Tinpot dictator: Boris Johnson wants to strip the Electoral Commission of its power to prosecute law-breaking – not because it is a bad idea, because it isn’t. He’s doing it because the commission may use this power to prosecute HIM over the funding of his Downing Street flat refurbishment.
Of course Boris Johnson is taking away the Electoral Commission’s power to prosecute people because it criticised him. It’s what he does.
Look at his current attack on the courts’ powers of judicial review. That happened entirely because judicial reviews ruled that he had broken the law by proroguing Parliament, and with his Brexit policy.
He is a classic, small-minded, tinpot, banana-republic dictator. His only function is to satisfy his own personal desires and to attack anybody who frustrates those desires.
And the UK’s voters put him in charge of one of the world’s richest and most powerful countries. Perhaps a few million people need to take their vote a little more seriously next time?
Boris Johnson is to strip the Electoral Commission of the power to prosecute law-breaking, just weeks after it launched an investigation into his controversial flat refurbishment.
Ministers have announced that a new Elections Bill will remove its ability to prosecute criminal offences under electoral law – arguing it “wastes public money”.
The watchdog launched an immediate protest, warning the move would “place a fetter on the Commission which would limit its activity”.
The shake-up was condemned as a “thinly-veiled government power grab” by the Electoral Reform Society.
Good advice: Boris Johnson can say what he likes about his alleged breaches of the ministerial code, but nobody in their right mind would take only his word for it.
Labour will be like a dog with a bone over Tory corruption.
You know why?
The party can’t attack the Tory government over its incompetent hnadling of Covid-19 because Keir Starmer supported every duff decision Boris Johnson made (until the evidence revealed those choices to have been homicidal).
And Starmer can’t criticise the Tories over Brexit because his choice of policy contributed to Labour’s spectacular loss of the 2019 general election. He would just be inviting ridicule.
But Tory corruption is a different matter.
And the controversy over the redecoration of the Downing Street Flat occupied by Boris (and Mrs) Johnson, dubbed “Wallpapergate” due to the enormous cost of the wallpaper they chose – more than £800 per roll – was only ever likely to get worse after the prime minister was cleared of wrongdoing by a man who is his employee.
And Labour has found a way to make this an actual Double Whammy.
Not only has Labour reported Johnson to the independent Parliamentary standards commissioner, but it has pointed out that he was warned to face stronger sanctions after a previous transgression.
He had failed to declare shares in a property by the deadline required for it to appear in the relevant register of MPs’ interests.
At the time, standards commissioner Kathryn Stone had reprimanded Johnson. She also warned that any further breaches may warrant “more serious sanction”.
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, reminded Ms Stone of this in her letter requesting an independent investigation into Johnson’s failure to register a donation by Tory donor Lord Brownlow to pay for the flat redecoration.
She wrote: “Far from learning the lessons of his previous transgressions, the prime minister has continued with his attitude of treating basic standards of integrity, openness and transparency with contempt, and behaving as though there is one rule for him and another for everyone else.”
And she said the fact that Mr Johnson told Lord Geidt he became aware of the donations for the works on the flat in February this year but did not settle the invoices personally until March 8 suggests he is in breach of parliamentary rules on declaring donations that all MPs must follow.
Ms Stone is already investigating whether Mr Johnson properly declared a £15,000 holiday on the Caribbean island of Mustique with his now-wife Carrie.
Johnson is also facing two other inquiries into the flat refurbishment.
The Electoral Commission is investigating whether the Conservative Party broke the rules on declaring donations over the Downing Street flat and has the power to issue a fine of up to £20,000.
And Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, the UK’s top civil servant, is also examining whether donations were properly declared.
And it will only get worse for Johnson because he won’t stop breaking the rules. It seems he genuinely thinks he’s above the law.
Still, it’s great for political commentators like This Writer. It guarantees me stories for years to come.
As for you… if you like that sort of thing, I recommend you buy popcorn – in a regular supply.
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We all know the Tories think we’re stupid; accept this nonsense at face value and they’ll know it’s true.
A Tory peer, Lord Geidt, has apparently carried out an internal party review of the way refurbishment of the 11 Downing Street flat (occupied by Boris Johnson) was funded and found that Johnson – who is his boss, let’s not forget – was innocent of any wrongdoing.
And nobody should believe a word of it.
Geidt said the Cabinet Office paid the costs and charged them to the Conservative Party, on the understanding that a trust was being set up to provide the funds.
This trust was never set up and the bulk of the cash came from Lord Brownlow, a Tory donor and former vice-chairman of Johnson’s Conservative Party from 2017 to July 2020 – as had been claimed in press reports.
With regards to the flat, [Geidt] said: “It is clear from the record that while a serious and genuine endeavour, the trust was not subjected to a scheme of rigorous project management by officials.
“Given the level of the prime minister’s expectations for the trust to deliver on the objects he had set, this was a significant failing.
“Instead, the prime minister – unwisely, in my view – allowed the refurbishment of the apartment at No 11 Downing Street to proceed without more rigorous regard for how this would be funded.”
In other words, Johnson claimed ignorance of the situation – but ignorance is no excuse.
Besides, he told us he had paid for the works himself, and that is plainly a lie.
He gets £30,000 a year as an allowance for such works – more than most of us earn in full-time work – and it still wasn’t enough. Reports suggest that the changes to the Downing Street flat cost around £200,000 in total.
Still, the Electoral Commission has launched its own investigation.
The commission said it was “satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to suspect than an offence or offences may have occurred”.
At the end of the day, it wouldn’t have matter what Geidt found, as power to decide whether a breach of the ministerial code has occurred rests with the prime minister – Johnson himself.
Knowing how corrupt he is, we know that he was never going to admit an offence that may require him to resign from his job.
We are left with several conclusions:
That Johnson is guilty as sin, that the government is utterly corrupt because he is leading it, and that Geidt and Brownlow have implicated themselves in that corruption by whitewashing their boss.
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If anybody was still in doubt that Priti Patel is an insensitive bully, then those doubts should be dispelled now.
She has just tried to detain – in order to deport – two Muslim immigrants who had settled in Scotland, during a Muslim Festival: Eid al Fitr.
Some on the social media consider it an attempt to bully the Scottish people after they returned another SNP government to the Scottish Parliament and leader Nicola Sturgeon immediately announced that there will be another referendum on Scottish independence from the UK:
Priti Patel sending forces into arrest immigrants in Nicola Sturgeon's constituency.
We're going to see a lot more of the UK government throwing its weight around trying to intimidate the Scottish government and First Minister in their own backyard.
If it was, then it has backfired badly because Patel’s immigration officials were forced to release the men after hundreds of residents of Pollokshields in Glasgow surrounded the Border Agency van in Kenmure Street and refused to let it leave.
Officers said they were freeing the men for the safety of everyone involved following a stand-off in Glasgow that lasted for nearly eight hours.
The pair, both Indians, [had been] detained on suspicion of immigration offences and were released on bail pending further investigation.
Video clips on the social media show how public feeling against Priti Patel’s heavy-handed bullying grew, from this…
"These are our neighbours. Let them go!" "These are our neighbours. Let them go!"
Priti Patel's hostile environment vs a community that stands up for friends and neighbours.
Sadly, we know Patel will not learn from her mistake. This message strikes as being all-too-accurate:
Waiting for Priti Patel to tweet “Disgraceful scenes in Glasgow. Thugs who prevent our brave police officers from removing undesirables from our streets will not be tolerated. Justice will follow.”
One other person will be regretting the incident, despite the fact that his heart was in the right place: Howard Beckett, candidate for leadership of the UK’s biggest trade union, Unite.
Mr Beckett tweeted in anger when the situation in Glasgow became clear, and his words were ill-chosen, for the reasons described in Owen Jones’s tweet:
This is a truly disgraceful tweet.
Yes, Priti Patel is a migrant and refugee bashing reactionary.
Anyone calling for a person of colour to be deported – regardless of their political record – doesn’t understand racism, at best, and needs a lot of education, to say the least. pic.twitter.com/DvCskBv6hg
But the Unite leadership candidate recognised this, acknowledged it, deleted his tweet and apologised:
My earlier tweet, deleted after half an hour, was never intended to be literal. My intention was to emphasise that racist policies should be rejected & have no place in society. The wording was wrong, offensive & I apologise unreservedly to Priti Patel. No one should be deported.
While his initial message was wrong in the language and concepts it used, it would have been equally wrong for him to back away from the issue after realising his mistake.
By the same token, it would also be wrong for anybody watching and commenting on what happened (Owen Jones take notice) to side with Patel against Beckett because of it:
Public service announcement: if you are now siding with Priti Patel against Howard Beckett, you are not the anti-racist you think you are.
— CrémantCommunarde#ActivistLawyer 🕊️⚖️ 🟠⬆️ (@0Calamity) May 13, 2021
If either of them is a racist, it could only be Priti Patel.
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Grenfell: this is what happens when inflammable cladding on tower blocks catches fire. Tenants in many more blocks have had this stuff inflicted on them, and the Tories want to force them to pay to get rid of it.
Isn’t it typical of the Tories that they’re happy to nod through possibly corrupt funding of Boris Johnson’s flat redecoration, but won’t protect people in blocks of flats from fires like that at Grenfell Tower?
They have just been knocked back – yet again – by the House of Lords, who have voted to shield residents of tower blocks from fire safety costs.
MPs had rejected the Lords amendment but, after their fourth defeat on this subject, it will now be reinserted into the bill.
The bill modifies a previous law to clarify that building owners must manage and reduce the risk of fire in their properties.
However, last week the House of Lords added an amendment which sought to ensure building owners do not pass on the costs to leaseholders and tenants until a support scheme is in place.
Housing minister Chris Pincher described the amendment as “ineffective and defective”, claiming that it would prevent any remediation costs from being passed to the leaseholder, even in instances where the cost was very minor – such as replacing a smoke alarm.
As a tenant in a rented property myself, I can inform Mr Pincher that my landlord pays for the cost of replacing the smoke alarm here as a matter of course.
It should not be used as an excuse to continue denying tower block tenants improvements that could save their lives.
And it could – because there are only hours left before the end of the current Parliamentary session, when the Bill will be dropped – unless the Tories decide to carry it over to the next session (which seems unlikely to This Writer).
All of this takes place in the shadow of the row over prime minister Boris Johnson’s own flat. Who pays to replace the smoke alarm there?
Tory MPs would have been happy to let £200,000 be paid, just to redecorate the rooms above 11 Downing Street, with no questions asked.
But members of the public have pointed out that this means they are happier for huge amounts to be paid on a single person’s flat – if that person happens to be one of them – than for cash to be spent on potentially life-saving work for many people.
Boris Johnson and #CarrieAntoinette should pay back every penny into a highly flammable cladding removal fund.
— Northern Independence Party 🟨🟥 (@FreeNorthNow) April 29, 2021
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Loadsamoney: the controversy over Boris Johnson’s flat has concentrated attention on the fact that Tories always find cash for their own benefit, while depriving members of the general public of the funding that a proper government should provide to them.
The Electoral Commission has announced that it is investigating the funding of redecoration work on Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat, saying it has “reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence or offences may have occurred”.
And our friends on the social media have gone into satire overdrive.
Today they have targeted the prime ministerial consort, Carrie Symonds, under the hashtag #CarrieAntoinette – on the grounds that she was the driving force behind the astonishingly-expensive changes.
Many have pointed out the hypocrisy of being funded with huge amounts of cash to pay for the redecoration of a Tory prime minister’s flat, while the Tory government still refuses to fund safety improvements to blocks of flats afflicted with inflammable cladding that makes them as likely to go up in flames as Grenfell Tower (due to decisions by Tories, most likely):
Boris Johnson and #CarrieAntoinette should pay back every penny into a highly flammable cladding removal fund.
— Northern Independence Party 🟨🟥 (@FreeNorthNow) April 29, 2021
The image is of a John Lewis van outside the gates of Downing Street.
The way events are moving, in a few days we’ll be seeing a removal van there.
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Temper, temper: Boris Johnson lost his rag in PMQs over repeated accusations of dishonesty and sleaze. Trouble is, his outburst contained at least one more false claim.
It had to happen at a Prime Minister’s Questions that This Writer didn’t see.
For once, Labour leader Keir Starmer had a good week – but then, with the kind of ammunition he has been provided over the last few days, he could hardly go wrong.
He spent most of his time on the financing of renovations to Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat. Questions over the origin of £60,000 of funding were asked months ago and not answered.
Now, Starmer asked directly whether the money – now pegged at £58,000 – was put up by Lord Brownlow – and Johnson failed to answer directly.
Rather than saying whether Brownlow had any involvement, he simply asserted – repeatedly – that he himself had “covered the cost”.
Starmer: Who paid for Downing Street flat refurbishment?
It would be entirely possible for Johnson to have “covered the cost” after receiving the money from a third party – and the fact that he did not flatly deny any involvement by Brownlow means his claim is meaningless.
But it may be Starmer’s first question that turns out to have been the bigger bear-trap. He asked whether it was true that Johnson had said he would rather have “bodies piled high” than implement another lockdown.
Johnson answered with a categorical “no”, coupled with a demand for Starmer to bring forward any evidence he had.
That may seem fairly straightforward.
But then Starmer said he would follow up on his question in the future.
And then the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford waded into the fray. Acknowledging that MPs aren’t allowed to directly accuse each other of dishonesty, he simply asked Johnson to say whether he is a liar or not.
And Johnson wouldn’t:
"People have lost their mothers and fathers, grandparents, and even their children. That's why so many find the Prime Minister's remarks utterly sickening."
As you can see from the clip, first he tried to worm out of answering by querying whether the question was in order – it was.
Then he (again) questioned the evidence of him having done as Blackford (and Starmer) had suggested.
And then he responded that he had not said those words (leading us all to conclude that they may be a close paraphrase of whatever he really said).
Under this kind of pressure, perhaps it should come as no surprise that, while responding to Starmer’s claim that he was “Major Sleaze”*, Johnson underwent what might be described as a “sulk-out” – a two-minute rant that failed to address what he had been asked…
"Who's at the heart of it? The Prime Minister – major sleaze, sitting there"
Keir Starmer accuses Boris Johnson's government of being mired in "sleaze, cronyism and scandal" #PMQspic.twitter.com/yBNkGMpE01
… including another false claim – that Starmer had voted against the Tory government’s Brexit deal.
And this is important, because…
As a result of all these accusations of dishonesty, Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has supported a plan to enforce the rules on misleading Parliament.
Amid a fresh row over the prime minister’s “lies” to MPs, Lindsay Hoyle supported a proposal for the cross-party Commons Procedure Committee to look into “how perceived inaccuracies could be corrected” as quickly as possible.
This could create serious difficulties for Johnson, whose serial lies were mentioned on This Site very recently.
You see, Starmer is right – any minister who knowingly misleads Parliament – including the Prime Minister – is expected to offer their resignation.
If the Procedure Committee puts this expectation on a more formal basis – and Starmer produced the evidence that Johnson did make a comment to the effect that he would rather see multiple deaths than impose a lockdown – then that would signal the end of his premiership.
And it wouldn’t be a day too soon.
*That should be Major Corruption, as reported a few days ago by This Site (and others) – but perhaps Starmer was restricted from saying as much by Parliamentary rules (again).
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Cheese Queen Liz Truss made a very interesting revelation to Andrew Marr about the renovation of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat.
But it wasn’t in what she said – it was in what she didn’t.
Referring to a claim by former prime ministerial advisor Dominic Cummings that Johnson encouraged Tory donors to help pay for the redecoration, she said he had funded the changes himself.
This is entirely in line with what Cummings stated. He said Johnson had planned “to have donors secretly pay for the renovation”. What better way for them to do so than by giving money to Johnson, which he could then pay towards the changes as if the cash had come from him?
Liz Truss repeatedly says the PM has “personally met the cost” for the No 10 flat refurb. But she *doesn’t* say whether he borrowed the money from a Tory donor first. #Marr
You see, when This Site reported on the funding of the redecoration job last month, the issue was why Johnson had not declared the money that had been spent on it. I wrote:
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has been accused of having misled Parliament by failing to provide details of funding for renovations to his official Downing Street flat.
The allegation is that private donations to the Conservative Party totalling £60,000 have been used as part of £200,000 worth of refurbishments to the flat.
If so, it should have been reported to the Electoral Commission, because the Ministerial Code demands that “a statement covering relevant Ministers’ interests will be published twice yearly”. The last such statement appeared last July, eight months ago.
I went on to say it seemed clear that Johnson had knowingly breached the Code in failing to declare the sources of funding for the flat.
That in itself, for MPs, is a resignation-level offence.
If donors had provided the money for this purpose, that would also have put Johnson in breach of the Ministerial Code because it isn’t allowed.
But how would Johnson have been able to afford it, otherwise?
It isn’t very long since we heard Johnson was complaining that his prime ministerial salary wasn’t enough to pay for all his outgoings:
On the personal front sources say Johnson is complaining about money. He is still supporting four out of his six children, has been through an expensive divorce and had his income drop by more than half as a result of fulfilling his lifetime ambition https://t.co/JGe3D91tOX
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Spotted on the internet: and who knows how many more nasty little secrets Dominic Cummings will be able to release, just when they will do Boris Johnson the most harm?
I’m waiting for Theresa May to turn up and say, “Now, boys, play nicely!” Not that she’d have any effect at all.
It seems that Boris Johnson thought details of his text conversation promising tax breaks to James Dyson had been leaked by Dominic Cummings.
Denying this, Cummings has nevertheless come out with a different claim – that Johnson had planned a “possibly illegal” way to get Tory donors to pay for renovations to the Downing Street flat that the prime minister uses.
Cummings wrote in his blog: “The PM stopped speaking to me about this matter in 2020 as I told him I thought his plans to have donors secretly pay for the renovation were unethical, foolish, possibly illegal and almost certainly broke the rules on proper disclosure of political donations if conducted in the way he intended. I refused to help him organise these payments.”
For good measure, Cummings has also denied leaking details of the UK’s second Covid-19 lockdown last summer – but he put an extra sting into this one.
He said Johnson had considered stopping an inquiry into that leak (that eventually exonerated Cummings) because (he reckoned) the evidence pointed to Henry Newman, a close personal friend of the prime minister’s fiancee, Carrie Symonds.
Cummings claimed Johnson was concerned that he would have to sack Newman, and this would cause friction with Symonds.
The official line from Downing Street is that Johnson has never interfered with any inquiries – but that’s not what Cummings claimed.
The claim was that Johnson had considered interfering – and this is entirely plausible after Johnson admitted promising to interfere with the tax system for Dyson, at Prime Minister’s Question on Wednesday. (Or did he? Will we have yet another clarification from “a Downing Street source” that he meant something completely – and implausibly – different?)
The result of the inquiry has never been published.
Cummings wrote: “I told him that this was ‘mad’ and totally unethical, that he had ordered the inquiry himself and authorised the Cabinet Secretary to use more invasive methods than are usually applied to leak inquiries because of the seriousness of the leak. I told him that he could not possibly cancel an inquiry about a leak that affected millions of people, just because it might implicate his girlfriend’s friends.”
He added: “It is sad to see the PM and his office fall so far below the standards of competence and integrity the country deserves.”
Asked to comment on the matter, Johnson himself came out with what may be his only accurate words on any of the corruption allegations that are currently pelting his government. He said:
“I think people aren’t so much interested in who is leaking what to whom as the substance of the issue at hand.”
Yes indeed.
We want to see accurate, verified evidence showing whether Johnson intervened with HMRC to change tax rules of Dyson.
We want to see evidence showing whether Johnson was implicated in the Greensill lobbying scandal.
We want evidence on how Johnson funded his flat renovations.
We want to know why the inquiry into the lockdown leak wasn’t published.
And we want to see evidence on the accuracy of all the other corruption claims that have come out of the woodwork – and that are likely to emerge in the future.
And no – “a Downing Street spokesperson denied the allegations” will not be acceptable.
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Not Michael Douglas: Boris Johnson’s attempt to emulate the infamous Gordon Gecko from the film Wall Street left him looking like a reptile.
He may have been trying to emulate Gordon Gecko but he ended up looking more like ‘Boris Dickfingergecko’* instead – a lizard you might find under a rock.
I make the comparison after Boris Johnson tried to tell a private meeting of Conservative MPs that the success of the UK’s vaccine programme was due to “capitalism” and “greed” – in emulation of the speech by the character played by Michael Douglas in the film Wall Street, “Greed is good”.
It seems that even Johnson himself doesn’t believe that mantra, as he immediately retracted his statement once it got into the public domain.
It seems Johnson had been referring to the profit motive that drives corporations to develop new products.
The implication is, of course, disgusting. He was saying that Pfizer and Astrazenica would not have bothered to develop their Covid-19 vaccines if they had not believed they could make a fat profit from doing so.
Such a comment denies that these firms could have rushed to develop a vaccine in order to prevent millions of deaths across the world, in favour of an unfounded claim that they would not have lifted a finger unless there was money in it.
The implication is potentially libellous and the companies should consider litigation against Johnson personally.
*With apologies to the Bibrons Dickfingergecko for associating it with Johnson just because of its name.
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