I changed my mind after reading the speech of his then Parliamentary Private Secretary Lisa Nici who was with him all day when the Sue Gray's report was published. The clever men like Daniel, Lord Finkelstein thought her speech was a joke but she made, I thought, good points.
She told the House that those advising Mr Johnson at the time “at no point advised him that there were parties, they advised him again and again that no rules were broken, and that guidance was followed at all times”.
“The sad thing is is that many people who gave that advice are still working in and around No 10 and Whitehall, but we don’t know who they are because they are not a high-profile politician."
"What we need to look at here is what I witnessed first-hand, and what happened was that people advising the then Prime Minister at no point advised him that there were parties. They advised him again and again—"
"Will my hon. Friend give way?"
"No, I will not give way at the moment. Those people advised the then Prime Minister again and again that no rules were broken and that guidance was followed at all times.
".....The sad thing is, many people who gave that advice are still working in and around No. 10 and Whitehall, but we do not know who they are because they are not a high-profile politician."
Yes it is a stitch up.
Was Simon Case one of the civil servants who told the PM that no rules were broken? He later denied this.
Barrister Charles Utley, son of TE Utley, is sure that the parties broke no law, though that is an entirely separate issue.
However Boris Johnson did not leave office because of what he told the House about the parties. He was forced out later, because he could not find enough ministers to carry on the Queen’s government, because they did not trust his word.
It is very good that he went but the the partygate inquiry was a political game.
Tim Stanley in his sketch of the debate yesterday in the Telegraph.
"Angela Eagle said anyone who questioned the integrity of the committee should be reported to the committee where, I’m sure, they’d received an objective hearing."
When is King Donuthin gonna ban gays?
ReplyDeleteMr Johnson had generally good ideas (thinking) - he was against the border down the Irish Sea (giving in to the European Union), he was against HS2 (a vastly expensive, and utterly insane, railway project), he was against Net Zero (he wrote articles mocking it as a journalist - till he was made to turn 180 degrees as Prime Minister) and he was, of course, utterly against the Covid lockdowns - and rightly so. The trouble was that, in every case, he gave way under pressure - the trouble has never been his intellectual ability, the trouble has been failure of nerve. Of the ability to say "no" (against all the pressure) and stick to NO.
ReplyDeleteYes
Delete"the partygate inquiry was a political game."
ReplyDeleteOf course, it was.
But the reason it was unleashed was that Boris offended the establishment by achieving a sort-of Brexit.
Had he been a remainer, we'd have heard nothing about any of this.
Remainers' revenge, that's all it was.
Letter to the Daily Telelgraph
DeleteSIR – Boris Johnson has been kippered by the minor charge.
His real crimes were failing to complete Brexit, implementing foolish lockdowns during the pandemic, pursuing unrealistic energy policies, failing to cut red tape and generally betraying the British public who voted for him.
Anthony Singlehurst
London SE11
All that is true but there is a long long list of things of which he was guilty including either persuading Ukraine not to negotiate or not persuading her to negotiate, doing nothing about Woke, a raft of ideas for curtailing freedom a propos of animals and homosexuality, being a running dog of Joe Biden, etc etc
Boris is laden with debt. It has forced him to make desperate decisions. It’s all going to come out.
ReplyDelete