How the mighty have fallen, after weeks of speculation over the outcome of the Commons Privileges Committee investigation into Boris Johnson finding what we suspected all along, that he did indeed mislead Parliament and commit other offences besides. Add to that contempt of Parliament for the way he disrespected and abused them, using the furious language of the victim card playing narcissist finally found out and publicly disgraced (‘witch hunt’, stitch up, kangaroo court’ etc – parroted endlessly by his deluded allies). The ‘devastating’ report concluded that Johnson deliberately misled parliament when he repeatedly said that either no Covid rules were broken, or that he had been assured none were broken; deliberately misled the committee by repeating those lies; breached confidence by leaking parts of the report in advance when he resigned on Friday; impugned the committee and by extension undermined the democratic process of parliament and was complicit in the ‘campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the committee’. As Ian Hislop said on Have I Got News For You: ‘Boris Johnson lied at the time to the Commons, he lied about lying later, he lied about whether he lied about the lie, he lied at every point, and ended up calling the Committee liars.’
Not only this but Johnson could be found in further contempt on account of sixteen more gatherings currently being investigated and he’s in yet further trouble for not having consulted ACOBA (Advisory Committee on Business Appointments) in advance of taking up the Daily Mail job. No worries, though, the lying charlatan will have reckoned, as this body has no teeth so isn’t in a position to sanction him. ACOBA has been in the news for good reasons, though: it rejected a government attempt to get Keir Starmer’s appointment of Sue Gray as his Chief of Staff delayed for 18 months. They recommended 6 months of ‘gardening leave’ and she will start in the Autumn.
Downing Street officials confirmed that Covid compliance was ‘a pantomime’ and 4 pm ‘wine time’ Fridays had continued during lockdown and now we have the very damaging footage, posted on the Mirror’s website yesterday, of a party underway in December 2020 at Conservative Party HQ. The party giver, then mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey, is en route to the House of Lords. Surely this shouldn’t be allowed to go ahead now. We also have to ask ourselves why has this footage only emerged now and what else is lurking behind the scenes to be released at an opportune moment?
But what I recall from Johnson’s appearance before the Committee was Chair Harriet Harman’s shocked expression which she couldn’t/didn’t disguise on discovering after repeated questioning (and why had no one done this before??) that the ‘assurances’ Johnson allegedly received that no rules were broken were just from communications staff, ie political appointees rather than officials speaking on authority, therefore ‘flimsy’, as she put it. Not to mention the cynical distancing of this language, heavily implying that the speaker was not present. The Committee said ‘The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the prime minister, the most senior member of the government. He misled the house on an issue of the greatest importance to the house and to the public, and did so repeatedly’. This is what the relentless and deluded Johnson apologists don’t seem to get – the magnitude of his offences as PM and the damage inflicted on the democratic process. Simon Clarke was amongst those tweeting their apparent shock at the findings: ‘I am amazed at the harshness of today’s report by the Privileges Committee. I believed Boris before and I believe him today. This punishment is absolutely extraordinary to the point of sheer vindictiveness, and I will vote against this report on Monday’. At a time when so many collusive media interviewers give Tories an easy ride, it was good to see how Victoria Derbyshire made mincemeat of Brendan Clarke-Smith on Newsnight. Well worth catching up with if you haven’t seen it.
David Garfinkel, a spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, said: ‘It’s an utter tragedy that Johnson was in charge when the pandemic struck and he should never be allowed to stand for any form of public office again. His fall from grace must serve as a lesson to other politicians to act with honesty and to serve the public as a whole, that is the only positive that can come from this’.
It’s interesting that, sensing support leaking away and later telling his allies not to stand up for him at Monday’s vote in Parliament, the original sanction would have been 20 days suspension from the House and what made it 90 days was his disrespect and abuse of the Committee, which, alarmingly, resulted in additional security being arranged for the members. Of course, his cowardly resignation means he won’t have to face these measures but there are others. Many of us now believe that his Parliamentary pass should be removed and he shouldn’t be allowed to stand for Parliament again. There’s been plenty of flak directed at Rishi Sunak for yet more weakness in remaining silent about the report and the Monday vote.
What’s almost as interesting is a separate report, due within a fortnight, on the MPs (including Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg) who may have committed contempt in a ‘sustained attempt, seemingly coordinated, to undermine the Privileges Committee’. As we know, Dorries is already hopping mad, claiming to be ‘heartbroken’ at not getting the peerage she was expecting, and is making even more of a fool of herself by demanding WhatsApp messages and other communications relating to this decision when she has no clout to make this happen. As for Rees-Mogg, the self-assured act on his GB News show might be somewhat dented by a report sanctioning him for contempt of Parliament – he who is so keen on quoting chapter and verse of parliamentary process.
It seems very likely that the Committee’s recommendations will go through as numerous cowardly Tory MPs are expected to abstain in the free vote because they don’t want to be seen either as allying themselves with Johnson or risking the wrath of their local associations either. Allies of Johnson are even thought to be targeting those endorsing the report for deselection. It will be interesting to see how far they get with that because ‘a snap YouGov survey of more than 3,000 adults on Thursday suggested nearly seven in 10 believed Johnson knowingly misled parliament. That included just over half of voters who backed the Tory party under Johnson in the 2019 general election’. This Monday vote will surely be a fitting present for Johnson on his 59th birthday.
Commentators have naturally had a field day, including Polly Toynbee, who surely gets it in one. ‘This was indeed the “worst” prime minister, the most unfit and yet, terrible though it is to admit, probably the most important. His short term in office has left the deepest and most enduring legacy that will scar the history books when other leaders are long forgotten. No other prime minister in my lifetime has inflicted such permanent and crippling damage, dividing and diminishing the nation with a Brexit he didn’t even care about.’
Another worth reading is Jonathan Freedland, who looks at the wider picture of three populist downfalls (Johnson, Trump and the recently deceased Berlusconi) and who reminds us of why this is important (those still adhering simplistically to the ‘cake’ scenario take note): ‘But the damage is great all the same. For both Trump and Johnson are, like Berlusconi in his pomp, tearing away at something precious. It might sound hyperbolic, yet it is not only democracy but civilisation itself that rests on our acceptance of the rule of law… We accept it instead as a system that transcends us and to which we are all subject. It is the only way we can get along, the only way we can live ordered lives. The alternative is brutal violence and competition: the law of the jungle’.
Equally serious but witty with it is Marina Hyde, who observed: ‘The Johnson household will soon effectively contain four babies of various sizes, with the 58-year-old one currently going through what nanny might call “a difficult stage”…Tory MPs need to stop running and face up to what their party enabled, and at least make some profoundly belated attempt to acknowledge that and do the right thing. The parliamentary Conservative party in the majority showed appalling judgment on Johnson, despite mountains of indications it would turn out badly…Anyone who couldn’t see that Boris Johnson would end up behaving like Boris Johnson to the vast detriment of the country and its democratic institutions is too stupid and naive to be in politics’.
As the polarity between those condemning Boris Johnson and those still defending him still continues, we have to wonder what planet the apologists are on and why are they sticking rigidly to their defensive stance despite such substantial evidence to the contrary. I suspect a mix of three reasons: they’re too proud after all this time to change their view; they still don’t understand (or pretend not to) that Johnson’s lies and damage he’s inflicted on the country are catastrophic; they’re just as dishonest and cynical as him but aren’t up to adopting Johnson’s tactics.
Meanwhile, in the real world outside Westminster…… you wouldn’t think, would you, given the amount of time and energy taken up with this disgraceful pantomime, that there is a country to run, one mired in debt, inflation, poverty and strikes, not to mention filthy waterways. Heaven knows what those outside the UK are thinking of us. It’s not only the Boris Johnson affair, though that is bad enough, but the Covid Inquiry, where the authority of the Chair, Lady Hallett, is still being challenged by the Cabinet Office refusing to release potentially incriminating WhatsApp messages, even taking the government’s own inquiry to judicial review on this issue. The initial stage is focusing on pandemic preparedness: the Inquiry, which will last till 2026 and cost over £100m, will seek answers to crucial questions around what went wrong with government and health systems responses – this should inform future strategy.
A shocking but unsurprising initial finding is that the government was preoccupied with Brexit when it should have been pandemic planning. Another was the government’s defensively controlling centralised approach and refusal to involve local public health teams – absurd. ‘Meanwhile, lawyers for council directors of public health, who have expertise in handling infectious disease outbreaks, said they were “repeatedly excluded” by central government. The Department of Health and Social Care didn’t have an up-to-date contact list for them, and at the start of the pandemic they found out about new policies only through televised Downing Street 5pm briefings’. The Inquiry also issued a worrying chart of the very fragmented health and social care organisational infrastructure, which must have contributed to the crisis.
And here’s another example of the use of distancing language we’ve seen with Johnson and his ‘assurances’, Matt Hancock telling the Inquiry: ‘On coming into post as Health Secretary, I was advised that the UK was a world leader in preparations for the pandemic. It did not turn out to be the case’. Surely he should have been more aware himself rather than just relying on ‘advice’.
Forever weak Rishi Sunak allowed Johnson’s resignation honours to go through, including some absurd examples bringing the entire system into further disrepute. Included are a knighthood for Rees-Mogg and a peerage for a 29 year old very junior Downing Street staffer (Charlotte Owen) whose experience and achievements come nowhere near justifying this award. Of course plenty have speculated as to the nature of the services she performed for Johnson.
Added to this we had the King’s birthday honours, though many of these are a damn sight more justifiable. The whole system needs reforming: it’s getting to the point where soon there will be no one who doesn’t have one honour or another. These individuals will be the exception rather than the rule.
The UK is in a dreadful mess (Prince Harry had it right when he said in court recently that the UK press and government were at ‘rock bottom’) and many are ‘terrified’ about increasingly unaffordable mortgages, but yesterday we had another bit of pricey pageantry of the kind we’re so good at in the form of the Trooping of the Colour ceremony, including the massive fly past over Buckingham Palace. Similar for the Coronation pantomime, if this isn’t a shameful example of ‘all fur coat and no knickers’ I don’t know what is. The Tories are in constant blame mode and there’s been a growth in disrespectful labelling of civil servants, teachers and others as ‘the blob’ rather than blaming their own rudderless regime. We may well have to wait till after the next election but it’s been suggested that in order to tackle institutional resistance (eg within the civil service) minister should be able to make political appointments to the service. This sounds rather a dangerous development.
Although I still come across people unaware of the mass sewage dumping around the British coastline, many would-be visitors will surely be deterred from the customary seaside trip during hot weather. But now it’s going even further, taking away people’s livelihoods. Just one example is a Scarborough surfing business owner having to shut up shop because of the repeated red flags appearing on local beaches. ‘But here and across the country, just as Britain’s beaches should be filling up, sewage and pollution are shutting them down. The figures are alarming. Between 15 May and 30 September last year, sewage was dumped into designated bathing waters more than 5,000 times. There were an average of 825 sewage spills every single day into England’s waterways in 2022’. Vastly overpaid water company CEOs talk blithely about their investment in infrastructure, but it’s surely very clear that water should never have been privatised. It’s a horribly exploitative and damaging business model. ‘Meanwhile, the sewage keeps coming. A massive discharge near Blackpool on Tuesday comes after 69,000 such events last year across the UK’s north-west from United Utilities. Yet the company still found the money to pay £300m in dividends to shareholders’.
If Nadine Dorries does actually resign, Rishi Sunak will soon face the headache of four by-elections, with possibly more to come. The latest Tory MP to resign is David Warburton, who had the Tory whip removed in April 2022 due to drugs and harassment allegations. It’s incomprehensible how MPs are allowed to resign ‘with immediate effect’ or so long after their suspension, leaving their constituents unrepresented. Surely this is another parliamentary procedure which needs changing.
Predictably, there has been widespread reporting of Boris Johnson’s first Mail column, where he wrote about his unsuccessful experience of the weight loss injection regime. No surprise there, as drugs such as Wegovy can only ever be short term: they don’t get to the social and emotional root causes of overeating, which require psychological work. Johnson’s experiment has coincided with the government’s bullish announcement of a £40m pilot scheme to trial this drug – again a typical Tory short-term measure. ‘Prescriptions are already limited by Nice to two years because no data is yet available on the drug’s long-term impacts. Side-effects include fatigue, dizziness, nausea and vomiting’. How typical of lazy Johnson to tackle his weight using least effort, he who’s now known to be taken by car part of the way on his photo opportunity jogging sessions.
On a brighter note, although we keep hearing that intensive farming and other activities have decimated the UK bird population, it was great news to learn that skylarks a making a recovery from a 75% decline, growing by 10% during the last five years and in some areas by 20%. I saw and heard skylarks for the first time last summer (on the East Lothian coast), a delightful experience it would be great to repeat.
Finally, the cost of living crisis has brought about some interesting developments (at least it seems to be the reason besides the pandemic being cited)….. for example the boom in ice cream parlours. ‘Ice-cream parlours are usually associated with a trip to the seaside but they are coming to a high street near you as a mixture of nostalgia and convenience puts sundaes and posh gelato on the menu all year round. The number of parlours on high streets in England, Scotland and Wales has soared in the past two years, with the tally rising by more than 200 to 1,015, according to analysts the Local Data Company (LDC). The charge has been led by independents as local neighbourhoods benefit from more custom after working and shopping patterns were altered by the Covid pandemic’. I think one parlour owner makes a good point about serving it ‘in a lovely chilled sundae glass’ as the container of any consumable makes a big difference to the experience. It could be less good news for ice cream vans serving the 99, though: launched by Cadbury in 1930, it’s now under threat because the trademark chocolate flakes are now produced in Egypt (!) and they’re too crumbly, often arriving in bits. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Cadbury does to remedy this problem!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 