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On June 23, I wrote about the House of Commons voting against giving Boris Johnson a former members’ pass to Parliament.
The hypocrisy of MPs voting to refuse him a routine privilege is breathtaking.
The Hansard debate is here. Excerpts follow, emphases mine, with news updates since then.
Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the House, led the debate. Her opening statement ended with this, a response to Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts:
The right hon. Lady brings me to my closing remarks on why what we do this afternoon matters, whichever way we decide to vote, or not to vote. The real-world consequences of a vote today may seem to come down to whether the former Member for Uxbridge has a pass to the estate. Our constituents may not appreciate why we are focused on contempt towards the House as opposed to contempts that they may feel have been made against them: the lockdown breaches themselves, which grate hard with those who sacrificed so much to keep us all safe; for others, the creation of a culture relaxed about the need to lift restrictions; for others, wider issues such as the debasement of our honours system. But we would be wrong to think that there is no meaningful consequence to our actions this afternoon.
The Committee of Privileges, in its work producing this report, did not just examine the conduct of a former colleague but sought to defend our rights and privileges in this place: the right not to be misled and the right not to be abused when carrying out our duties. As a consequence, it has also defended the rights of those who sent us here and those we serve. I thank the Committee and its staff for their service.
This matters because the integrity of our institutions matter. The respect and trust afforded to them matter. This has real-world consequences for the accountability of Members of the Parliament to each other and the members of the public they represent. Today, all Members should do what they think is right, and others should leave them alone to do so.
Well, in the event, only seven MPs, of whom six Conservatives, voted against the motion.
Not surprisingly, most MPs weighed in against Boris in this late afternoon debate that extended until the end of that day’s session, around 9:45 p.m.
Only Conservative MP Bob Seely raised a question about Tony Blair’s spurious reasons for going to war with Iraq. This intervention occurred when the Shadow Leader of the House, Thangam Debnonaire, spoke:
I want to make a brief point. I am voting in support of the motion and I did not vote in support of Owen Paterson, but I remind the hon. Member that we got rid of Boris Johnson a year ago because we lost faith in him, because he was probably not telling the truth. I am also an Iraq war veteran, and the reality is that when Tony Blair lied and lied and lied, you lot covered up for him.
Former Prime Minister Theresa May gave her speech at 5:02 p.m.:
I do not intend to dwell on the events covered in the report of the Committee of Privileges or its conclusions. It is a rigorous report and I accept its findings. I do wish to comment on the role of the Committee, the role of this House and the importance of today’s debate and vote for our political life, this Parliament and our democracy.
It is not easy to sit in judgment on friends and colleagues. One day we are judging their behaviour, the next day we may be standing next to them in the queue in the Members’ Tea Room. I know that it is not easy because, as Prime Minister, I had to take decisions based on judgments about the behaviour of friends and colleagues—decisions that affected their lives and, potentially, their careers. But friendship and working together should not get in the way of doing what is right.
I commend members of the Privileges Committee for their painstaking work and for their dignity in the face of slurs on their integrity. The House should, as the Leader of the House said, thank all of them for their service and for being willing to undertake the role. Particular thanks should go to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for being willing to stand up to chair the Committee when the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) rightly recused himself. This Committee report matters, this debate matters and this vote matters. They matter because they strike at the heart of the bond of trust and respect between the public and Parliament that underpins the workings of this place and of our democracy.
Let us consider the pious Mrs May. One week after this debate, on Monday, June 26, The Telegraph tweeted that she, too, had attended a party during lockdown on the parliamentary estate. As we can see, Guido Fawkes got there first:
Guido posted that Theresa May attended an event on November 24, 2020, two weeks before the one in Deputy Speaker Dame Eleanor Laing’s office which Bernard Jenkin MP attended: the December 8 birthday party for his wife Anne, Baroness Jenkin. Anne is wearing the white coat and was also present, allegedly, at the November 24 event:
Guido has more photos and more on the story (emphases in red his):
Bernard Jenkin’s “cowardly” silence hasn’t deterred Guido from digging deeper into the Jenkin’s parties. Yes, you read that right, parties – plural. Guido can reveal that Anne Jenkin’s lockdown-breaking birthday bash in Eleanor Laing’s office wasn’t an isolated event. Just two weeks prior, when the country was in an even stricter lockdown, she hosted a “(socially distanced) party”…
At the time, lockdown regulations made clear “you must not meet socially indoors with family or friends unless they are part of your household… or support bubble”. There was no such thing as a “socially distanced party” permitted, and “everyone who can work effectively from home must do so”. There was no justification for an indoor social celebration – even if it was a ‘work event’.
The party concerned a support group for women MPs, Women2Win, which was celebrating its 15th anniversary:
Perhaps this is why Charlotte Carew Pole, director of Women2Win, has become unwilling to speak to Guido. Despite initially responding receptively, after the topic of conversation became apparent she seemed to suffer immediate amnesia. All she could say was that she didn’t run Women2Win’s social media and that she couldn’t remember any details. Although Charlotte insisted she would get back to Guido, she never has…
Guido did manage to get through to two other attendees of the celebration, held as a hybrid event in Policy Exchange’s Westminster offices. Theresa May was there in person, as Boris Johnson and David Cameron addressed the event via zoom. The hybrid event could arguably be a “work event”. It was certainly a live-streamed public event.
More problematic is that the event was followed by celebratory drinks described as a “birthday party” and Theresa May stuck around briefly for a few pictures – though apparently left swiftly and Guido has seen no pictorial evidence she had a lockdown-breaking drink. Whilst one of Guido’s source insists masks were worn at all times, the private photos differ from the publicity photos…
Baroness Nicholson pictured on the left (top photo) has no drink, whereas Anne Jenkin (on the right) has a drink in hand. In publicity photos everyone is masked with no drinks in hand. One attendee insisted it wasn’t a party, although they did describe it as “joyful” and “a celebration, definitely”.
The Telegraph article stated:
Theresa May is under pressure to clarify her involvement in a “socially distanced party” she attended during the second full lockdown.
The former prime minister was pictured taking part in an event held on Nov 24 2020 to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Women2Win, a Tory pressure group she co-founded with Baroness Jenkin …
The Guido Fawkes website reported that Mrs May participated in a hybrid discussion in person at the headquarters of the Policy Exchange think tank, before staying to pose for a number of photographs.
A social media post on the Women2Win Instagram account posted shortly before the event read: “When Anne Jenkin and Theresa May founded Women2Win 15 years ago, there were 17 Conservative women MPs.
“Today there are 87 and we think that deserves a (socially distanced) party.”
The Guido Fawkes report went on to claim the panel was “followed by celebratory drinks described as a ‘birthday party’”.
Mrs May was reported to have left prior to this, and is seen socially distancing from other participants in pictures from before and after the discussion.
There is no suggestion Mrs May broke any Covid rules. In its original article, Guido Fawkes wrote: “The hybrid event could arguably be a ‘work event’. It was certainly a live-streamed public event.”
A spokesman for the former prime minister declined to comment when approached by The Telegraph.
There is no evidence that Boris Johnson broke Covid rules, either, including at the surprise birthday ‘party’ his wife Carrie organised. His cake stayed in its Tupperware container and Boris was photographed socially distancing from Rishi Sunak and others there. It lasted only a few minutes.
Moving away from Mrs May, with regard to Baroness Jenkin’s birthday party on December 8, which Dame Eleanor Laing hosted in her conference room on the parliamentary estate, we learned that another Conservative MP, Virginia Crosbie, was in attendance. Pictured below are Baroness Jenkin, Virginia Crosbie and their hostess, Dame Eleanor Laing:
The aforementioned Telegraph article said:
It came as a ministerial aide to Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, apologised “unreservedly” after attending a drinks party also said to have involved Baroness Jenkin.
Yes, here is a photo of Hancock and Crosbie during their time at the Department of Health and Social Care:
The article continues:
Virginia Crosbie, the Conservative MP for Ynys Môn and Mr Hancock’s parliamentary private secretary during the pandemic, is alleged to have co-hosted the event with the Tory peer on Dec 8 2020, the date of their respective 54th and 65th birthdays.
A ban on socialising indoors was in place in London at the time of the reported gathering. It has come under additional scrutiny after her husband Sir Bernard Jenkin, who was allegedly present, sat on the privileges committee of MPs that recommended Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, be suspended from Parliament for 90 days.
Ms Crosbie said: “The invitation for this event was not sent out by me. I attended the event briefly, I did not drink and I did not celebrate my birthday. I went home shortly after to be with my family.
“I apologise unreservedly for a momentary error of judgment in attending the event.”
Sir Bernard has denied attending a drinks party and an ally has said no rules were broken.
Let’s look at the party Theresa May attended for Women2Win, at which Baroness Jenkin was present:
Now let’s look at the joint Baroness Jenkin-Virginia Crosbie birthday party on December 8:
Guido suggested via tweet that this might be a case for Inspector Columbo:
Guido’s post was, rightly, quite pointed:
In the WhatsApp invitation from Anne Jenkin, the party is described as “joint birthday drinks“. It was both Virginia Crosbie’s 54th and Anne Jenkin’s 65th birthdays on December 8, 2020.* Why let a little thing like lockdown get in the way of having a party?
Guido should say that on the list of MPs invited, there are three current cabinet minister’s names and the name of one former PM. Guido has managed to speak to only one of those names. She got her SpAd to deny her attendance after claiming she couldn’t remember. The others are refusing to comment.
The obvious thing for the Metropolitan Police to do is the same they did with the suspected attendees at the Downing Street parties. Send a formal letter inviting them to pay a Fixed Notice Penalty or risk more serious consequences in Court if they deny attending and the evidence shows otherwise. As Bernard Jenkin sanctimoniously reminded us on the Privileges Committee: no matter how high we are, none of us are above the law…
*We are aware that date per the text message was a Tuesday not a Wednesday. We have other meta-data evidence confirming the time and place was Tuesday evening December 8, 2020.
Six hours after Guido broke the story, Virginia Crosbie issued a written apology:
What are we to conclude from a written apology? Boris Johnson made several apologies in the House of Commons but to no avail. The kangaroo court went after him anyway.
Therefore, why should it be any different for another MP? Is the only difference that Boris was Prime Minister?
Boris believed that civil servants were telling him the truth — that he was not breaking the rules with these brief leaving dos and the equally brief surprise birthday party.
All of these MPs should be investigated.
Fortunately, on Thursday, June 28, Guido Fawkes appealed for help from insiders to expose them:
Guido’s accompanying post lays out the ways that people in the know can contact him and his team in safety.
He warns that he has heard of more lockdown violations by MPs, including Dame Eleanor Laing:
Since we broke the story about Anne Jenkin’s party in Parliament, we have been getting snippets of tips about other lockdown legislators’ lawbreaking parties in Westminster. We know of other parties held by Deputy Speaker Eleanor Laing in her offices on other days. We know of other MPs attending those parties. We also know of other parties held elsewhere. Guido believes that there is a cover-up being quietly organised by senior MPs who realise that on this issue “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
This is a call for information to add to our dossier. If you have evidence, invitations via WhatsApp or emails, better still photos. These parties were not held in total secrecy. Staff in Parliament will have known…
Sources are anonymous (unless you want credit). Who is on the fiddle? Who is lying? If you know “the line” is a lie, ask yourself why you got into politics; was it to cover up the truth or to tell it?
At least one member of the public thinks the Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle should investigate the do that Deputy Speaker Dame Eleanor Laing hosted:
https://twitter.com/paynter_peter/status/1673416068574900249
https://twitter.com/paynter_peter/status/1673502623528353793
Someone else noted that another gathering in Boris’s Partygate was very brief, a leaving do for his adviser Lee Cain. That brief event was different to the joint birthday party gathering:
Now let’s look at the conclusion of Theresa May’s speech about the Privileges Committee report:
As MPs, we are in some sense leaders in our communities, but with that leadership comes responsibility. We each and every one of us bear the responsibility to put the people that we serve first, to be honest with them and with one another, and to uphold the standards of this place. We all know that in the rough and tumble of parliamentary debate between people of opposing views there will be exaggeration, careful use of facts and, in some cases, misrepresentation, but when something is said that is wrong and misleads the House, we are all—not just Ministers—under an obligation not to repeat it and to correct it at the first opportunity. Above all, we are all responsible for our own actions. Beyond that, this House has a responsibility to ensure that standards are upheld by showing that we are willing to act against the interests of colleagues when the facts require it. In this case, I believe they do.
The decision of the House on the report is important: to show the public that there is not one rule for them and another for us; indeed, we have a greater responsibility than most to uphold the rules and set an example. The decision also matters to show that Parliament is capable of dealing with Members who transgress the rules of the House—if you like, to show the sovereignty of Parliament. Following an unsettling period in our political life, support for the report of the Privileges Committee will be a small but important step in restoring people’s trust in Members of this House and of Parliament.
I say to Members of my own party that it is doubly important for us to show that we are prepared to act when one of our own, however senior, is found wanting. I will vote in favour of the report of the Privileges Committee and I urge all Members of this House to do so—to uphold standards in public life, to show that we all recognise the responsibility we have to the people we serve and to help to restore faith in our parliamentary democracy.
Oh, the irony!
The next MP to speak was Labour’s Harriet Harman, who chaired the Privileges Committee investigation after the head of the Committee, another Labour MP, Chris Bryant, recused himself because he was so anti-Boris.
She accused Boris of deliberately misleading Parliament. How could she or any other MP know that unless they had eyes into his soul, as Elizabeth I once put it:
The evidence shows that, on a matter that could hardly have been of more importance, Mr Johnson deliberately misled the House, not just once but on numerous occasions. The evidence shows that he denied what was true, asserted what was not true, obfuscated and deceived. It is clear that he knew the rules and guidance: as Prime Minister, he was telling the country about them nearly every day. He knew that there were gatherings: he was there. He knew that the gatherings breached the rules and the guidance. Yet he told the House that the rules and the guidance were followed in No. 10 “at all times”.
Misleading the House is not a technicality but a matter of great importance. Our democracy is based on people electing us to scrutinise the Government, and, on behalf of the people we represent, we have to hold the Government to account. We cannot do that if Ministers are not truthful. Ministers must be truthful; if they are not, we cannot do our job. It is as simple and as fundamental as that. The House asked the Privileges Committee to inquire into the allegations that Mr Johnson, who was then Prime Minister, misled the House. That is the mechanism—the only mechanism—that the House has to protect itself in the face of a Minister misleading it. We undertook the inquiry, scrupulously sticking to the rules and processes laid down by this House under Standing Orders, and following the precedents of this House.
At that point, a Boris supporter, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was Leader of the House under his tenure, intervened:
I wonder whether the right hon. and learned Lady could say something of her own position in relation to the precedent set by a judicial Committee of the House of Lords, when a decision in which Lord Hoffmann was involved was set aside not because he was biased, but because of the perception of bias. In relation to her famous tweets, how does she think she met the Hoffmann test?
Harman defended her position:
I am happy to answer the right hon. Gentleman. I was appointed by this House in the expectation that I would chair the Committee, with no one speaking against it. After the tweets were brought to light and highlighted, as I am concerned about the perception of fairness on the Committee—I agree that perception matters—I made it my business to find out whether it would mean that the Government would not have confidence in me if I continued to chair the Committee. I actually said, “I will be more than happy to step aside, because perception matters and I do not want to do this if the Government do not have confidence in me. I need the whole House to have confidence in the work that it has mandated.” I was assured that I should continue the work that the House had mandated, and with the appointment that the House had put me into, and so I did just that.
She also mentioned Theresa May, whom the Opposition always defends, possibly because the former Prime Minister did her best to thwart Brexit, even though she made it appear that she was on-side. May is also soft on illegal immigration, which also pleases the Opposition parties:
Like the right hon. Member for Maidenhead, with whom I share a great deal—including, it turns out, a necklace—I thank every member of the Privileges Committee.
Yes, both MPs wear what are called ‘power necklaces’, huge things slung around their necks.
This is the one that Harman was wearing when she gave her speech:
Far from flattering, although The Telegraph‘s fashion writer seems to like them. This is from March 23, complete with photos:
As statement necklaces go, Harman’s is peerless. That oversized gold chains are ultra-fashionable this season is the least of it: of far more significance is the symbolism. You don’t need a GCSE in cultural studies to know that chains are a symbol of bondage, or that prisoners are shackled by them upon their arrest. “It radiates justice like the chains on Marley’s ghost in A Christmas Carol”, one Twitter user noted, while others compared it to the spider brooch worn by Lady Hale in 2019, when the supreme court ruled that Boris Johnson’s proroguing of Parliament during the Brexit crisis was unlawful. Well-played, Harman. Well-played.
It’s a pity that the paper didn’t mention May’s Wilma Flintstone neck pebbles.
Let’s look at Harriet Harman for a moment.
On May 26, 2022, while Boris was still PM, Labour appointed Harman in Chris Bryant’s place to investigate Partygate:
Guido told us that Harman was hardly above receiving fines herself:
… The vacancy was created when Chris Bryant stepped down because he didn’t want the investigation to look biased. Guido’s not sure whether any Tory in the country is going to accept Harman’s judgements as politically neutral…
If Labour goes ahead with the bizarre appointment, not only will the PM be judged by someone equally as biased as Bryant, having called for the PM to quit, it’ll be one of the few Labour MPs who’s racked up more Fixed Penalty Notices than Boris. As Guido pointed out when Harman accused the PM of breaking the laws he made, she was charged with three speeding offences during her time as a minister…
Guido posted the penalties from 2003, 2007 and 2010.
On May 30, 2023, Guido alum Christian Calgie alleged in The Express that Harman received reports on Boris from one of her relatives via marriage:
Alex Chisholm, Permanent Secretary for the Cabinet Office, is related to Privileges Committee chair Harriet Harman, the Express can reveal.
The familial tie is yet another link between the top Government department at the heart of the Partygate saga, sparking new questions about the neutrality and independence of the civil service.
Last week, top Mandarin Alex Chisholm passed Boris Johnson’s diaries over to both the Met Police and Thames Valley police amid allegations from Government lawyers that visits to Mr Johnson’s grace-and-favour mansion Chequers had broken Covid rules.
The Cabinet Office then handed the diaries over to Ms Harman’s Privileges Committee, which is investigating whether the former PM “recklessly” misled Parliament over lockdown parties.
A few weeks earlier, on May 12, Guido posted that Harman had been in touch with the then-senior civil servant Sue Gray, who, although she was supposed to be impartial, had allegedly agreed by then to become an adviser to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Impartiality?
Guido wrote:
Chief Partygate investigator-turned Labour Chief of Staff Sue Gray was in personal contact with Privileges Committee chair Harriet Harman while Gray was still a civil servant. According to Sky News, Harman made frequent, direct contact with Gray in the early stages of the Kangaroo Court’s Partygate probe, claiming privately “I just speak to Sue”. A Privileges Committee spokesperson insists this is all above board:
The chair with the full knowledge of the committee has had regular contact with a number of ministers and officials in the Cabinet Office to discuss matters such as the provision of documents to the committee, the identity of potential witnesses and the welfare of civil servants who may be affected by the inquiry.
They also stressed “the privileges committee is not relying on evidence gathered by Sue Gray“. Just like how she ‘wasn’t’ working on the Partygate probe after opening talks with Labour – until it was revealed she was, after all…
Starmer claimed Richard Sharp being appointed to the BBC was corrupt because he was helpful to then PM Boris on an unrelated matter when the role was being discussed. Gray being appointed to Starmer’s office however is not corrupt despite when the role was being discussed her being helpful to the man who wants to be PM in getting rid of his most potent campaigning opponent. Completely different.
Going back further, to August 2019, weeks after Boris became Prime Minister, Harman was having none of his new position and said she should be a caretaker PM in order to prevent a no-deal Brexit:
We knew then how anti-Boris she was.
One month later, she decided to put her name into the ring to become the second female Speaker of the House, following news that John Bercow, who began as a Conservative but then revealed his left-wing, anti-Brexit stances during his tenure, was standing down.
On September 13, Guido posted the full list of MPs wanting to succeed Bercow. As he was technically a Conservative, a Labour MP would have to succeed him. Of Harman, Guido wrote:
The (self-described) ‘Mother of the House’. Pitching herself as ‘continuity Bercow.’ That will go down well with Remainers but is unlikely to pick up much Tory support…
Guido had his finger on the pulse even at that early stage:
Harriet Harman has the most sophisticated operation and the most support from the Labour benches. Another serious contender at this stage is Deputy Speaker Lindsay Hoyle.
Well done. Hoyle was duly elected Speaker several weeks later.
In the meantime, Harman appeared to allege that the Commons never had a woman Speaker, which it surely did in the 1990s with Betty Boothroyd:
Harman was even an MP when Boothroyd was Speaker:
By November 4, former Labour Party member, Daily Mail journalist and Glenda Jackson’s son Dan Hodges tweeted that Harman’s campaign had been a disaster:
This was Harman’s pitch that day, which did not go down well:
Later that afternoon, Harman signalled to the then-Father of the House, then-Conservative MP Ken Clarke, that she was ending her candidature:
https://twitter.com/tompeck/status/1191413009442385924
In the end, Labour MPs carried Sir Lindsay Hoyle from their benches to the Speaker’s chair, a longstanding Commons tradition going back to when an elected Speaker did not want to take up the post.
Moving closer to the present, on December 7, 2021, The Sun‘s political editor Harry Cole, another Guido alum, tweeted that Harman would not be seeking re-election in the next general:
That is why she was so determined to get Boris. She wanted to leave a lasting legacy.
On March 17, 2023, Guido posted that Harman seemed to have come to a conclusion even before grilling Boris as part of her investigation. Fairness?
When Harman interviewed Boris on March 22, she told him that Sue Gray would not be a witness:
Boris reminded Harman of her biased tweets against him:
Guido has a full rundown of the Committee’s grilling of the then-MP, who was by then no longer PM, along with these videos.
Note Harman’s power necklace:
Harman even brought up a speeding metaphor:
16:50 – Whilst berating Johnson’s assurances, Harriet Harman asked “if I was going at 100mph and I saw the speedometer saying 100mph – it would be a bit odd, wouldn’t it, if I said somebody assured me that I wasn’t?”. A peculiar choice of metaphor – coming from Harriet. Would this be the same Harriet Harman caught speeding twice, banned from driving for seven days and fined £400?
The anti-Boris Conservative MP Charles Walker, who is another MP not standing for re-election, asked Boris if he thought he was up before a kangaroo court:
Boris gave him a polite response.
The Mail‘s Sarah Vine, Michael Gove’s ex-wife, thought that Boris had done admirably:
However, there is a long-forgotten past to Harriet Harman, one that my British readers remember and one that I mentioned in my 2011 post, ‘More on the Fabians, the Frankfurt School and society today’:
– Sanctimonious politicians whose minds are in the gutter. In my 2010 post on the Fabians and Labour politicians, I wrote that they presented themselves very well on television and radio interviews. Between 1997 and 2010, they articulately pointed out the shortcomings of British taxpayers who smoked, drank and ate too much. If we were not guilty of any of those, then we consumed too much electricity and gas. We drove too much. We didn’t get enough exercise. We didn’t read to our children enough. The list was endless. But did you know that one of these MPs, Harriet Harman, in an earlier incarnation as legal officer in 1978 for the organisation now called Liberty, wanted to lower the age of consent to 14 and to decriminalise incest? British readers should also note that at that same time Patricia Hewitt — later a Secretary for Health (!) under Tony Blair — was the general secretary for what was then the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL):
It also defended self-confessed paedophiles in the press and allowed them to attend its meetings …
In NCCL’s official response to the Government’s plans to reform sex laws, dubbed a “Lolita’s Charter”, it suggested reducing the age of consent and argued that “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage”. It claimed that children can suffer more from having to retell their experiences in court or the press.
What I did not know until 2014, was that Harman’s husband, Jack Dromey, who died in 2022, had chaired the NCCL in the 1970s. In 2014, he was still a serving MP and remained so until his rather sudden death.
On February 28, 2014, Guido reported on a story in The Sun, which appeared during the Leveson inquiry:
… Earlier this week Jack Dromey insisted:
During my time on the NCCL Executive, I was at the forefront of repeated public condemnations of PIE and their despicable views. I was then the first to argue that paedophiles could have no place in NCCL.
Today’s dark revelations in the Sun cast doubt over the credibility of that denial. While Dromey was sitting on the NCCL executive, general secretary Patricia Hewitt put her name to a press release arguing that it was acceptable to have sex with children as young as ten. Recipients of the press release were urged to contact Hewitt for further information.
Not only that, Dromey personally attended a meeting where the minutes of which show:
It was agreed that our evidence should propose that if a partner in a sexual relationship was under ten, s/he is presumed incapable of consent. If the partner is over ten and under 14, there is a rebuttable presumption that no consent was given, but the defendant should have to prove that the child consented and understood the nature of the act to which consent was given.
Which means that, far from taking a public stance condemning PIE as he told us earlier this week, Dromey was actually a member of the executive which called for the weakening of child sex laws. Hewitt has ‘fessed up and apologised for her actions. Is Dromey’s denial still really entirely believable?
A few days later, on March 1, 2014, The Independent featured an editorial by Joan Smith, ‘PIE controversy: Harriet Harman has got this one wrong’:
Between 1978 and 1982, Harman was legal officer of the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty). Her husband Jack Dromey, who is Labour’s shadow police minister, chaired the NCCL in the 1970s; Patricia Hewitt, who was later a cabinet minister, was its general secretary. The links between the NCCL and an organisation called the Paedophile Information Exchange have been known about for years, and are a stain on its reputation.
The problem for Harman, Dromey and Hewitt isn’t that they were advocates of sexual relationships between adults and children when they were at the NCCL. It isn’t even an NCCL press release in 1976 calling for the lowering of the age of consent to 14 – a terrible idea, but not one supported only by paedophiles at the time. It’s that the origin of the attack seems to have blinded them to the fact that they might actually have something to apologise for.
Hewitt broke her silence three days ago and admitted she “got it wrong” on PIE, but Harman’s tardiness in acknowledging the organisation’s poor judgement has kept the story on the front page. She was defensive on BBC2’s Newsnight programme, and didn’t express regret about the link until the following morning.
… there was a collective failure at the NCCL to kick out a very nasty bunch of people. Harman’s defence – that any legal organisation was allowed to affiliate to the NCCL – suggests a lack of proper governance. Yesterday a Court of Protection judge confirmed that he resigned in 1979 when he discovered that representatives of PIE were speaking at NCCL meetings at the London School of Economics.
Harman has many talents but she also has a patrician testiness which doesn’t respond well to being challenged. I can understand her revulsion at having to admit that the Mail has a point, but I’m also surprised the story hasn’t blown up before now. The brightest people make mistakes, even if it’s a matter of failing to notice something or act robustly enough.
That’s what Harman, who went to work at the NCCL after PIE affiliated to it, should have acknowledged. Instead, she has played into the hands of a newspaper which wants its readers to believe the appalling smear that the Labour Party is stuffed with covert supporters of child abuse.
Incredibly, in 2013, Guido received a tip about an adult social media item that Jack Dromey ‘favourited’. Dromey was the Shadow Minister of State for Policing at the time. We can only be grateful that the hand of providence prevented these two MPs from doing more harm to our nation.
Jack Dromey died in January 2022:
Guido posted Sir Keir Starmer’s statement and this:
The Shadow Minister for Immigration has passed away at the age of 73. According to Press Association: “Labour MP Jack Dromey died suddenly in his flat in Birmingham on Friday morning, a statement issued on behalf of the 73-year-old shadow minister’s family said”. Condolences to Harriet Harman and the entire family. Rest in Peace.
So this is the woman who conducted the investigation on Boris for short leaving dos and a surprise birthday party that lasted only minutes:
This is a story of hypocrisy beyond belief.
And it is not over yet. Harman and her Privileges Committee MPs issued a second report today, Thursday, June 29, 2023, which will be debated in Parliament next week.
It is about those MPs who objected to Boris being investigated for Partygate and being hounded out of office as an MP. Yes, he resigned, but only because they recommended an unheard-of 90-day suspension which would no doubt have triggered a petition in his constituency for a by-election:
Here is part of the detail:
Guido says the Committee did not want any opposition to their dark doings:
Here is a readers’ exchange from Guido’s post, which omits the link to the report, or maybe it will be added later:
Reader A (in response to Reader B): … it lacked all the components of a fair trial that allow the social and cultural legitimacy of banning direct criticism of a judge and jury during a trial.
You are giving a p3d0 apologist the same social gravitas as a Judge. Have a think about that.
Reader B: Fine. Then a motion should be put to the House arguing that she is not a fit and proper person, and allow her to argue her case in defence. Otherwise, you are conducting your own witch hunt. Have a think about that.
Reader A: Yes I thought about it, and like the MPs in question are simply pointing out the absurdity of the Committees own view of themselves as above and beyond the demos, to the extent they feel they are above negative comment. That is the actions of a despot not of an organ of a democratic institution.
If they were adults secure in their objectivity and the logic and fairness of their rulings they would just laugh it off. The fact they have acted like this shows that not only are they hugely nervous about the foundations upon which they have cast their ire but also their own viability to be there in the first place. Paging Bernard Jenkins.
You don’t seem to have thought about the long term issue for trust and fairness of having someone as morally and intellectually compromised as Harman as a chair.
I could not agree more.
Yet, this is where we are. Harman’s investigation was supported by the four Conservative MPs on it. Their loathing of Boris clouded their judgement.
Will the other Conservative MPs ever be investigated for their lockdown breaches? And what about Labour? When Sir Keir and a few other Labour MPs were in Durham campaigning during a time when socialising was forbidden in April 2021, no one did anything, certainly not Durham Constabulary. Nothing to see here, move along.
Sadly, it seems that the only goal in this egregious process was to bring Boris down — and Brexit down with him.
More to follow next week.
Dear, oh dear.
This week was not a good one for the Leave voters of Britain.
Monday and Thursday were the huge news days.
Let’s begin with Thursday.
Brexit anniversary: so little done
June 23, 2023 marks the seventh anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the UK’s largest plebiscite. Since then, the percentages of 52% to 48% have been turning up with odd regularity in subsequent polls in this country: strange portents.
Moving on to the reality as to why so little in the way of re-establishing the UK as an independent world power has occurred since Boris Johnson’s stonking December 2019 victory with an 80-seat majority, Leave voters have cottoned on to the fact that our MPs prefer the EU days when they did not have to legislate. One could live high off the hog collecting an ample salary for doing, well, nothing except for micro-managing Britons’ lives: think smoking bans and sugar taxes.
Peter Ramsay, a Leave voter, who is Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and the co-author of Taking Control: Sovereignty and Democracy After Brexit, wrote about this torpor on Thursday, June 22 for UnHerd. Excerpts follow, emphases mine:
The EU is a profoundly undemocratic form of government, which is why I had voted to leave it. Seeing the result for the first time, I knew that the very principle of British political equality would now be on the line, because no referendum against the EU had ever previously been acted upon. I also knew that very few of my professional caste (academics) would fall in with the majority view, and help to make sure that Brexit was implemented, or even that it was properly understood.
Ramsay says that Leave voters were unknowingly upset just as much with Parliament as they were with the EU;
The institution was not, as many Leave campaigners presented it, a foreign superstate that ruled over Britain; it was the way in which the British political, business and professional elites ruled over Britain. It was British ministers and civil servants who made law and policy in the EU, in collaboration with the politicians and bureaucrats of other member states.
… The whole system is backed up by treaties that allow capital and labour to shift around at will, out of the control of particular nations or of their pesky electorates. If a particular consequence of this was unpopular — such as, say, mass migration — then “Europe” could be blamed.
The essence of the EU is this evasion of political responsibility within its member states, which explains why Britain’s political system has become so sclerotic and dysfunctional.
Leave voters saw the problem once we were out of the EU:
… the underlying problem was still going to be with us, in or out of the EU. That problem is a political class which is much more comfortable hobnobbing with the cosmopolitan elites of other states in intergovernmental forums, and finding its policy cues there, than it is with the less glamorous process of actually representing their citizens. How was national sovereignty going to solve this problem?
Leave voters were asking legislators to step up to the plate and work for us:
With Brexit, the electorate bowled balls that none of the major players in the political class have been able to play. All have been stumped, humiliated.
All the political parties are at fault:
First, the Labour Party paid the price for its unwillingness to respect the political equality of its poorest voters …
The Tories were next. They had a clear mandate to level up and to invest in deprived regions. They did neither. Instead, the pandemic hit and they trailed along with a globally inspired, technocratic suspension of civil liberties, imposing draconian rules that they chose to ignore while being unable to keep their hypocrisy secret. After Johnson was caught out, they next indulged the extraordinary farce of the Liz Truss government before retreating back to a centrist in Rishi Sunak. Bereft of new ideas, they blew a massive parliamentary majority managing to alienate both their 2019 gains from Labour in the North and their wealthier, more Europhile core in the South.
The SNP has now followed the Tories, its ersatz “independence” project falling into disarray once the security blanket of the UK’s single market membership was taken away. With the UK out of the EU, Scottish independence is just too demanding a prospect for the culture warriors in Holyrood who have survived its corruption chaos.
Prof Ramsay explains why the scandals of the Conservatives and Scotland’s SNP are taking centre stage:
those parties’ fundamental inability to deliver on the policies at the core of their mandates in the wake of Brexit.
I disagree with his explanation of exhaustion. I repeat that it is torpor:
As long as we were in the EU, they could carry on pretending and so could we, but Brexit has exposed their exhaustion. It was the first step on the road forward to national sovereignty, a clearing of the ground for a new project: the project of nation-building.
… For politics to function, in other words, voters must believe that parliament, and the government that is answerable to it, really represents us, so that we recognise its laws as our laws. And it is this which generates the real power of government to get anything useful done. Yet today, those with eyes to see — and that’s now most of us — know that our major parties can no longer sustain this kind of authority.
… They will limp along offering nothing too innovative: more green austerity, more culture wars, more censorship. They will stay close to the Single Market, relying on the strictures of the Northern Ireland Protocol, rather than trying to conjure up something new.
It’s too much effort for them. Yet, we are paying them to represent us.
Ramsay presents the positive aspects of nation-(re)building, which will strike a chord with Leave voters who are still waiting for MPs to get moving:
It allows us to identify the real obstacles in our domestic constitution to the revival of our collective public life, emphasising equal citizenship over narcissistic identity and ethnic or religious divides. And, crucially, nation-building is inherently internationalist — as opposed to cosmopolitan and intergovernmental. After all, respecting one’s national sovereignty includes, and even depends on, that of others’. Far from being isolationist, then, Brexit remains a huge opportunity to break free from the decaying structures of globalism and Atlanticism, and instead to make friends not only with the restive peoples of Europe, but also with the rising powers of the Global South.
At present, however, the following paragraph depicts a grim reality:
On the seventh anniversary of that great ballot box rebellion, the mainstream of British politics presents a terminally sad spectacle: obsessing over the foolish misdemeanours of failed leaders, while the government-in-waiting confirms its willingness simply to go back to following EU rules, only now without any say in the making of them. What few seem able to imagine is what was still obscure to me when I momentarily regretted being on the winning side that morning in 2016. The majority of voters were demanding that they too were represented at the feast. In so doing, they laid the basis for a new project of national sovereignty.
Ramsay concludes that Brexit can be properly done if only MPs have the gumption to do so:
It is by its nature a most invigorating project — if we are willing to embrace it.
Poll: Leave voters frustrated
Another Thursday news item was an article, accompanied with graphs, by UK Polling Report: ‘A Majority of Voters Think Brexit Has Gone Badly … That Doesn’t Mean They Want to Rejoin’:
To coincide with the seven year anniversary of the Brexit vote, UK in a Changing Europe have published polling taking a deep dive into the extent of Brexit regret. The pressure group has produced 537 pages of tables, if any committed readers fancy trawling through the data, with a full report set to be published soon.
Note the percentage here:
Amongst the headline findings are that just 10% of voters think Brexit has, so far, gone well. A slim majority, ironically of 52%, think Brexit has gone badly. Even Leave voters are more likely to think Brexit has, on the whole, turned out badly – by a margin of 4%.
However, those polled are more optimistic about Brexit in the long term:
The numbers for Brexit do get slightly better when voters are asked whether Brexit will go well in the long-run. A respectable 30% think Brexit will work out well, compared to 43% who disagree. A strong majority of leave voters, 61%, still, think Brexit will come good.
UK Polling Report’s conclusion rather ties in with what Prof Ramsay was expressing in his UnHerd article:
Although voters think it has, so far, gone badly, they are much more likely to believe it has undelivered promise.
Ultimately:
… although there is appetite for a second referendum, it isn’t quite a majority of voters. Nor would a majority vote to rejoin.
Guido Fawkes picked up on the poll. I prefer his graphics to UK Polling Report’s:
Guido sagely points out (red emphases his):
The figures get even more stark when “don’t know” responses are removed. A stonking 72% think Brexit will go well to just 14% predicting it will go badly.
BBC’s Question Time Brexit ‘Special’
Thursday night’s Question Time was billed as a Brexit ‘Special’.
Hours before the show even aired, the BBC received complaints from Remain voters:
The complainers needn’t have panicked.
As usual, Fiona Bruce or the BBC or the production company Mentorn won’t have more than two conservatives on at any one time. Last night’s were John Redwood MP and former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib:
Someone commenting on Guido’s post wrote:
No thanks. 3 remainers and 2 Brexit supporters. The BBC stitch up is loading…
Indeed. Two hours later, Guido posted about the suspected BBC stitch-up:
Guido wrote about the change of Conservative panellists:
Guido hears the negotiations between the BBC and the government over this inevitable circus have been a disaster. According to Guido’s sources, Downing Street submitted Treasury PPS Anthony Mangnall to appear on the panel, with the show’s team agreeing to the booking this week and Mangnall clearing his diary to make way for an evening of shouting over Alastair Campbell. Only for the producers to later turn Mangnall down in favour of John Redwood, supposedly to take the show “in a different direction”…
The feeling amongst the Tories is the whole thing will be a “stitch-up” and “not serious“. Guido’s not sure if John Redwood is brave or foolish for being prepared to do it anyway. Apparently 30% of the audience will be composed of those who voted leave and have now regret it …
Guido’s readers were less than impressed. They took a decision on Question Time years ago. One wrote:
‘which will feature an audience exclusively of Leave voters’
of people who claim to be Leave voters – not quite the same thing, is it?
I could not agree more.
More bad news
Thursday had more bad news.
First, the Bank of England raised interest rates to 5%. It is the job of the Bank’s Governor, currently Andrew Bailey, to monitor interest rates and take action accordingly in a responsible way. Since the second half of 2022, rate rises have jumped, even though they are lower than 30+ years ago when interest rates were around 15%.
There is no way to force the Governor to resign, either, thanks to conditions that former Chancellor Gordon Brown put in under Tony Blair’s Labour government:
Guido tells us:
It’s the highest rise in fifteen years. The move comes after inflation remained stubbornly high in yesterday’s statistics – though the Bank does still expect “inflation to fall significantly” by year end. It’s the thirteenth rate rise in a row.
Hmm.
The aforementioned John Redwood tweeted that, since the pandemic, public spending has gone up by 45%. He rightly asks what Britons are getting in return for an extra £13,000 per household spend:
Then we have our Prime Minister whose biggest financial worry is how to pay for the electricity that heats his outdoor swimming pool. Oh, if only more of us could have married billionaires as he did:
But Rishi reassured us yesterday, telling us, as he would tell his young daughters, that everything ‘will be okay’:
Guido has the video and wrote:
In the wake of soaring interest rates, rising waiting lists, hundreds of boat crossings and sky-high inflation, Rishi Sunak rolled up his sleeves in Kent this afternoon and attempted to reassure everyone that “it is going to be okay“… somehow:
I’m here to tell you that I am totally 100% on it, and it is going to be okay, and we are going to get through this. And that is the most important thing that I wanted to let you know today. Now you should know, look I know this won’t make it any easier, but what we are grappling with here is something that many countries around the world are also grappling with at the same time…
Four out of his five pledges are looking increasingly unattainable – even growth is at 0.1%. At least he’s rolled up his sleeves…
Yes, well, I wish he would stop rolling up his sleeves when talking with ordinary Britons. You know he wouldn’t do that with the likes of Andrew Bailey, for example.
The last piece of bad news concerned Hamish Harding, the billionaire explorer who was still missing, thought to have been fighting for his life, in his Titanic expedition.
Harding was an alumnus of Cambridge University’s Pembroke College. It is vital to know that the name of the college is pronounced ‘Pem-brook’, not the way it is spelled. The other vital piece of information here is that May Week — a ten-day period when all the colleges’ annual balls are held — takes place in June.
The Telegraph‘s Tony Diver (!) and Catherine Lough posted ‘Hamish Harding’s Cambridge college hosts “unsettling” submarine-themed ball’. Timing is everything, but how were the organisers to have known what tragedy would befall the Titan crew and passengers?
Pembroke College students attended an “Into the Depths” ball, themed on under-sea exploration, and sang sea shanties on Wednesday night.
A second-year student, who asked not to be named, said they were “incredibly shocked” by the ball’s “unsettling” theme.
Dear, oh dear:
The college said that by the time the OceanGate Titanic expedition had become an international rescue mission, it was too late to change its theme.
Mr Harding, a billionaire British businessman, attended the college in the 1980s and is among five people believed to be trapped on a submersible craft in the Atlantic Ocean.
The expedition began on Sunday and planned to descend to 3,800 metres below sea level to visit the wreck of the Titanic.
But OceanGate staff in a control room lost contact with the submersible and have been unable to determine what has happened to its occupants.
An international rescue effort has so far been unable to locate the craft, with experts predicting the five passengers will use up all available oxygen by Thursday afternoon.
A statement on the Pembroke College Ball’s official website, which has since been deactivated, said the theme was “chosen many months ago,” adding: “If we could change it now, we would.”
The ball’s official Instagram page has also been set to “private”.
A source at the college confirmed the event had gone ahead as planned on Wednesday night, but Pembroke did not respond to a request for comment from The Telegraph.
Monday: Boris blown out of Parliament
However, Monday’s machinations of the Privileges Committee and MPs from all sides of the Commons saw the end of Boris Johnson, who had stood down the previous week in order to avoid a 90-day suspension over Partygate and a possible by-election.
On Friday, June 16, Boris had already filed his first weekly column for the Mail, something he was not allowed to do technically, as there is a waiting period between the time an MP stands down and the beginning of other paid employment. He wrote about the new injectable weight loss drug, which did not work for him after a few weeks:
The hormone is called semaglutide, and the proprietary name of the drug is Ozempic …
So for weeks I jabbed my stomach, and for weeks it worked. Effortlessly, I pushed aside the puddings and the second helpings. Wasn’t it amazing, I said to myself, how little food you really need.
I must have been losing four or five pounds a week — maybe more — when all at once it started to go wrong. I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe it was something to do with constantly flying around the world, and changing time zones, but I started to dread the injections, because they were making me feel ill.
One minute I would be fine, and the next minute I would be talking to Ralph on the big white phone; and I am afraid that I decided that I couldn’t go on.
For now I am back to exercise and willpower, but I look at my colleagues — leaner but not hungrier — and I hope that if science can do it for them, maybe one day it can help me, and everyone else.
Monday, June 19, was Boris’s birthday. He turned 59:
He was the 20th Prime Minister to have attended Eton and the third of three to have been born in June:
The Privileges Committee was rather cunning about delaying their report, as I wrote last week, and I later wondered if they were waiting for Boris’s birthday, at which point they could present the findings to Parliament via Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt in a debate, more about which below.
That post of mine from last week also discussed Sir Bernard Jenkin’s breaking of lockdown rules on the parliamentary estate. We did not find out about that until the Privileges Committee — of which he has been a vociferous anti-Boris member — had nearly completed their report.
Hmm.
On Friday, June 16, Lord Watson — Labour’s Tom Watson — wrote an article on his Substack newsletter about all of this, ‘Unravelling the Boris Johnson Decision: An Unsettling Perspective’:
The verdict on the investigation into Boris Johnson seems unequivocal, and, admittedly, the facts as presented appear to be an accurate portrayal of the events. Yet, there’s a gnawing disquiet that preoccupies my thoughts. In days past, I might have dismissed this as an adversary receiving his rightful comeuppance. But the gravity of a recent Prime Minister being ousted in such a manner warrants deeper scrutiny and a focus on due process.
The distraction comes from Boris Johnson’s eleventh-hour claim that Bernard Jenkin, a committee member who investigated him, had a conflict of interest due to his own actions. This last-minute revelation, presumably aimed at diverting media attention from Johnson’s behaviour, has raised serious concerns.
The allegation in question? That Jenkin knowingly attended an event – potentially violating Covid rules – and subsequently withheld this information from the Privileges committee and the House for an entire year. If this assertion is true, then despite its apparent spitefulness, it does present a plausible argument for Johnson’s perceived injustice.
Several MPs dismiss this concern, arguing that Jenkin was just one among seven members of the committee and that the decision was unanimous. However, I believe it’s more complex than a simple matter of votes. As arguably the most senior Conservative on the committee, Jenkin’s thoughts and opinions held substantial sway, shaping the report’s draft. If the accusations hold any weight, then, however reluctantly, one must acknowledge that Johnson may not have received fair treatment.
This viewpoint may elicit exasperation among MPs, but it remains my firmly held belief. This notion is corroborated by Johnson’s defence barrister, Lord Pannick, who in September 2022, cited Bernard Jenkin’s arguments in his legal opinion. Lord Pannick’s incisive logic and formidable intellect have been demonstrated time and again in the House of Lords …
Clearly, Jenkin’s views were significant in deciding the parameters of the inquiry …
In Rishi Sunak’s position, I would ascertain the facts before allowing Parliament to consign Boris Johnson to political oblivion come Monday. Their personal animosity should not cloud due process. Only Sunak can delay parliamentary proceedings to establish the facts and discuss potential alternatives if it transpires that Jenkin should have recused himself. And only Sunak can ensure an appeal process, should the facts dictate it. He should act today.
Rishi should have done something, but, not surprisingly, he didn’t. He’s not one who wants to get his hands dirty. He’s like the departmental or regional manager of a private enterprise who wants to make sure he is squeaky clean at all times. No controversies, please, including suspending an unfair process pending further investigation or voting on Boris’s future.
On Saturday, The Mail‘s front page story was about Bernard Jenkin: ‘Proof Boris Johnson’s accuser DID go to party in lockdown’:
Tory grandee Sir Bernard Jenkin, the most senior Conservative on the Commons Privileges Committee that so vehemently condemned the former Prime Minister last week, had denied breaking Covid rules at a Commons function …
When the bombshell allegations against Sir Bernard first emerged, Mr Johnson called for his resignation from the committee, accusing him of ‘flagrant and monstrous hypocrisy’. Hours later, the committee ruled that the former PM had deliberately misled the Commons over gatherings in Downing Street during the pandemic.
But an ally of Mr Johnson, who quit as an MP before the report was published, said The Mail on Sunday’s revelation ‘invalidates the findings’ of the 14-month investigation.
The gathering Sir Bernard attended was in Deputy Speaker Dame Eleanor Laing’s office on December 8, 2020, when indoor socialising was banned in England. In her invitation, Baroness Jenkin offered ‘birthday drinks’ for ‘a few of our favourite people next Wednesday 8th 6.30 to 7.30 in Eleanor Laing’s conference room in [the] Commons’.
The message concluded ‘x anne.’
Although the invitation said the drinks would be ‘v small and socially distanced’, this newspaper has been told that at least ten people were in the room throughout, preventing effective social distancing. At the time, all indoor social gatherings were against the regulations …
One of the people who witnessed the event said they had made a formal complaint to Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle yesterday – and were planning to offer their evidence to the police. Scotland Yard has so far only received a ‘third party’ complaint, rather than from someone claiming to have direct evidence of wrongdoing, and say they are ‘assessing’ it …
He [Jenkin] has refused to answer any more questions since, and neither he, his wife, nor Dame Eleanor would comment last night …
I was not best pleased to find that Miriam Cates MP had been there, too. I thought she was one of the good guys:
Two MPs said to have been present – former Cabinet Minister Maria Miller and backbencher Miriam Cates – did not respond to a request for comment last night.
Mr Johnson, who branded the inquiry into his conduct a ‘witch-hunt’, told the committee Sir Bernard should have recused himself as he could not be considered ‘a valid judge or investigator’.
MPs will debate the report [on Monday] and are expected to approve it, including the recommendation Mr Johnson be denied the pass to the Palace of Westminster usually given to ex-MPs. To the relief of many Tories fearful of an angry reaction from grassroots members still loyal to Mr Johnson, the report may be approved without a formal vote.
During the investigation, headed by former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, Sir Bernard said: ‘The rules were clear, they were there for everyone, and no one is above the law’ and that ‘it’s only right that those in power should lead by example’.
Rishi could have done something. Here was his golden opportunity to suspend Monday’s proceedings. Rishi did nothing.
Early on Monday, a poll from YouGov for The Times appeared, indicating that Boris was still miles ahead of Rishi in the popularity stakes:
Guido put the poll’s results into sharper focus for us:
Guido pointed out:
Nearly half of Tories (47%) still think Boris was a good Prime Minister, while 34% say the same of Sunak today…
This might explain why Rishi is skipping the Privileges Committee vote in the Commons today, rather than voting for it. He hasn’t got the political capital to aggravate Boris’s supporters any more than he already has.
UPDATE — On Friday, June 23, another poll had worse news for Rishi. His pizza slices of approval were getting thinner by the day:
Guido said:
Once “don’t know” responses are removed, over 90% of people think Rishi is failing in four of his five pledges. The worst part is, they’re not wrong…
A majority of 2019 Tories think Rishi is doing badly in all five of his pledges – with 80% saying he’s failing to stop the small boats. Rishi’s pledges were meant to be easy to achieve…
Anyway, returning to the beginning of the week, mid-morning on Monday, the Speaker of the House, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, asked Parliament’s Director of Security to liaise with the witness who spoke to The Mail:
Rishi did nothing.
This was Monday’s order paper for the Commons. ‘Privilege (Motion)’ related to Boris:
Some pundit said that the Privileges Committee debate would be brief. Hah!
In fact, it began at 4:19 and ended after 9:30 p.m. Everyone had to have his/her last chance to twist the knife into Boris’s back. The UK Tech Industry debate did not happen.
Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt thanked the kangaroo court for everything they had done:
Here’s the video:
Guido wrote:
She confirmed she’ll vote to support the findings and to ban Boris’s ex-MPs pass…
…We all owe the Committee a debt of gratitude to the work that they have done on our instruction. But it is for Members to decide whether their conclusions are correct or not… As the Member for Portsmouth North I will be voting to support the committee’s report and recommendations. But all members need to make up their own minds and others should leave them alone to do so.
True, but ugh for the most part.
Just before the debate went to a vote, Guido posted that London’s Metropolitan Police were investigating new allegations, i.e. those against Bernard Jenkin and others:
Guido has the Met’s full statement and ended his post with this:
Still nothing from Bernard Jenkin…
At 9:42 p.m., Guido posted the results of the vote:
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who is hardly ever present for an evening debate, read the result:
It was said earlier in the day that no Conservative MPs would agree to being the two tellers for the vote.
Interestingly, in what must be a rare occurrence, Labour MPs agreed to do the job — Sir Alan Campbell and Lilian Greenwood.
Six Conservatives voted against the motion. Good for them:
I do not know the identity of the seventh MP.
When Sir Lindsay read out that seven had voted against the motion, a handful of horrified Labour MPs went on a verbal rampage, crying out:
Who are you? Who are you?
On Wednesday, UK Polling Report told us that six in ten Britons were most unhappy at the way Rishi treated Boris over this ordeal:
Almost 60% of voters think Rishi Sunak handled the investigation and report into whether Boris Johnson misled Parliament badly. According to new polling from YouGov, 32% of voters think the Prime Minister handled the Privileges Committee’s report “very badly”, with 25% saying the Prime Minister did “fairly badly”. Just 19% thought he did well.
These attitudes even extended to 2019 Conservative voters, where 20% more said Rishi Sunak handled the situation badly than well. It does provide some context to Labour’s latest polling resurgence…
I might have more on this next week, as I watched the debate and was thoroughly disgusted at the many sanctimonious, hypocritical MPs on both sides of the aisle.
How millions of us wish this had been done to Tony Blair over the Iraq War instead.
Those who missed them will find parts 1 and 2 about this bombshell week in British politics of interest.
Wednesday’s news: Dorries delays resignation
Apparently, Nadine Dorries did not resign with immediate effect at all. More on that below.
The by-election in Boris’s former constituency
Although it seems an age already, it is too early for the candidates for the by-election in Boris’s constituency, Uxbridge and South Ruislip, to be formally announced.
Guido Fawkes thinks the Conservatives can win this west London area provided they stand up against Mayor Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ (Ultra-low Emission Zone) plan to extend it to more of outer London. However, I fail to see how this could win them the other seat, Nigel Adams’s, which is nowhere near the capital:
The smaller parties are readying themselves to hand Labour or the Lib Dems victory by chipping away at Conservative votes.
Reform is what used to be the Brexit Party, when it spun off from UKIP, which still exists. Richard Tice leads Reform, and Nigel Farage is its president.
Reclaim is a tiny party, led by actor and musician Laurence Fox.
Guido tells us that the two parties are working together:
To answer Guido’s question, small parties rarely merge. Each leader wants to be in control.
On Monday, Laurence Fox seemed to be planning to stand as the Reclaim candidate in Uxbridge and South Ruislip:
Guido had the story (red emphases his):
Reform UK’s leader Richard Tice has agreed his party will not stand their own candidate in a bid to maximise Fox’s chances. Chances which, it’s fair to say, are pretty slim…
I could not agree more. This will guarantee that Conservatives lose.
Guido continues:
In a statement today, Fox said:
The main political parties are not fit for purpose. We have uncontrolled immigration putting pressure on an already over stretched NHS, which is one of the poorest performing health services in the developed world. Labour and Conservative are offering the same policies and are largely indistinguishable … Britain deserves better. Reclaim seeks to represent the best interests of British people, Reclaim is motivated by common sense. Reclaim is interested in a prosperous future for our children.
If elected, Fox would become the second MP to sit for the Reclaim Party, after Andrew Bridgen’s defection last month. Although realistically all this will do is siphon protest votes off the Tory candidate. Labour must be happy…
Indeed they are.
TalkTV
As for TalkTV, which completely missed breaking the news that Boris had stood down on Friday evening, including Nadine Dorries’ show, Guido reminds us:
Also:
The channel finally caught up on Monday evening, after the world and his dog knew the story chapter and verse:
Rishi lashes out
On Monday, June 12, Rishi lashed out at Boris about his honours list:
He appeared at London Tech Week to talk about the list and HOLAC (House of Lords Appointments Committee). Purple emphases mine:
Boris Johnson asked me to do something that I wasn’t prepared to do, because I didn’t think it was right. That was either overrule the HOLAC committee, or make promises to people… now I wasn’t prepared to do that, as I said, I didn’t think it was right. And if people don’t like that, then tough…
Wednesday’s scoop: Bernard Jenkin, Boris accuser, broke rules
On the afternoon of Wednesday, June 14, Guido published an exclusive scoop.
He and his team tweeted:
Minutes later, the scoop followed. Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin, a member of the Privileges Committee that found Boris guilty of breaking lockdown rules with No. 10 get-togethers, had himself broken lockdown rules, albeit on the parliamentary estate. Next to Jenkin are his wife Anne, Baroness Jenkin (centre), and Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, Dame Eleanor Laing:
I was shocked to find that Dame Eleanor was involved, as she is one of my favourite MPs. I’ll have to give her a rethink:
Guido had received a tip-off about her gathering, so he phoned her and Jenkin.
He tells us:
Guido has just got off the phone with Bernard Jenkin. Our conversation was short. We got to the point of the call pretty quickly:
Guido: Cast your mind back to December 8th, 2020 during lockdown, do you remember attending a drinks party in parliament held by Eleanor Laing?
Bernard: I did not attend any drinks parties during lockdown.
Guido: It was your wife’s birthday celebration, are you saying you did not have anything to drink?
Bernard: I don’t recall.
Our chat came to a curt end. Fortunately prior to speaking to Sir Bernard, Guido had a longer conversation with Dame Eleanor Laing, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. She conceded that she held a “business meeting” on that evening, where “I was so strict with my 2 metre ruler and told everyone we will adhere to those rules and be very careful” …
The Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons dictated the following statement to Guido:
At the beginning of the pandemic I took advice on how many could be present in a room, I had the room measured and I kept a 2 metre ruler so that I could always verify that nobody who was working here was put at risk.
Guido asked her again:
Guido: Were any drinks served?
Eleanor: I don’t know. I will have to check.
No need Eleanor, Guido has already checked. Eleanor hosted a drinks party to celebrate her friend Anne Jenkin’s 65th birthday on that day. There was a cake for Baroness Jenkin and people were invited by WhatsApp for “drinks”. There was a spread of food, other MPs attended including some of the 2019 intake and others. It was not an impromptu affair – the nibbles had been bought in.
One source says that Dame Eleanor did mention the need for social distancing – to some amusement – windows and doors were open, although initial attempts to social distance “went out the window”. The crowd included those typically involved with Anne Jenkin and the Women2Win campaign, such as Maria Miller. A co-conspirator says there was “loads of drink” and that they specifically remember Bernard Jenkin with drink in hand at a jolly affair.
On that day December 8th 2020, London was in Tier 2 lockdown. Gatherings of more than 6 indoors either in a public or private building were against the regulations. No Christmas exception applied and breaches of the regulations were offences which could be prosecuted or dealt with by fixed penalty notices with penalties ranging up to £10,000. The guidance was clear:
Although there are exemptions for work purposes, you must not have a work Christmas lunch or party, where that is a primarily social activity and is not otherwise permitted by the rules in your tier.
This was a birthday party, in breach of the legal regulations, and to top it off there was even birthday cake.
UPDATE: Boris Calls on Bernard Jenkin to Resign Over His Own Drinks Party
The reason Guido mentions cake is because that was the object of outrage at the socially-distanced get-together on Boris’s own birthday.
A furious Boris
Boris must have been furious at finding out about the sanctimonious Bernard Jenkin who lambasted the then-PM in the Commons over the Partygate affair. To listen to Jenkin, you would think he was pure as the driven snow.
Boris must read Guido …
… because he got on the case within 20 minutes of the breaking scoop:
Guido reported that Boris sent him the following statement, using similar language to that which Jenkin used against him:
If this is true it is outrageous and a total contempt of parliament.
Bernard Jenkin has just voted to expel me from parliament for allegedly trying to conceal from parliament my knowledge of illicit events.
In reality of course I did no such thing.
Now it turns out he may have for the whole time known that he himself attended an event – and concealed this from the privileges committee and the whole House for the last year.
To borrow the language of the committee, if this is the case, he “must have known” he was in breach of the rules
Why didn’t he say so?
He has no choice but to explain his actions to his own committee, for his colleagues to investigate and then to resign.
Dorries steps in
A short while later, Guido posted an item showing that Nadine Dorries, a loyal Boris supporter, wrote to the Clerk of the Privileges Committee, Dr Robin James, about Bernard Jenkin:
Afterwards, Guido posted a video of a supercilious Jenkin grilling Boris at the Privileges Committee hearing several weeks ago:
Yes, the Metropolitan Police have been notified:
Let us hope they are on the case. (UPDATE, June 16: According to Guido, the Met are saying that they will investigate if a ‘formal complaint’ is made. So, whether the above tweet referenced a formal complaint is unclear.)
Let us also remind ourselves of those in the public eye who have been fined thus far. Only Boris, his wife Carrie and Rishi. Note that Labour’s Keir Starmer and his other MPs got nothing for their curry and beer party in Durham in April 2021. Scotland did nothing about the hypocritical Nicola Sturgeon, then First Minister. Furthermore, Wales did nothing about Prif Weinidog (First Minister) Mark Drakeford. Nor did left-leaning Sky News presenters receive anything in London in December 2020. Only Conservatives get fined, it would seem:
Around 7:30 p.m., Guido had an update on Boris, who had just written to the chair of the Privileges Committee, Labour’s Harriet Harman:
Guido posted Boris’s letter to Harman in full:
Dear Harriet,
You will no doubt have seen the reports in today’s media concerning Sir Bernard Jenkin. It has been reported that he attended a rule-breaking birthday party event when London was in Tier 2 restrictions. The reports suggest alcohol was served at the event and that it broke the rules on numbers. To my knowledge, as of this point, he has made no attempt to deny the allegations.
And yet at no time has he seen fit to tell you, or the House of Commons about this alleged gathering. He has repeatedly insisted that any such breaches are a matter of the utmost gravity for any public servant.
If indeed it is the case that he broke the rules himself – and knowingly broke them – Sir Bernard is guilty of flagrant and monstrous hypocrisy.
But I am afraid it is far worse than that.
He has just voted to expel me from the House of Commons because he says – falsely – that I concealed from the House my knowledge of illicit events.
If indeed he did attend a blatantly rule breaking event he would be guilty of doing exactly what he claims that I did. Although this report is not yet confirmed by an investigation, I believe he should have informed the Committee of his conflict and he should have informed the House.
He should have recused himself.
I really find it incredible – and nauseating – that this matter is emerging at this stage of your process.
Are you please able to confirm that you have asked every member of the committee whether they attended any such events, and that these checks were made before your inquiry began?
I would be grateful for your urgent response and to know how the committee intends to proceed, since it seems to me that Sir Bernard can no longer be held to have been a valid judge or investigator in these proceedings.
Yours
Boris Johnson
Meanwhile, Guido — Paul Staines — was preparing to appear on GB News to discuss the developing story with Conservative MP Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg:
A short time later, Guido confirmed that Harriet Harman had received the news about Bernard Jenkin. One Twitter user rightly wondered if the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle (Labour), knew:
Meanwhile, Jenkin was allegedly prowling around a corridor on the parliamentary estate, looking ‘worried’:
While Jenkin stayed out of the reach of the media, Paul Staines — Guido — explained to Jacob Rees-Mogg how he came about the story:
TalkTV, GB News’s main competitor, also carried the story, saying that Jenkin was not responding to media requests for comment:
Jenkin was still silent on Thursday morning, June 15:
Privileges Committee report finally appears
Interestingly, on Thursday, after days of delays — e.g. couldn’t find a printing company (really?) — the Privileges Committee was finally ready to publish its damning report on Boris:
Guido reported:
Guido hears other MPs have since written to the Privileges Committee over Jenkin’s conduct following Nadine Dorries’ letter last night. At least one MP has also reportedly written to Parliamentary sleaze watchdog Daniel Greenberg, which could lead to an investigation if accepted. Boris himself has written directly to Kangaroo Court chair Harriet Harman, demanding to know if any other Committee inquisitors have broken the rules…
Speaking of the Kangaroo Court, its 33,000 word report is expected at around 9 a.m., with Boris’s response published soon after. The report, which is longer than Of Mice and Men, will find Boris committed “multiple” contempts of Parliament, and would have recommended a Commons suspension of longer than 10 days. Guido looks forward to reading Bernard’s analysis.
The report is expected to detail multiple instances of ‘contempt’ from Boris towards the House of Commons:
Poor man.
On Saturday, Boris allegedly fired a shot across Rishi’s bow re schooldays:
Rishi won this round though by finalising Boris’s resignation on Monday. He put him in the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, or the Chiltern Hundreds, an old constitutional mechanism by which a resigning MP gets a special designation. In Boris’s case, it is Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern:
As MPs are not technically allowed to resign, even though we use that word, they are given a temporary ‘office of profit under the Crown’, which requires MPs to vacate their seats. This constitutional device was first used in 1751. There are two applicable titles, that of the Chiltern Hundreds and the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.
On Monday, Nigel Adams was appointed Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.
Dorries still an MP
On Thursday, news emerged that Nadine Dorries was delaying her resignation in order to find out why she was omitted from Boris’s honours list:
She said, ‘This process is now sadly necessary’:
Personally, I do not think that seeking and fighting for a peerage is a good look. Few former MPs are elevated to the Lords.
She’s making far too much of this. Being an MP is supposed to be about service to others rather than serving one’s own interests.
On Tuesday, Dorries blamed Rishi and his close friend James Forsyth, ex-Spectator political editor and the Prime Minister’s best man, of suppressing her nomination to the Lords:
She even wrote a column in the Mail about how hard done by she was. The paper must have liked it, as they put a banner for it on their front page.
Guido wrote:
Speaking last night on Piers Morgan Unwatched Uncensored, alongside a column in the Mail, she accused “privileged posh boys” Rishi and James Forsyth, his political secretary, of “cruelly” denying her peerage. Nadine went further:
This story is about a girl from Breck Road in Liverpool, who worked everyday of her life since she was 14 years-old, had something offered to her that people from that background don’t get offered, removed by two privileged posh boys who went to Winchester and Oxford. Taken away duplicitously and cruelly because they have known for months that it wasn’t the case. And yet, they let me and they let Boris Johnson continue to believe that was the case.
Unsurprisingly, she pledged to “keep on fighting”…
My prediction is that the longer she stays in the Commons, the colder the shoulder she will get from her colleagues.
As I write at 11:09 a.m., Thangam Debbonaire, the Shadow Leader of the House, is voicing a similar sentiment in Business Questions about Dorries outstaying her welcome and asking if she is resigning or not.
Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the House, announced that there will be a motion asking the Commons to approve the Privileges Committee report on Monday afternoon, June 19, in the Commons. She acknowledged but did not reply to Thangam Debbonaire’s remarks about Dorries.
Thursday’s update
The Privileges Committee report appeared at 9 a.m.:
Boris responded immediately:
It is for the people of this country to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman.
Guido points out:
Among other things, the report recommends that Boris be denied a former Member’s pass, something that rarely occurs. It seems nasty, especially in light of allegations about Bernard Jenkin:
Not surprisingly, Boris is deeply unhappy with the report. Guido has his response in full:
It is now many months since people started to warn me about the intentions of the Privileges Committee. They told me that it was a kangaroo court. They told me that it was being driven relentlessly by the political agenda of Harriet Harman, and supplied with skewed legal advice – with the sole political objective of finding me guilty and expelling me from parliament.
They also warned me that most members had already expressed prejudicial views – especially Harriet Harman – in a way that would not be tolerated in a normal legal process. Some alarmists even pointed out that the majority of the Committee voted remain and they stressed that Bernard Jenkin’s personal antipathy to me was historic and well-known.
To be frank, when I first heard these warnings, I was incredulous. When it was first proposed that there should be such an inquiry by this committee, I thought it was just some time-wasting procedural stunt by the Labour party.
I didn’t think for one minute that a committee of MPs could find against me on the facts, and I didn’t see how any reasonable person could fail to understand what had happened.
I knew exactly what events I had attended in Number 10. I knew what I had seen, with my own eyes, and like the current PM, I believed that these events were lawful. I believed that my participation was lawful, and required by my job; and that is indeed the implication of the exhaustive police inquiry.
The only exception is the June 19 2020 event, the so-called birthday party, when I and the then Chancellor Rishi Sunak were fined in circumstances that I still find puzzling (I had lunch at my desk with people I worked with every day).
So when on December 1, 2021 I told the House of Commons that “the guidance was followed completely” (in Number Ten) I meant it. It wasn’t just what I thought: it’s what we all thought – that we were following the rules and following the guidance completely – notwithstanding the difficulties of maintaining social distancing at all times.
The committee now says that I deliberately misled the House, and at the moment I spoke I was consciously concealing from the House my knowledge of illicit events.
This is rubbish. It is a lie. In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the Committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts.
First, they say that I must have known that the farewell events I attended were not authorised workplace events because – wait for it – NO SUCH EVENT could lawfully have taken place, anywhere in this country, under the Committee’s interpretation of covid rules. This is transparently wrong. I believed, correctly, that these events were reasonably necessary for work purposes. We were managing a pandemic. We had hundreds of staff engaged in what was sometimes a round-the-clock struggle against covid. Their morale mattered for that fight. It was important for me to thank them.
But don’t just listen to me. Take it from the Metropolitan Police. The police investigated my role at all of those events. In no case did they find that what I had done was unlawful. Above all it did not cross my mind – as I spoke in the House of Commons – that the events were unlawful.
I believed that we were working, and we were: talking for the main about nothing except work, mainly covid. Why would I have set out, in the Chamber, to conceal my knowledge of something illicit, if that account could be so readily contradicted by others? Why would we have had an official photographer if we believed we were breaking the law?
We didn’t believe that what we were doing was wrong, and after a year of work the Privileges Committee has found not a shred of evidence that we did.
Their argument can be boiled down to: ‘Look at this picture – that’s Boris Johnson with a glass in his hand. He must have known that the event was illegal. Therefore he lied.”
That is a load of complete tripe. That picture was me, in my place of work, trying to encourage and thank my officials in a way that I believed was crucial for the government and for the country as a whole, and in a way which I believed to be wholly within the rules.
For the Committee now to say that all such events – “thank-yous” and birthdays – were intrinsically illegal is ludicrous, contrary to the intentions of those who made the rules (including me), and contrary to the findings of the Met; and above all I did not for one moment think they were illicit – at the time or when I spoke in the Commons.
The Committee cannot possibly believe the conclusions of their own report – because it has now emerged that Sir Bernard Jenkin attended at least one “birthday event”, on December 8, 2020 – the birthday of his wife Anne – when it is alleged that alcohol and food were served and the numbers exceeded six indoors.
Why was it illegal for me to thank staff and legal for Sir Bernard to attend his wife’s birthday party?
The hypocrisy is rank. Like Harriet Harman, he should have recused himself from the inquiry, since he is plainly conflicted.
The rest of the Committee’s report is mainly a rehash of their previous non-points. They have nothing new of substance to say. They concede that they have found no evidence that I was warned, before or after an event, that it was illegal. That is surely very telling. If we had genuinely believed these events to be unauthorised – with all the political sensitivities entailed – then there would be some trace in all the thousands of messages sent to me, and to which the committee has had access.
It is preposterous to say, as the Committee does, that people were just too scared to mention concerns to their superiors. Really? Was Simon Case too scared to draw his concerns to my attention? Was Sue Gray or Rishi Sunak?
The Committee concedes that the guidance permitted social distancing of less than 1 m where there was no alternative – though they refuse to take account of all the other mitigations – including regular testing – that we put in place.
They keep wilfully missing the point. The question is not whether perfect social distancing was maintained at all times in Number ten – clearly that wasn’t possible, as I have said very often. The question is whether I believed, given the limitations of the building, we were doing enough, with mitigations, to follow the guidance – and I did, and so did everyone else.
They grudgingly accept that I was right to tell the Commons that I was repeatedly assured that the rules were followed in respect of the December 18 event in the media room, but they try, absurdly and incoherently, to say that the assurances of Jack Doyle and James Slack were not enough to constitute “repeated” assurances – completely and deliberately ignoring the sworn testimony of two MPs, Andrew Griffith and Sarah Dines, who have also said that they heard me being given such assurances.
Perhaps the craziest assertion of all is the Committee’s Mystic Meg claim that I saw the December 18 event with my own eyes. They say, without any evidence whatever, that at 21.58pm, on that date, my eyes for one crucial second glanced over to the media room as I went up to the flat – and that I saw what I recognised as an unauthorised event in progress.
First, the Committee has totally ignored the general testimony about that evening, which is that people were working throughout, even if some had been drinking at their desks. How on earth do these clairvoyants know exactly what was going on at 21.58?
How do they know what I saw? What retinal impressions have they somehow discovered, that are completely unavailable to me? I saw no goings on at all in the press room, or none that I can remember, certainly nothing illegal.
As the Committee has heard, officials were heavily engaged in preparing difficult messaging about the prospect of a No-deal Brexit and a Christmas lockdown.
It is a measure of the Committee’s desperation that they are trying incompetently and absurdly to tie me to an illicit event – with an argument so threadbare that it belongs in one of Bernard Jenkin’s nudist colonies.
Their argument is that I saw this event, believed it to be illegal, and had it in my head when I spoke to the House. On all three counts they are talking out of the backs of their necks. If I did see an illegal event, and register it as illegal, then why was I on my own in this? Why not the Cabinet Secretary, or Sue Gray, or the then Chancellor, who was patrolling the same corridors at the time?
The committee is imputing to me and me alone a secret knowledge of illegal events that was somehow not shared by any other official or minister in Number Ten. That is utterly incredible. That is the artifice.
This report is a charade. I was wrong to believe in the Committee or its good faith. The terrible truth is that it is not I who has twisted the truth to suit my purposes. It is Harriet Harman and her Committee.
This is a dreadful day for MPs and for democracy. This decision means that no MP is free from vendetta, or expulsion on trumped up charges by a tiny minority who want to see him or her gone from the Commons.
I do not have the slightest contempt for parliament, or for the important work that should be done by the Privileges Committee.
But for the Privileges Committee to use its prerogatives in this anti-democratic way, to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination – that is beneath contempt.
It is for the people of this country to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman.
One cannot say fairer than that.
It should be pointed out that Harriet Harman will not be standing again at the next general election. What an egregious legacy she has left Parliament and the British electorate. Then again, she’s a Labour MP. What more could one expect?
End of series
This is the penultimate instalment of Boris Johnson’s downfall.
Earlier ones can be found here: parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Before I get to the heart of the matter, one of Boris’s former aides, Cleo Watson, wrote about her time in Downing Street for the September 2022 issue of the high society magazine Tatler: ‘Exclusive: how PM’s former aide had to “nanny” him through lockdown’.
Cleo Watson tells the story of how she went from working on Obama’s 2012 campaign to the Vote Leave one that preceded the 2016 Brexit referendum. As she worked with Dominic Cummings on the latter, he asked her if she would like to work at Downing Street when Boris became Prime Minister.
She accepted but had no idea what fate awaited her. Who knew then about the pandemic, which she had to get Boris through: frequent coronavirus testing, recovering from his near-death viral experience with nourishing drinks rather than Diet Coke and putting up with his silly, schoolboy jokes.
Then there was Dilyn, his and Carrie’s Welsh rescue terrier, which they acquired in 2019. Dilyn never was properly house-trained and left little surprises in Downing Street and at the prime ministerial weekend retreat, Chequers.
Watson has just finished writing her first novel, Whip!, a fictionalised account of what life is like in Downing Street. It is scheduled to be published in 2023.
One thing that struck me is just how pervasive Dominic Cummings was during his time there.
She describes what the penitential press conference he had to give in May 2020 after his forbidden trip to County Durham during lockdown was like (emphases mine):
Dom’s ‘eye test’ itself led to moments of strange humour as we struggled to respond to the public anger it caused. Remember his press conference in the rose garden? What you didn’t see was the group of advisers loitering behind the cameras, clutching ourselves with worry. Dom’s natural sunny attitude …
‘Sunny attitude’? Surely some sarcasm there, methinks:
… seemed to be waning, so halfway through I took to standing directly in his eyeline, bent over like a tennis linesman, gesticulating for him to sit up straight and, if not smile, be tolerant and polite when responding to the repetitive questions being fired at him.
She left around the same time as Cummings, in November 2020:
As so many in politics know, the end comes sooner or later – generally sooner, if you’re employed by this prime minister. (Although I suppose he’s had karma returned with interest recently.) The end for me came in November 2020, about two weeks after Dom’s hurried departure.
These were her final moments with Boris:
The PM had been isolating after his latest ‘ping’ and he and I finally reunited in the Cabinet room, where we had an exchange that I am sure may have been familiar to many of his girlfriends. Him: ‘Ho hum, I’m not sure this is working any more.’ Me: ‘Oh, OK, you seem to be trying to break up with me. I’ll get my things.’ Him: ‘Aargh… I don’t know… yes, no, maybe… wait, come back!’ I suppose it went a little differently. He said a lot of things, the most succinct being: ‘I can’t look at you any more because it reminds me of Dom. It’s like a marriage has ended, we’ve divided up our things and I’ve kept an ugly old lamp. But every time I look at that lamp, it reminds me of the person I was with. You’re that lamp.’ A lamp! At least a gazelle has a heartbeat. Still, he presumably knows better than most how it feels when a marriage breaks up.
So I left No 10 – without a leaving party, contrary to what has been reported. What actually happened is that we agreed to go our separate ways and I went to the press team to say goodbye. The PM, unable to see a group of people and not orate, gave a painful, off-the-cuff speech to a bewildered clutch of advisers and I left shortly after.
More work followed, then came a holiday in Barbados:
I was asked to work on the COP26 climate change summit (quite cleansing for the brand after Vote Leave and Johnson’s No 10), which took place in Glasgow in November 2021. It was a brutal year, no less dogged by Covid than the previous one, and I was lucky enough to top it off with a recovery holiday in Barbados in December.
The sun, the sea, the cocktail bar… Welcome to paradise. Except something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but whenever I was indoors at Cobblers Cove, the lovely hotel my husband, Tom, and I were staying at, I had a strange, uneasy feeling that I’d been there before. Where had I seen muted green print on jolly green print on rattan before? The place had been revamped by none other than Lulu Lytle, of the Downing Street flat fame.
Downing Street stays with a person, not unlike memories of an ex:
It’s often the way that looking at a period of your life later on can frame it as much happier than it really was. It’s like remembering the good times with an ex. You’ll smell or hear something that nearly knocks you over with a wave of nostalgia and before you know it, you’re thinking: ‘I wonder what they’re doing now…’
I’m very fortunate in that I know exactly what they’re doing and what I’m missing out on. Yes, you get the chance to serve the country and on an individual level you can change people’s lives. But there is also the constant work that gets gobbled up by the news cycle. The gut-busting effort behind every speech that flops. The policy that gets torn to shreds. The constant lurk of an MP rebellion. From the moment you’re awake, you’re on your phone(s).
These days I’ll be walking my dog (far too big to be used as a handheld prop now) and delighted – literally delighted – to be picking up after him rather than dealing with the latest catastrophe I can see playing out just a couple of miles away.
I’ve weaned myself off my phone, cancelled my newspaper subscriptions and studiously avoided social media. I’ve really understood what burnout means. It has taken months to recover …
Now on to the final weeks of Boris and his wife Carrie.
The thing that sticks most in my mind is that awful — and awfully expensive — refurb of the Downing Street flat.
The next occupant will want to rip it all out and start again with something quiet and tasteful.
Boris must have thought he would be there for years. Otherwise, why would he have agreed to it?
Another disappointment for them must have been not being able to use Chequers for their big wedding party.
The couple married in 2021 at Westminster Cathedral (Catholic), but because of coronavirus restrictions, could have only a small number back to Downing Street to celebrate.
They had looked forward to having a big party at Chequers. Unfortunately, once Boris resigned as Party leader, he became a caretaker PM and was refused permission.
Fortunately, Lord and Lady Bamford of construction equipment manufacturer JCB fame lent their sprawling Gloucestershire estate to the Johnsons:
On Wednesday, July 27, GB News reported:
The Prime Minister and his wife are said to be planning on hosting family and friends at 18th-century Daylesford House, in Gloucestershire, this weekend.
A huge white marquee topped with bunting had been erected in the property’s expansive grounds on Wednesday, with staff going in and out amid apparent party preparations.
Owned by Lord Bamford, the Grade I-listed mansion has been found as a replacement to Chequers – where the Johnsons had originally planned to host the party.
The Tory peer, chairman of construction equipment manufacturer JCB, has donated millions to the Conservative Party …
Lord Bamford is covering at least some of the cost of the party, the Mirror reported, quoting unnamed sources.
No 10 declined to comment on the “private matter”.
The Johnsons decided on a unique celebration.
Reporters from The Mail were on hand earlier on Saturday, July 30, to find out more:
Guests at Boris and Carrie Johnson‘s wedding party are set to dine in style on South African street food at the Cotswolds retreat of Tory mega-donor Lord Bamford today.
Caterers from eco-friendly BBQ eatery Smoke and Braai were spotted setting up shop on the grounds at Daylesford House on Friday in advance of the fanfare.
Around 200 guests including a dozen Conservative MPs will gather at the idyllic, Gloucestershire Grade I-listed mansion for drinks from 5.30pm.
Grass-fed locally sourced meat will be the mainstay of the food menu in line with Mrs Johnson’s well-known commitment to green causes, The Telegraph reported.
At least three street food outlets were pictured arriving at the gorgeous countryside manor house on Friday afternoon, with helicopters heard amassing above …
Daylesford House is the 18th-century home of Lord Bamford, 76, the founder of construction giant JCB and one of the Conservative party’s most prolific donors.
The billionaire Bamfords, who gave £4million to the party in the run-up to the 2019 general election, after handing £100,000 to the Vote Leave campaign, stepped in to fill hosting duties after furore surrounded the Johnsons’ prior plans to hold their wedding party at Chequers.
Lady Bamford and Carrie, in particular, joined forces to orchestrate today’s proceedings, the newspaper reported.
The South African street food menu is set to include lime and mint-infused pineapple, skin-on fries, cherry wood-smoked pork with honey and mustard slaw, and Aberdeen Angus ox cheeks.
South Africa’s answer to the barbecue, a braai is typically the setting for an hours-long cookout in which all are welcome.
The Telegraph told us that Steve Bray, the braying anti-Brexit chap from College Green near Parliament, was a short distance away. The article has a photo of him.
Caterers and entertainers could not miss him:
… they were greeted by Steve Bray, an activist known as the “Stop Brexit Man”, who had positioned himself at one of the entrances holding a banner which read: “Corrupt Tory Government. Liars, cheats and charlatans. Get them out now.”
The article told us more about the menu:
Rum punch is also available to guests, as well as barbecue chicken and beef with salad. Handmade ice-cream from a family run dairy farm in the Peak District is also being served, adding to the laid back atmosphere at Daylesford House, Gloucestershire …
Mrs Johnson is thought to have worked closely with Lady Bamford to organise the event and set the theme of a South African-style barbecue laid on by Corby-based Smoke and Braai, with the 200 guests served from eco-friendly street food trucks amid hay bale benches.
On the menu is grass-fed British beef braai boerewors rolls, masa corn tortilla tacos, smoked barbacoa lamb and what was described as “ancient grain salad” …
Adding to the festival atmosphere, for dessert there is ice-cream courtesy of Dalton’s Dairy, a family-run dairy farm in the Peak District which produces handmade ice creams, including wild strawberries and cream, pineapple, and amaretto and black cherry.
The guest list included MPs, singers and millionaires:
The guests, who include several Conservative MPs, began to arrive at the estate at around 5pm. Australian actress and singer Holly Valance, who is married to British property developer Nick Candy, was also pictured arriving at the estate in a Rolls Royce.
Mr Johnson’s younger sister, Rachel Johnson, was seen arriving via the back entrance, as did the Prime Minister’s father, Stanley Johnson, who arrived alongside a female companion.
Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg were also among the first guests to arrive.
Other politicians in attendance included Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary; Jake Berry, who previously served as minister for the Northern Powerhouse; Amanda Milling, the MP for Cannock Chase; and John Whittingdale, the former culture secretary.
More elusive and camera shy guests preferred to arrive by helicopter, landing on a helipad positioned in the grounds of the estate. They were then ferried to the garden party in a black Range Rover.
The Mail on Sunday had more, complete with lots of photographs:
Boris and Carrie Johnson danced the night away at their festival-style wedding party in the Cotswolds last night, with the bride wearing a £3,500 dress that was rented for £25.
Carrie opted to stick to her sustainable fashion principles with the dress by designer Savannah Miller, the older sister of actress Sienna.
The floor-length, halter-neck gown named Ruby has an original price tag of £3,500 but is available for a day rate of £25 on London-based website Wardrobe HQ, which Carrie, 34, has been using for more than three years.
Meanwhile, the festivities started with Boris joining Carrie on the dancefloor for their first dance to Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline – chosen because Carrie’s full first name is Caroline.
They were joined by friends and family at the picturesque venue that sits within 1,500 acres and boasts stunning amenities including a heart-shaped orchard, painstakingly manicured gardens, an 18th century orangery and a luxurious pool.
For anyone wondering if this Daylesford is related to the eponymous organic food brand, it is, indeed:
Lady Carole Bamford OBE, became famous for launching Daylesford Organic Farm, based in the private village but with farm shops across London.
Daylesford House, which is just a mile from Lord and Lady Bamford’s organic farm of the same name, boasts 1,500 acres of manicured gardens including pristine lawns, an 18th-century orangery and a secret garden – complete with octagonal swimming pool, shell grotto and alfresco pizza oven.
The article had more on the Bamfords and their involvement with the Conservative Party:
Downing Street has refused to comment on the occasion, stating it does not discuss private events which do not involve taxpayer funds or ministerial declarations.
Beyond cash handouts, the Tories have also benefited from repeated press conferences staged at JCB’s Staffordshire headquarters.
Boris Johnson made his headline-grabbing Brexit stunt at the factory as part of his general election bid in 2019.
The global digger manufacturer paid him £10,000 just three days before he smashed through a brick wall in a JCB digger.
Beyond politics, the Bamfords hold sway with a long list of British elites, including their friends the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.
Lady Bamford, whose precise age is unknown, sits on JCB’s board of directors and was awarded in OBE in 2006 for services to children and families.
A former air hostess, Lady Bamford OBE married Sir Anthony in 1974.
They have four children and a haul of houses around the world in addition to a prolific car collection worth tens of millions of pounds.
The article beneath it, by Adam Solomons, had more about Steve Bray’s presence. One photo shows a policeman seemingly asking him to leave. Bray alleged that his friend was arrested:
So-called ‘Stop Brexit Man’ Steve Bray flouted the tight guest list for Boris and Carrie Johnson‘s wedding party to conduct a solo protest yesterday after a friend and fellow campaigner was allegedly arrested nearby.
Photographer Sylvia Yukio Zamperini was taken away in a police car after turning up close to opulent party venue Daylesford House, Gloucestershire, Mr Bray claimed.
In a Facebook post this evening, he wrote: ‘I was supposed to meet Sylvia […] but she called me. She was searched by Police.
‘A police van and car passed me 20 minutes ago. She was crying and waving frantically from the back of the car. She’s been arrested.’
He added in a subsequent tweet: ‘Police using dirty tactics.’
Gloucester Constabulary did not respond to a MailOnline request for clarification or comment this afternoon.
The notorious Parliament demonstrator put out an appeal for urgent legal help on Sylvia’s behalf.
Ms Yukio Zamperini has been Bray’s right-hand woman throughout years of noisy campaigning in and around the parliamentary estate over the past six years.
Describing herself as a ‘proud European’, she often shoots footage of Bray’s flags and banners.
Sylvia travelled to the gorgeous Cotswolds wedding venue from Birmingham, with Steve commuting from London.
They were supposed to meet close to Daylesford House, but Sylvia had reportedly already been arrested.
Bray also posted a video in which he spoke to a local police officer, who’d warned him that loud amplifiers set up to disrupt the party would be confiscated.
The unidentified officer, who Bray’s followers noted was polite and respectful, said he was giving ‘Stop Brexit Man’ a ‘pre-pre-warning’ in the event he tried to sabotage the postponed wedding party.
The infamous campaigner tells the policeman: ‘Look what these guys have done to our lives. I don’t care if it’s a wedding party.’
Guido Fawkes has a video of Boris and Carrie dancing to Sweet Caroline, which young Wilf interrupted. Carrie picked him up and swayed from side to side. Of Boris, Guido says:
Some questionable dad dancing moves from Boris there.
On August 6, The Telegraph‘s Gordon Rayner had more in ‘Inside Boris and Carrie Johnson’s secret wedding party’:
The bride wore a gold mini dress, the groom wore a baggy cream suit and the guests wore expressions of mild bemusement.
At the Prime Minister’s wedding celebration, Sweet Caroline had been chosen for the first dance as a romantic tribute to Caroline Johnson, better known as Carrie – but her husband seemed to think he was at an England football match, where the song has become a fan favourite.
His dad-dancing at the couple’s wedding celebration last weekend was more “let’s all have a disco”, as sports crowds chant, than “how can I hurt when holding you”, in the words of Neil Diamond’s song.
The moment, however, was entirely in keeping with the eccentricity of the whole event, held in the middle of a field where guests had no escape from the speeches, the South African street food or the bitching about Rishi Sunak.
It featured slut-drops, congas, rum punch, hay bales, a steel band and Jacob Rees-Mogg, but without an actual wedding for the guests to attend, it was an event that appeared not to know quite what it was trying to be …
The Prime Minister, who had worn a charcoal suit on what was his third wedding day last year, struggled to pull off the Man From Del Monte look, wearing a cream suit with trousers that needed taking up and a jacket that appeared too long for his body.
Mrs Johnson, 34, had greeted guests earlier in the day wearing a £3,500 halter-neck Ruby wedding gown by Savannah Miller, the designer, which she had rented for £25 a day. However, by the time the first dance happened at 8.30pm, she had changed into a shimmering gold mini dress with a plunging neckline that was more disco diva than blushing bride.
Neither she nor the 58-year-old Prime Minister looked comfortable dancing in front of their guests. They may have been relieved when their two-year-old son Wilfred, dressed in a navy blue sailor suit, toddled across to them halfway through the dance and became the centre of attention, as he was twirled around on the hips of his parents …
The event officially ended at 11.30pm, although many guests, with long journeys home, had already left by then.
Ms Johnson said the party was held in “a magical flower-filled field”, but other guests whispered that the party had the vibe of a failed pop festival, complete with portable lavatories …
Before the dancing, the guests were treated to a succession of speeches, starting with Ms Johnson, followed by Carrie Johnson – whose words were “full of affection” for her husband – and finishing with the Prime Minister himself, who stood with one hand in his trouser pocket and the other clutching A4 sheets of notes.
In a defiant and typically joke-filled speech, Mr Johnson told his guests that he had received “masses of letters to resign, mostly from my closest family”, according to The Times.
He went on: “There are many opportunities, which lead to disasters, and disasters can lead to new opportunities, including to opportunities for fresh disasters.”
He also described the mass ministerial resignations that forced him to resign as: “The greatest stitch-up since the Bayeux Tapestry.”
The guest list was light on parliamentarians, partly because so many of them had turned on the Prime Minister only days before. Only the most ultra-loyal Johnsonites received an invitation.
As a former head of communications for the Conservatives, Mrs Johnson knows all about messaging. She was keen to put the word out that her dress was rented, because she is keen to promote sustainable fashion, and that the food on offer was eco-friendly because the catering firm buys its ingredients from local farmers.
But the messaging was somewhat undermined by the reality of the event. Guests arrived in a steady stream of Range Rovers, Rolls-Royces and other gas guzzlers, with some even arriving by helicopter.
By choosing to hold their party in such a rural location, the couple ensured that it had the largest possible carbon footprint. In only a matter of weeks, though, worrying about political mis-steps will cease to be much of a concern for them.
The party — especially with Bray’s presence — would make a great film for television. You could not make this up.
On August 2, Telegraph reporter Rosie Green poured cold water on Carrie’s renting of dresses. I’m including this as a caution for women thinking it’s a failsafe solution: ‘Renting a dress sounds like a good idea — until you face the logistics’.
She went through the process herself, which sounds tiresome:
I book appointments at the places offering “trying on” services (Front Row, Harrods and Selfridges) and let them know which dresses I would like to road test.
At the My Wardrobe HQ pop up concession at Harrods, although the manager was friendly and helpful, disappointingly only one of the four pieces I had requested was there. Then the dress I had loved on screen wouldn’t do up. Hmm.
Thankfully I found another wonderful gown by the same designer which fits beautifully (the same size weirdly). But at £1,861 to buy and with a long train that looked perfect for stepping on I was worried about incurring damage. Another dress I loved had a broken zip …
I leave for my next appointment at Front Row to meet one of its founders and to try on a selection of dresses, but when I arrive at the showroom she is not there and the doors are locked. I am stumped. I can’t get through on the phone. I later discovered she had her handbag snatched by a man on a motorbike. Front Row confirms they’ll send the dresses to my home instead. In the meantime, I get a message from Selfridges saying my requested dress (the only one on the website I found suitable) is not available as it is being repaired. Hmm.
I head home to Oxfordshire a little dispirited. So I start delving deeper into By Rotation and discover that they act as a middle man between the renter and the owner. This means the clothes are kept by their owners and so effectively you are reliant on Sandra from Surrey or Carla from Cheshire posting you their gown. This makes me very nervous.
There’s more, so I’ll skip to the chase:
Then, on the day I’m expecting the My Wardrobe dress to arrive, I’m told I have to pick it up from Harrods. I have a minor heart attack. I tell them I live in Oxfordshire and not only is it impractical but the cost of the return train ticket to London would be more than the rental. They arrange for it to be couriered and it arrives the morning of the event.
According to UPS the Front Row dresses are stuck at the depot. Then they are officially AWOL. Renting has not been stress free. Buying my dress is now feeling like a much more attractive proposition …
… my advice if you’re planning to rent would be to get your choices a few days before you need them. Try them on first, and always have a back-up plan.
Would I hire a wedding dress this way, like Carrie did? No way. My nerves couldn’t take it.
On another cautionary note, provocative dance moves can prove difficult as one ages.
Guido Fawkes found a 2018 Celebrity Big Brother clip with Boris’s sister Rachel boasting about how Liz Hurley taught her one of these dance moves then demonstrating it.
Unfortunately for Rachel, 56, things didn’t go so well with it at her brother and sister-in-law’s party, as she wrote in her Spectator diary of August 6:
The Season has ended and – apart from The Spectator’s summer bash of course – the two bang-up parties of July were discos in the Cotswolds. They do things differently there. At Jemima Goldsmith’s I danced so hard in high heels with a selection of her handsome young swains that I suspect the double hip replacement will be sooner rather than later. At Carrie and Boris’s Daylesford wedding do in a magical flower-filled field we all busted out our best moves. I was taught the slut-drop by Liz Hurley years ago in Nick Coleridge’s party barn in Worcestershire. She demonstrated how to collapse to the floor like a broken deckchair on the count of three. My problem at Daylesford was getting up again – not a challenge shared by my sister-in-law. She could win a Commonwealth gold hands-down in this particular high-risk dance move. I’d kicked off my shoes (to save on physio bills later) but still ripped off a big toenail during the conga. Conclusion: I can no longer slut-drop but I can still name-drop for Britain till the cows come home.
Sometimes I feel as if I live in another world.
Anyway, by early August, the party was over for Boris.
Although he surpassed Theresa May’s tenure at No. 10 on August 5 …
… Boris faces a hearing by the parliamentary Privileges Committee in September, led by Labour’s Harriet Harman.
Note that Boris’s opposite number, Keir Starmer, gets away with multiple violations. Yet, Boris will be quizzed on whether he knowingly — rather than accidentally — misled Parliament over a piece of cake in a Tupperware container:
To make matters worse, Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin is on that committee. He is not one of Boris’s biggest fans:
The topic came up on Dan Wootton’s GB News show on August 8. Nearly 75% of his viewers thought the committee hearing would be a witch hunt:
Panellist Christine Hamilton agreed:
Boris’s supporters among the general public were eager to get his name on the Conservative Party leadership ballot along with Liz Truss’s and Rishi Sunak’s. The fight on that still continues. The best they can hope for now is a change in the Conservative Party rules. I will have more on that in a separate post. The feeling for Boris continues to run deeply among many voters.
On Friday, August 12, a reporter asked Boris why he was not taking calls from Rishi Sunak:
Boris said:
That’s one of those Westminster questions that doesn’t change the price of fish…
He quickly deflected to move the discussion towards resolving the cost of energy crisis and said that the future would be very bright.
On Saturday, August 13, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency, gave an interview on GB News to two of his fellow Conservative MPs, Esther McVey and her husband Philip Davies.
In this segment, he explains why Boris has always had his support, dating back to 2016. His only criticism is that the Government could have handled the economy better post-pandemic:
As for Boris coming back as PM, Rees-Mogg said it was highly unlikely. The Telegraph reported:
“Nobody’s come back having lost the leadership of the party since Gladstone,” Mr Rees-Mogg replied. “And I just don’t think in modern politics, the chance of coming back is realistic.
“Lots of people think they’re going to be called back by a grateful nation which is why Harold MacMillan waited 20 years before accepting his peerage… Life just isn’t like that.”
Rees-Mogg also explained why Boris was hounded out of office:
In the interview, Mr Rees-Mogg claimed that Mr Johnson’s downfall was partly the result of anti-Brexit campaigners – even though a number of Brexiteer MPs, such as Steve Baker, called for his resignation.
Mr Rees-Mogg said: “There’s a lot of people who resent the fact we left the European Union. And therefore to bring down the standard bearer of Brexit was a triumph for them.”
In August, Boris and Carrie took a summer holiday in Slovenia.
He no sooner returned than he jetted off again, this time to Greece, for reasons to be explored tomorrow.
‘No one is remotely indispensable’.
So were the words of Boris Johnson as he stood in front of Downing Street in the early afternoon of Thursday, July 7, 2022, to announce that he was standing down as Conservative leader. He said that he planned to stay on as Prime Minister until a new leader is chosen.
Boris’s resignation speech
The Prime Minister’s speech is just over six minutes long:
Knowing how quickly the leadership contests moved in 2016 (David Cameron to Theresa May) and in 2019 (May to Johnson), we are likely to see a new party leader in place before Parliament’s summer recess. Regardless of what news outlets say, it no longer takes two or three months. The timing — i.e. summer resignations in all three cases — will accelerate because of recess.
Guido has the transcript of Boris’s speech, excerpts of which follow (I’ve put in punctuation, paragraphs and emphases):
It is now clearly the will of the parliamentary Conservative party that there should be a new leader of that party and, therefore, a new Prime Minister and I have agreed with Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of our backbench MPs [the 1922 Committee], that the process of choosing that new leader should begin now and the timetable will be announced next week.
And I have today appointed a cabinet to serve – as I will – until a new leader is in place.
So I want to say to the millions of people who voted for us in 2019 – many of them voting Conservative for the first time — thank you for that incredible mandate, the biggest Conservative majority since 1987, the biggest share of the vote since 1979.
And the reason I have fought so hard for the last few days to continue to deliver that mandate in person was not just because I wanted to do so but because I felt it was my job, my duty, my obligation to you to continue to do what we promised in 2019, and of course I am immensely proud of the achievements of this government …
He went on to list Brexit, the coronavirus vaccine rollout, coming out of lockdown the earliest of any other Western nation and showing leadership with regard to Ukraine.
He clearly regretted that he had to stand down:
If I have one insight into human beings it is that genius and talent and enthusiasm and imagination are evenly distributed throughout the population but opportunity is not, and that is why we need to keep levelling up, keep unleashing the potential of every part of the United Kingdom. And if we can do that in this country, we will be the most prosperous in Europe.
And in the last few days I have tried to persuade my colleagues that it would be eccentric to change governments when we are delivering so much and when we have such a vast mandate and when we are actually only a handful of points behind in the polls, even in mid term after quite a few months of pretty unrelenting sledging, and when the economic scene is so difficult domestically and internationally. And I regret not to have been successful in those arguments and, of course, it is painful not to be able to see through so many ideas and projects myself.
But as we’ve seen at Westminster, the herd is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves and,
my friends, in politics no one is remotely indispensable.
And our brilliant and Darwinian system will produce another leader equally committed to taking this country forward through tough times, not just helping families to get through it but changing and improving our systems, cutting burdens on businesses and families and – yes – cutting taxes, because that is the way to generate the growth and the income we need to pay for great public services.
And to that new leader I say, whoever he or she may be, I will give you as much support as I can and, to you the British people, I know that there will be many who are relieved but perhaps quite a few who will be disappointed. And I want you to know how sad I am to give up the best job in the world, but them’s the breaks.
I want to thank Carrie and our children, to all the members of my family who have had to put up with so much for so long. I want to thank the peerless British civil service for all the help and support that you have given, our police, our emergency services and, of course, our NHS who at a critical moment helped to extend my own period in office, as well as our armed services and our agencies that are so admired around the world and our indefatigable Conservative Party members and supporters whose selfless campaigning makes our democracy possible.
I want to thank the wonderful staff here at Number Ten and, of course, at Chequers and our fantastic protforce detectives – the one group, by the way, who never leak.
And, above all, I want to thank you the British public for the immense privilege you have given me.
And I want you to know that from now until the new Prime Minister is in place, your interests will be served and the government of the country will be carried on.
Being Prime Minister is an education in itself. I have travelled to every part of the United Kingdom and, in addition to the beauty of our natural world, I have found so many people possessed of such boundless British originality and so willing to tackle old problems in new ways that I know that even if things can sometimes seem dark now, our future together is golden.
Thank you all very much.
Boris delivered his speech in a normal, matter-of-fact way, which was good, especially given the circumstances.
Now that he has resigned from the Conservative leadership, some ministers are willing to come back into Government for the interim period.
As such, Boris held a Cabinet meeting at 3 p.m. today:
Those who read my post from yesterday will recall that I had not expected to cover this development until next week at the earliest.
However, yesterday afternoon into this morning was pure political carnage.
Wednesday, July 6
Junior ministerial resignations continued to pour in throughout the day, into the night.
Mid-afternoon, Boris held a second online meeting with Conservative MPs:
Guido has the story (emphases in red his):
In a sign of a continuing effort to hold on to his job, the PM has held a second meeting of Tory MPs in his parliamentary office, just 19 hours after his last meeting. Last night’s turnout was said to be around 80 – today’s turnout is said to have fallen to around 30. A loyalist MP spins that the PM was in a “buoyant mood and keen to get on with the job”. Presumably he was just happy his PMQs slagging was over and done with…
Boris apparently pointed to polls narrowing to “about five points” and left his reduced coterie of supporters under no doubt that “he’s going nowhere… no chance of stepping aside”. We’ll see what the 1922 Committee has to say about that this evening…
Guido’s mole concluded that “Basically the current challenge is all about personality and not policy. It’s a coup attempt before recess” The timetable observation is, at least, objectively correct…
At 3 p.m., Boris appeared for 90 minutes before the Liaison Committee, which is comprised of all the MPs who head Select Committees.
They grilled him on his performance and whether he would resign.
I’ve never seen anything like it. You can watch the proceedings using the link below:
These were the topics of discussion and the names of the MPs questioning him. Sir Bernard Jenkin chaired the session. Conservative MPs Tobias Ellwood and Jeremy Hunt might have their eyes on the leadership. Boris defeated Hunt in the 2019 contest:
All were brusque, including Bernard Jenkin, sadly.
That said, in May, Jenkin did write to the Leader of the House, Mark Spencer, to express his disappointment that some Government ministers were not appearing as scheduled before Select Committees:
The Liaison Committee were vipers. They were on the attack relentlessly.
Boris stood his ground. He reminded one MP that, in 2019, he had more than doubled the number of sitting Conservative MPs:
He also stated that he did not want another unnecessary general election when he had a clear mandate from the electorate to carry out. You can see how nasty Bernard Jenkin got in this short exchange:
Huw Merriman went so far as to send Sir Graham Brady, Chair of the 1922 Committee, a letter of no confidence during the session:
https://twitter.com/PinkGin2022/status/1544696592044810244
Meanwhile, Guido Fawkes and his team were busy updating Wednesday’s list of resignations.
The 1922 Committee was — perhaps still is — considering a rule change allowing for more than a 12-month gap between votes of confidence in a Prime Minister. Pathetic.
Guido has the story (purple emphases mine):
There are some reports that the 1922 Committee may move in the next 24 hours-or-so to dispose of the PM. Bloomberg is reporting that “The Tory backbench 1922 Committee will meet at 5 p.m. Wednesday and will discuss changing the rules to allow another party-leadership ballot. If there is a majority opinion in favor, a ballot could be held as soon as next week.” James Forsyth of the Spectator reports rule change or not, a senior committee member tells him “they now favour a delegation going to Johnson to tell him that it is over and that they will change the rules to allow another vote if he doesn’t quit”.
Guido’s post has a list the 1922’s executive members and whether or not they favour this rule change.
Later on, the 1922 decided not to change the rules — for now — because they will be holding their executive election on Monday, July 11:
Guido reported:
Surprisingly the 1922 executive has decided against changing the rules to allow a second vote of no confidence in the PM. Instead executive elections will go ahead on Monday, 2pm to 4pm.
Critics of the prime minister are organising a slate of candidates who are expected to win a majority of places, given most backbenchers voted to oust Johnson in last month’s vote. They are then expected to endorse a rule change.
During the afternoon, it was rumoured that the Chief Whip, Chris Heaton-Harris, was going to tell Boris that time was up.
Boris was hemhorrhaging support. The resignations were coming thick and fast from junior ministers. This is how it is done. The same thing happened when Labour wanted rid of Jeremy Corbyn as leader:
I used to like most of the Conservative MPs. Given what happened yesterday, I am not so sure anymore.
Those who have gone down in my estimation include former Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch; Lee Rowley; Liam Fox; Red Wall MPs Dehenna Davison, Jacob Young and Jo Gideon; Ed Argar and former Welsh Secretary Simon Hart.
And that’s not counting the rest of them that Guido has named, including those from Tuesday.
The only one I’m willing to give a pass to is Lee Anderson.
The hubris and hypocrisy got worse.
Attorney General Suella Braverman appeared on Robert Peston’s show on ITV that night to announce her withdrawal of support for Boris. I really had expected better of her, especially as Peston has been anti-Boris for years. To add insult to injury, she went on to announce on his show that she would be running for leader:
Cabinet members visit Boris
Just before 5 p.m. a small Cabinet delegation visited Boris in Downing Street.
Guido wrote:
A Cabinet delegation of Nadhim Zahawi, Grant Shapps, Brandon Lewis, Simon Hart and Michelle Donelan are currently waiting in Downing Street to tell Boris the jig is up, and it’s time for him to step down. Kwasi Kwarteng has also reportedly lost confidence. Beginning of the end…
Note Michelle Donelan’s name in that list. Boris had just made her Education Secretary after Nadhim Zahawi moved into the Chancellor’s role.
What did Michelle Donelan do? She resigned after 36 hours in the role:
https://twitter.com/Complyorcry/status/1544953225551515650
Yes, of course, she got a pay out — one of £16,876.25:
The others got pay outs, too. I read that the total for ministers who resigned is over £120,000.
That’s not a Conservative plan, by the way.
That’s how the system works.
The caboose
Just before midnight, the final resignation of the day rolled in, that of Gareth Davies, making him the 35th that day. There were ten more from Monday as well as Michael Gove, summarily sacked. It’s hard to disagree with the person comparing this to Trump:
https://twitter.com/FrozenFingers1/status/1544820680713068544
Michael Gove
It was time for this duplicitous man to go. I never trusted him and never will.
When he turned from supporting Boris in the 2016 leadership campaign to start his own before supporting Theresa May, he stabbed him in both the front and the back.
One thing we have learned during Boris’s premiership is that he — Boris — is one to forgive.
He made Gove part of his Cabinet in various high profile roles.
On Wednesday, Gove decided to tell Boris to resign:
Gove, most recently the Levelling Up minister, was conspicuous by his absence in the House of Commons. He missed Prime Minister’s Questions:
News emerged at 9:30 that Boris sacked Gove — via a telephone call:
I will be very disappointed if Gove returns to a Government role. He is a Scot who, in my opinion, is too young at the age of 54 to appreciate the Union fully, and he does not have the Englishman’s best interests at heart.
I’ve never heard him say anything about England other than to do away with English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) in 2021. As the then-Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, he deemed it unnecessary in Parliament. It was a quick, quiet moment in the Commons. I do wonder why it went unchallenged by English MPs.
Yet, the English are the ones who have been overlooked the most over the past 25 years, beginning with Tony Blair, a quasi-Scot who pumped our Government and media full of many more Scots, e.g. Gordon Brown, to name but one. My apologies to Scottish readers, whom I admire greatly, but it is true.
Christian Calgie from Guido’s team explains that Boris might have sacked Gove because, unlike the Cabinet secretaries who had descended upon him earlier, Gove allegedly told Boris to resign:
By the end of Wednesday, it became clear that Boris was not about to leave:
Guido reported:
Guido has had it confirmed by a PM ultra loyalist that Boris Johnson is not resigning tonight, and is understood to be planning a reshuffle. The news will spark further senior cabinet resignations…
According to reports, Boris sat down individual members of the Cabinet – including those involved in the coup – and cited his 2019 mandate, as well as the belief the government needs to spend the summer focusing on the economy and not a leadership election …
I watched four hours of analysis on GB News on Wednesday, beginning with Nigel Farage …
… and concluding with Dan Wootton, who had a great interview with Boris’s father Stanley Johnson (see the 1 hour 15 mark, or, if the GB News clock shows, 10:21). Stanley is a big supporter of his son, which was heartening to see:
Thursday, July 7
Conservative ministers continued to resign en masse on Thursday morning, July 7.
Guido has a timeline of resignations and other events of the day.
Just before 9 a.m., Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi sent Boris a formal letter requesting his resignation.
Just after 9 a.m., Defence Secretary Ben Wallace — also thought to be a candidate for Conservative leader — tweeted MPs to say that they should make use of the 1922 Committee to get rid of Boris:
At 9:07 a.m., news emerged that Boris agreed to resign as Conservative Party leader. I agree that the next demand from the braying hypocrite hyenas in the media will be a call for a general election. Disgusting:
Guido reported:
Chris Mason has been told the PM has agreed with Graham Brady that he will resign, allowing a Tory leadership race to take place ahead of the Tory Party conference in October. A letter has been written. He’ll quit as Tory leader today. Guido’s frankly not sure how Boris can stay on for the summer with so many ministerial holes in his government…
Perhaps we can get by with fewer ministers, as someone said in Parliament this morning.
I hope that Boris’s Cabinet meeting at 3 p.m. went well.
Not everyone has been happy with the coup so far. Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major is fuming. It’s interesting he never reacted like that about David Cameron or Theresa May:
In brighter news, Boris’s loyal friend from Ukraine rang him with his condolences and thanks:
1457: PM has spoken to Zelensky on the phone. Finished the call by praising him: “You’re a hero, everybody loves you.”
Yes, well, I wished our MPs loved Boris as much as President Zelenskyy does.
Ladies and gentlemen, this was a coup.
It was for a ridiculous reason, too:
Don’t forget: this was ALL ABOUT BREXIT.
More to follow next week.
Churchmouse Campanologist 