Boris Johnson to fill the place with people who don’t deserve to be there:
Why wouldn't they give Owen a peerage? Afterall, they gave one to John Woodcock, who was suspended from Labour after claims he sexually harrassed an employee, refused to co-operate with investigation, left Labour so the investigation was stopped, & then told people to vote Tory! https://t.co/MVz7ODWQYs
Crime really does pay in Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, doesn’t it?*
It seems the Tories will keep the Parliamentary seat that their corrupt MP just vacated, even though their conduct throughout the affair shows that none of them deserve to be in Parliament at all.
And Paterson himself is set up for a nice little peerage and more than £300 per day for turning up at the House of Lords.
*All right, what he did is not defined as a crime, otherwise he would be facing criminal charges. But it is certainly not acceptable behaviour, as this entire affair demonstrates.
**What an illiterate! I meant cui bono. After realising my mistake I decided to leave it in, mostly because I reckon more people might read the article, simply to correct my spelling! What a world we live in.
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Patel: see the posters behind her? The only UK aid she likes is helping foreigners off British soil. Odd, considering she is herself the daughter of immigrants.
Priti Patel’s Home Office has been disproportionately targeting Jamaicans for deportation.
And it seems clear officials know their actions are racist. Otherwise why would they have spent a year trying to withhold the information after The Guardian made a simple Freedom of Information request?
Jamaicans are 10 per cent more likely to be deported than people from other countries, even though the same rule applies to all of them:
Under the UK Borders Act 2007, foreign nationals who are jailed for a single offence for at least 12 months will normally be considered for deportation on their release, with exceptions under human rights rules – for example, having children in the UK, and for people who have been trafficked.
A comparison of Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Home Office data between 2015 and 2020 showed that once people from European Economic Area countries were excluded, as they are not covered by the act, an average of 65% of overseas nationals jailed for at least 12 months were deported.
For Jamaican nationals, this proportion rose to 75%, however, despite the much greater likelihood of their having significant ties to the UK. For other former British colonies in the Caribbean, such as Trinidad and Tobago, and St Lucia, the rates were higher still.
The statistics also showed that 90% of Nigerian nationals were deported, and 76% of those from Ghana. For Albanians, the rate was 90%, and for Vietnamese nationals 84%.
Concern has also been registered about deportations to Albania and Vietnam, which have known issues with human trafficking connected to organised crime.
The Guardian reported that it had only been able to publish its findings after “a year-long freedom of information battle”:
While the MoJ supplied the information within weeks, the Home Office refused, saying that to do so would be “likely to prejudice diplomatic relations between the UK and a foreign government”, and could hamper the operation of immigration controls.
The Guardian appealed to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which ruled against the Home Office, calling the department’s arguments “vague” and “generic”, and noting that no attempt had been made to substantiate them. “The commissioner will not accept at face value assertions made by a public authority that, in her view, require a proper and fuller explanation,” the ruling stated.
Even now, the Home Office has tried to justify its disproportionate targeting of people from Jamaica: “We do not target specific countries.”
The record states otherwise – because the Windrush scandal showed how the Home Office deliberately destroyed records proving that people of Jamaican origin had the right to remain in the UK, and then pursued an aggressive policy of deportation against them.
It seems Priti Patel has kept up the deportations, despite protestations of fairness.
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Ventilator: people with long-term illnesses, disabilities and learning disabilities are still being denied resuscitation by the NHS – and one nurse, at least, has denied the existence of this scandal.
I can’t let this pass.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on June 16, Peterborough’s Tory MP Paul Bristow asked an important question about “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) orders that have been made on NHS patients during the Covid-19 crisis.
Having reported on this scandal many times on This Site, I tweeted in response:
Ah! A question about Do Not Resuscitate orders – from a Tory. Does Johnson agree that these orders should have no place in NHS care?
He doesn't. The reason DNR orders are allowed is POLITICAL. There has been huge controversy about this, but it still happens. #PMQs#PoliticsLive
I was surprised and saddened when this provoked the following response from a Twitter user who identifies as a nurse (I won’t reproduce the tweet here because I do not wish to identify that person):
“Are you a healthcare professional?
“No.
“Then do not spread false theories about something you obviously know nothing about.”
I attempted to put my critic straight – as politely as possible, in the circumstances:
“I am a news reporter of nearly 30 years experience and have been covering this story from the start. I DO know the facts here. And I see that, since you provide no information to support your insult, you probably don’t. Go well.”
Sadly, this person would not take the (rather overt) hint and came back at me:
You have confirmed it.
It is a story.
I do not have the time, inclination or room on twitter to “provide you with information” only to say that I have 30 years experience as a nurse and have a postgraduate qualification in Professional Practice
Then this is a person who ought to have known better. The claim, “It is a story,” was an attempt to downplay the DNR deaths as fiction, and I wasn’t having that. Also the refusal to support a claim with factual information is a classic tactic by trolls who don’t have any facts to offer.
So I responded (again):
“And how does that better qualify you to comment on this? I’ve done the research so I know my facts. It isn’t fiction.”
And again this person came back at me:
Ok then would you attempt CPR on a five stone frail old woman? Am not going to carry on with this because I’m afraid you just don’t know what you’re on about
This is misleading, and a lie. Allow me to explain.
Mr Bristow’s question is available to read in Hansard, here. He said: “Last year, doctors and care settings issued an unprecedented number of “do not resuscitate” orders to patients with learning disabilities and mental illness. Many were unlawful and caused avoidable deaths.
“Despite urgent Care Quality Commission and NHS guidance, shockingly, this practice has continued. Last week, The Telegraph reported that Sonia Deleon died unresuscitated. Her family said she was given a DNR without them knowing, and with her learning disabilities and schizophrenia stated as reasons.
“Does the Prime Minister share my alarm about these cases, which should have no place in our care, and does he agree that they should be independently investigated?”
I won’t bother to repeat Boris Johnson’s response as he made no undertaking to prevent further abuses of DNR orders.
It was clear that the issue here was not the safety of attempting cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on a person who may suffer as much harm in that attempt as by the condition that had caused them to need reviving.
It was a political choice to deny health care to people dying with Covid-19, because they have learning (or other) disabilities. It seems to have been considered an opportunity to clear many thousands of so-called “useless eaters” from the UK’s benefit books.
Sonia Deleon’s story is a classic example; you can read about it here.
In brief, almost a year after it was revealed that a policy was in place to deny NHS Covid-19 care to people with long-term illnesses and disabilities – and NHS bosses then claimed to have warned hospitals, GPs and NHS managers not to make such orders on these people, Sonia Deleon was deliberately allowed to die because a DNR order on her had been made.
Hospital authorities claimed that it the order had been agreed with Ms Deleon’s family but they deny this strenuously.
Ms Deleon had learning disabilities and the circumstances of her death are not only a scandal in themselves but are a continuation of a national disgrace.
And I was criticised for highlighting this atrocity – by someone claiming to be a nurse.
I won’t take this matter further by seeking to identify the NHS trust for which this person works and requesting that they be reminded of the facts and properly disciplined for trying to mislead the public. I may change my mind if any further attempts at deception result from this article.
But I will take the opportunity to request that anybody who has relatives living with a long-term illness or disability, or a learning disability, should contact the NHS and ensure that orders equivalent to death sentences have not been applied to their loved ones without their knowledge.
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