Lest we forget that CCHQ was also on the list of locales permitted to host parties, vis a vis the December 14th, 2020 Christmas Party hosted by the Shaun Bailey mayoral campaign.

https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/sta...48429546217475

Question, of course is how long until the Tory Party leadership decides that Boris has become deadwright and decides to dump him.

They have decided.

I guess the question is whether they think he can soak up any more blame or whether he will contaminate the rest.

The only people defending Boris Johnson tonight are George Eustace, Peter Bone and Nadine ******* Dorries.
Imagine how low you would have sunk if that was your line of defence?

Mitch Benn tweeted
@MitchBenn
·
4h
Can’t help but feel a bit irked at all the people who voted for Boris Johnson despite having been warned that he was Boris Johnson suddenly reacting with outrage and indignation upon belatedly discovering that Boris Johnson is in fact Boris Johnson

Jay Rayner tweeted
@jayrayner1
·
4h
As the great Julia Child once said, a party without cake is just a meeting. Johnson’s staffers supplied a cake. Ergo, It was a party.

They got the interior decorator from the other scandal to attend this scandal.

Things are tough when Marie Antoinette shows more social solidarity than the PM.

The UK government is facing an internal rebellion over plans to increase National Insurance payments. These payments are supposed to fund the NHS (though at first they will just pay down some of the Covid debt) - indeed Jacob Rees Mogg has already crowed about the NHS receiving the £350m a week promised six years ago on the side of a bus despite neither the tax nor the funding being in place.

Now the government is facing another squeeze on funding. Inflation has increased the cost of servicing the government's enormous debt. A "fiscally responsible" party would raise taxes - ideally on those most able to pay, the rich - but of course the Conservatives are entirely wedded to the voodoo economic view that the path to national prosperity lies in making sure that wealth and income inequality is as high as possible. :mad:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60117150

Give it 24 hours before calling it. IMO other cabinet members are just waiting to be presented with the right form of wording before stepping in front of the cameras.

I note from Grant Shapps' performance this morning that they seem to be going with the "It was a nice, but misjudged move from his staff but Boris Johnson knew nothing about it" defence.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-6...ost_type=share

Whether they'll make the same defence when it turns out that the evening event wasn't just six close family members adhering to social distancing and instead it was, say, a dozen friends and family meeting indoors/outdoors.

That was what came to my mind too! Appropriate for the Tories. "This is a local country for local people. There's nothing for you here"

It's got so bad that even the Met have decided that they have to be seen to be doing something:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-6...ost_type=share

I'm sure that they'll look in a way that they're guaranteed not to find anything "inconvenient" to either the government or senior police officers. Imagine the furore if it turns out that plod were at one or more of the gatherings. ;)

"We asked the officers concerned for their notebooks covering the period but unfortunately they were all destroyed in mystery fire started by a stray birthday cake candle"

Would it be cynical of me to think it very convenient that Sue Gray's report will be delayed while the Met investigation is ongoing?

I already thought just that.

But I have a long-standing reputation for cynicism (ask a couple of botany lecturers at Sheffield in 1977...).

And another thing: WTAF is Carrie doing at all those "work events"? Carrot Flower Queen and I were never at each other's work things, even though it might have been helpful at times, what with both working in different bits of the NHS. And if your robbing git interior designer is there it definitely isn't work...

And the Met investigation delayed while the Sue Gray report is pending - because Sue Gray will provide the evidence which will form the basis for the Met investigation - and vice versa ;)

Announcement

They've got some combination of Kafka and Joseph Heller in to write the script, haven't they? With Flann O'Brien/Brian O'Nolan/Myles Na gCopaleen in as script consultant.

Tory head saying the Grey report must wait until the police investigation is complete.

So that's it in the 'long grass' until after the council elections then?

I've always been slightly puzzled by this. I understand there can be certain issues with 'interfering' with police investigations, but is there a specific legal issue with Sue Gray's report being published, albeit with some caveats about matters that have been referred to the police. ?

I can understand them not commenting on the actual police investigation, but the issue about not commenting AT ALL on any matter which is being investigated by the police always feels very convenient.

Police investigation could take "up to a year" to complete.

Of course it is. After the police investigation is complete the Grey investigation will have to take it in to account, that will add another few months on to the process.

It's not cynicism in this case. It's more like getting disgusted early to avoid the rush.

Mission Accomplished then. :rolleyes:

As far as people in Westminster care, local elections are neither here nor there. If the Conservatives do okay in the local elections then they'll keep Boris Johnson in post.

If they go badly then they'll ditch him and rebrand.

Sam Coates Sky
@SamCoatesSky
·
18m
Multiple sources confirm Boris Johnson didn’t tell his cabinet of the police investigation *despite knowing before cabinet started the announcement was imminent*
This has caused Cabinet incredulity, I understand.
No10 says it was too “sensitive” to share with cabinet

Boris Johnson has NOT seen what Sue Gray has passed to the Met Police, No10 spokesman said
Asked if Boris Johnson would resign if he’s interviewed under caution, the spokesman said this was a hypothetical
Boris Johnson does not believe he broke the law, his spokesman said
The spokesman wouldn’t repeat that all coronavirus rules were followed at all times

PM willing to speak to police he says. How very gracious of him

That's setting the bar pretty low given that he appears not to have understood what the law was and that he believes that the law doesn't apply to him.

No one told him and he was unable to tune into the No 10 broadcasts detailing the changes to the law as he was working* when they were on.


*'Real work' as opposed to 'cake, cheese and suitcases of wine work'.

Looks like Boris Johnson is relying on a supply of dead cats:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-6...ost_type=share

Sadly, I think that he's right. Another week or so and we'll all be bored of it. Another month or so and we'll have forgotten all about "Partygate" :mad:

This is how they get away with everything wait until the public are distracted by something shiny.

If you ask me, which you didn't, Partygate is the shiny distracting thing. Leaders all over the world have failed to follow their own rules. Boris just acted as Boris always acts. Who in their right mind is surprised that his personal moral rectitude hasn't been a blazing standard to guide the rest of us. It's not as if he has ever seriously presented himself as a moralist. If anybody genuinely supported him before, and is now genuinely turning their back on him on principle over this, then the workings of their mind baffles me.

I can't think of Boris without thinking of a nursery rhyme Private Eye printed years ago:

Oh dear, what can the matter be?
Boris got caught with Anna Fazackerley
They were at it from Monday to Saturday
His wife didn't know he was there.

I've been reading for a few hours now that the Met inquiry doesn't affect the release of the Grey report as the issues relate to fixed-penalty matters rather than criminal ones. Also a number of media sources are expecting the report to be released to #10 tonight and that it could be made public tomorrow.

I still think many of his own MPs will be furious if the report is withheld for a long spell or heavily redacted.

Perhaps but all he would say is "so what"? Now he's bought off the anti-science Tory MPs he can't face a motion of no confidence.

Rishi Sunak accidentally went to Boris Johnson's No 10 birthday event

Apparently he was present when the birthday cake was served but was unaware it was going to happen as he'd gone to the room specifically for COVID strategy committee meeting.

He accidently went to the party thinking it was a meeting, the interior designer accidently went to the party as she wanted to speak to the PM about the wallpaper, Carrie accidently went to the meeting because.?

I can hear him now

"I accidentally entered a room full of drunk revellers singing 'Happy Birthday Big Dog', & spilling cheap beer over me. But I stayed to complete what I would later describe as a strategy meeting. After a slice of delightful cake & a polite amount of champagne, I promptly left."

Meanwhile Johnson was apparently "ambushed by cake"

I am shocked - shocked I tell you - at the appalling state of education provided by Eton and Oxford University!

Someone who attended both and was a member of that well-known party frat, the Bullingdon Club, cannot tell what is a party or not! How can that be?

This graduate of Sheffield and attendee at Durham Johnson School certainly knows a party when he sees one...

Waste of money on Eton and Oxford, eh?

It's not a party unless you've burned a few £50 notes under the noses of homeless people (and Johnson then scrabbles to pick up the ash)

Every single day they defend him, every single "ambushed with a cake" moment and 'thought it was work related' the stench of his lies and corruption sinks deeper in to the Tory Party lackeys.

It's like a smoker's old jacket in a charity shop, the smell won't ever come out.

The smell never did come out, they simply sprayed some Febreze on it, this is simply the tory party being the tory party with a man with no sense of shame at the top.

Go back even 10 years and there would be no way a PM could have stayed in place being investigated by civil servants and the police with such unambiguous evidence.

I do have some sympathy for them, when your life has been nothing but a party it's hard to recognise any separate party from the miasma of his life.