Boris Johnson!

Although now he wants us to keep paying the bills but just not have the cabinet office as the client.
Hopefully they will tell him to piss off.
Either he gets it paid for by the taxpayer and the taxpayer via the cabinet office gets to review it or he pays it himself (well I say himself more likely he will sponge it from someone anyway).

Its an absolutely delicious irony that if he’d payed his own legal fees instead of getting us mugs to foot the bill, none of this about the Chequers piss ups would ever have come to light

Yes, but we all know that Johnson was living day-to-day doing whatever was the easiest thing to get to 24 hours hence.

It’s a true mark of his disdain for us that he couldn’t even be arsed to plan properly for his lies.

But we elected him, so go figure…?

more likely he will sponge it from someone anyway

I hear Dodgy Dickie Sharp does a nice sideline in off the record financial advice.

This is nicely done:

This is absolutely on fire by @maitlis on Boris Johnson’s culture of lying

– and Guto Harri’s blithe willingness to be part of it. ?pic.twitter.com/dYoRndZVTQ

— Mike Galsworthy (@mikegalsworthy) May 26, 2023

And it’s the critical point when you are dealing with habitual and casual liars like Johnson. The small lies, taken in isolation, seem trivial and not worth bothering about. But they point to a failure of character which will lead to bigger and bigger lies, about things that really do matter.

It is why ‘character’ should still be important when we are assessing politicians. If you lie to your spouse, or to your boss, you’ll lie about anything.

Also, Guto Harri seems a bit washed up and desperate. He knows he pinned his colours on a moral black hole in Boris, and now he can’t get free and faces oblivion. Shame.

I don’t know who’s done this for Newsthump, but its absolute genius

Bottom centre, is that Ginger Spice?

Bottom centre, is that Ginger Spice?

Nah that’s Truss complaining that we took her budget the wrong way surely?

This is nicely done:

That is simply fantastic. Emily Maitless let loose is a thing to behold

Fab twitter thread #aweekintory

I don’t like it.
You don’t like it.
The Tories definitely don’t like it, cos the **** keep blocking me.
But it’s happening anyway.

Brace, brace, for #TheWeekInTory?

(and remember to click "show replies" if the thread cuts off)

— Russ Jones (@RussInCheshire) May 26, 2023

favourite quotes

“Iain Duncan Smith, a child’s drawing of sublime idiocy superimposed onto a competitively evil gonad

“Jacob Rees-Mogg, a zombie Jarvis Cocker made entirely out of string cheese

“Nadine Dorries – Johnson’s very own Greyfriars Bobby who has made it halfway to being an idiot savant

“Rishi Sunak, Britain’s first known spine donor

made it halfway to being an idiot savant

🙂

Revelations coming in the Sunday papers about who was at Johnson’s Chequers parties during lockdown

Meanwhile the fruitloops still loyal to Johnson are doing their best to trash the party for Sunak

UPDATE: PM’s team say the topic of honours full stop — peerages and other awards such as knighthoods too — are not up for discussion.

So Johnson believes conversation with Sunak will relate to a matter which the latter is, er, expressly refusing to discuss.

??? https://t.co/TUbikEOlnx

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) May 27, 2023

Once we have Blojo’s honours list out of the way an equally / more controversial one comes around the corner.

Rotten bastards.

I wish this lot had as much interest in their alleged day jobs – actually running the country – as they do with plotting and scheming against each other.

It’s actually all they seem to do nowadays

Apparently Liz Truss is about to re-enter the rats-in-a-sack race with a stint on GeeBeebies too.

You couldn’t make it up

If it is true, as alleged here, that Oliver Dowden was responsible for the latest misleading leaks from the Cabinet Office against Boris then he is simply unfit to be Deputy Prime Minister and should pay the price. Dom’s Patsy? pic.twitter.com/qXi20fHgw9

— David C Bannerman (@DCBMEP) May 27, 2023

Johnson has until 4 o clock today to hand over his communications and diaries to the covid inquiry

The cabinet office is saying it won’t do so as they have deemed them ‘not to be relevant’

The sheer arrogance of it that Boris Johnson thinks he should be the arbiter of what is and isn’t relevant to a public inquiry?

Par for the course though. Did anyone expect anything different?

Because nothing says ‘I’m innocent’ like suing your own inquiry to avoid sharing unredacted diary entries…https://t.co/vU8IeR2OVq

— Marina Purkiss (@MarinaPurkiss) May 29, 2023

Johnson has until 4 o clock today

I don’t think anyone thinks they’ll be handed over today at 4 do they? Thing is, it would appear that Boris’ diaries and WhatsApp appear to implicate the rest of the then government in failing to pay any attention whatsoever to the rules that they expected everyone else to follow, so I expect that the Tories will actually put up a pretty well co-ordinated campaign to make sure these don’t get into the public domain.

I expect that they contain all manner of incriminating evidence of both rule-breaking but also biblical levels of incompetence, implicating pretty much everyone in government.

They know that this issue (rightfully) still causes genuine anger amongst the electorate and they’re obviously desperate that this stuff isn’t made public.

I don’t know about you, but if I was conducting an inquiry and somebody was insistent that a tranche of evidence was ‘of no relevance’ and they were going to previously unprecedented lengths to stop me seeing it, I’d be suspecting thats where the bodies are buried

so I expect that the Tories will actually put up a pretty well co-ordinated campaign to make sure these don’t get into the public domain.

100% agree thetyll fight tooth & nail to keep it buried, they’re being squeezed by general public on COVID incompetence & corruption as well as from the GBNEWS conspiracy clowns, who would otherwise be their normal fanbase

I don’t know about you, but if I was conducting an inquiry…

Indeed, the harder they claim that these should remain private, the harder I’d push to have them released.

Deadline extended to Thursday now…so even more time to delete/destroy or create more confusion and mince.

Well, it turns out that Tom was right again… if he was talking about what Johnson would be doing in the 2020s, rather than the UK population more generally…

If Boris wins, the 20s are going to be so roaring. ???? pic.twitter.com/gJthr6cTlq

— Tom Harwood (@tomhfh) December 10, 2019

I expect that they contain all manner of incriminating evidence of both rule-breaking but also biblical levels of incompetence, implicating pretty much everyone in government.

They know that this issue (rightfully) still causes genuine anger amongst the electorate and they’re obviously desperate that this stuff isn’t made public.

I don’t know about you, but if I was conducting an inquiry and somebody was insistent that a tranche of evidence was ‘of no relevance’ and they were going to previously unprecedented lengths to stop me seeing it, I’d be suspecting thats where the bodies are buried

It absolutely stinks of a full-on cover-up being undertaken and it’s so obvious they are doing so then the bodies that are buried must be either so numerous that it genuinely takes this long to bury them all or they really don’t care that everyone knows it is what they are doing!

One thing that has concerned me though is that for every company I have worked for they have always had it in my contract that they have the right to inspect any correspondence that involves work. When requested it must be handed over promptly and that any correspondence should be done by work emails, phones etc anyway. How does this lot get away with having secret channels of communication that they can hide and lose/doctor? That alone smacks of incompetence, especially in the security services who protect them.

The cabinet office is saying it won’t do so as they have deemed them ‘not to be relevant’

Shame that decision isn’t theirs to make. There seems to be very little reason to withhold the material, the Inquiries Act is fairly clear cut on all of this.

Deadline extended to Thursday now…so even more time to delete/destroy or create more confusion and mince.

This is documentation already handed to thecpolice, isn’t it? If they didn’t have it, why have they fought scrutiny?

This has a mild End Of Days feel about it – we live in hope…

Being a bit dumb here. How do we know what is released is actually a proper log of the messages? They clearly don’t come direct from the source. So is there an audit trail from WhatsApp that is cross checked. Or does someone just type them in Word and say yep, that’s what was in the message?

Tories also now seem to saying its about personal privacy. Which I find a bit funny as the party who is pushing the Online Safety Bill.

The cabinet office is saying it won’t do so as they have deemed them ‘not to be relevant’

The cabinet office is also trying to say that they haven’t kept all of them anyway as they don’t routinely keep copies of private messages. It can’t have it both ways, they’ve either seen the messages and judged them irrelevant, or haven’t kept them and don’t know if they’re irrelevant or not.

It looks like they’ve finished destroying all incriminating evidence. From the Guardian just now…

Downing Street says there is ‘no requirement to record every single communication’

Downing Street has said there is no requirement to retain every WhatsApp message after the Cabinet Office told the Covid-19 inquiry it does not hold all of the evidence requested surrounding Boris Johnson.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “We do not permanently store or record every WhatsApp.

“The substantive and relative content, including decision making, is copied across to the official record in appropriate format for preservation.

“We wouldn’t, as is standard, retain irrelevant material. There’s no requirement to record every single communication for the public record.”

Sunak’s spokesperson added: “It is down to individuals to decide what personal information they are able to hand over, but there is a process for the government-owned material.

“There’s a distinction between government-owned material, that would need to be disclosed by the government, if it was their own personal information, then obviously they are able to make a judgment.”

Sunak and Johnson are also not meeting or due to speak this week, despite previous reports claiming they were due to do so.

Ahh, that kind of answers my question. What is being handed over is not WhatsApp messages. Its a record of some WhatsApp messages that may or may not be relevant to the running of the country depending on if the sender wants them to be.

Totally transparent 😉

Surely all they have to do is delete any dodgy messages from their account? Would only take a few minutes especially if it was done on the PC web app.

Then let them log in to your account on the web app and see the rest of the stuff.

And to think, poor old Dick Nixon had to listen to hours of himself ranting and raving to find the bits he needed to delete. Different times.

Then let them log in to your account on the web app and see the rest of the stuff.

Yeah, but then they would see the missing messages in a conversation and the other people involved in it and be able to get the conversation from them. Or, if it was criminal, request the logs and data from Meta which would show the timestamp, device and user doing the deleting. I’m not a lawyer, but that deletion of evidence during what is/might be a criminal investigation and after requesting the data, may be seen as obstruction of justice, which is a criminal offence.

That’s leaving aside the use of personal communications channels for official government business to avoid scrutiny (which is against the ministerial code?) and the use of non-E2E encrypted services for official government business.

I’m not entirely clear why it’s the Cabinet Office being held out here – they will only do what their political masters tell them.

The sensible thing would be for everything to be handed over to the enquiry unredacted and for the enquiry to redact anything that is not relevant. I mean, that’s what the Official Secrets Act I signed is for, shirley.

I suspect that Boris’s diary went:

14:00 Francesca
15.00 Svetlana
16.00 Valerie
Etc
Etc

The sensible thing would be for everything to be handed over to the enquiry unredacted and for the enquiry to redact anything that is not relevant.

Up until this gang of shysters arrived on the coat-tails of Brexit, I think most people would just assume that would be what happened with this kind of thing

Not any more. Now its the polar opposite. You just expect them to do everything in their power to ensure that that absolutely doesn’t happen.

They don’t do accountability

For good reason

The sensible thing would be for everything to be handed over to the enquiry unredacted and for the enquiry to redact anything that is not relevant. I mean, that’s what the Official Secrets Act I signed is for, shirley.

That’s not how a Public Inquiry works though. In theory if evidence is tendered to the Inquiry it will be held in public and / or published unless the witness requests redaction or secrecy and this is agreed by the Chair. Openness is the norm and redaction the variation – hence the name Public Inquiry. The bar for redaction is usually quite high, it is clearly explained in the act, and usually it requires the witness to show a real risk of harm – not it’s a secret or confidential or I don’t want people to know but why publication will cause real harm. The Inquiry team won’t know what needs to be redacted that’s why it is up to the witness to apply. The inability to demonstrate harm is also why Johnson et al are on a bit of a sticky wicket (IANAL)

Should we assume this goes way beyond Johnson now, and move this chat to the thread about the enquiry? Is there one?

EXCLUSIVE: Bloomberg has obtained written legal advice from the government‘s top lawyer Sir James Eadie KC to the Cabinet Office

It advises them NOT to hand over “politically sensitive” material about ministers’ private discussions to the Covid inquiryhttps://t.co/7FCiG4X7r9

— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) May 30, 2023

Eadie’s legal advice against disclosure: "That material will concern a number of Ministers still in office, and potentially in the same office. On any view, it will be extremely recent and of the greatest political sensitivity."https://t.co/7FCiG4X7r9

— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) May 30, 2023

[ non-Twitter link to article ]

Presumably as when we see their private WhatsApp discussions we’ll realise just how Bunga Bunga this whole government really is.  Any other country would have torched the Houses of Parliament by now…

Should we assume this goes way beyond Johnson now

Sunak and Johnson absolutely despise each other, as do their respective teams of toadies. They would do anything to undermine each other and never miss an opportunity to do so

Yet on this they’re in absolute unison. Rishi’s people are parroting the exact same line as the fly-tipped sofa and his nodding dogs. They’re as determined as he is to see this stuff isn’t made public.

That would suggest he’s as much to fear from this, if not more, than Johnson.

Why is this man still being touted as a possible electoral saviour?

Where are the worlds best Hackers when you need them?

I expect that they contain all manner of incriminating evidence of both rule-breaking but also biblical levels of incompetence, implicating pretty much everyone in government.

“incompetence & corruption”

Well nobody saw this one coming, eh?

Sunak accused of trying to cover up ministers’ actions during pandemic https://t.co/6pOtnGRUsl

— The Guardian (@guardian) May 30, 2023