4th December 2021
Here is a tweet to consider carefully, from a British Member of Parliament:
Is this what you you were sent to Parliament to do? Is this what you want the police to spend time doing? Or would standing up for your constituents and letting police fight crime be best use of public money? https://t.co/fJRWsew5Td
— Lucy Allan MP (@lucyallan) December 3, 2021
Let’s separate out the issues here.
First, there is something to be said against politicians reporting each other to the police and seeking prosecutions.
Getting the police involved should not be a a routine part of political activity and party campaigning.
It is, to an extent, distasteful as a partisan tactic.
But second, if there are laws then they do have to be enforced equally.
It may well be that the penalty against parties last Christmas was disproportionate and illiberal.
But it was a penalty that many outside Number Ten incurred.
And so either those penalties for others should all be revoked or the party-goers of Downing Street should be treated the same way.
One does get the sense that those in the government machine regard the laws and rules they impose on the rest of us to be only for the rest of us to comply with.
Third, the Member of Parliament is openly saying that Number Ten should be exempt from police investigation and excused from the deployment of scarce police resources.
That is an extraordinary proposition, if you think about it.
But one suspects the Member of Parliament has not really thought about it – though that, in turn, makes it worrying as a casual aside.
On any view, such a public statement by a Member of Parliament tells us some unfortunate things about the state of our polity as 2021 comes to an end.
Brace brace.
******
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Agree to all of the above, but let’s also throw in another of Lucy’s tweets, and consider the hypocrisy at work here.
On Margaret Ferrier MP – who acknowledged her own Covid wrongdoing AND notified the police – Lucy Allen commented, “…it’s reckless lawbreaking.”
https://twitter.com/lucyallan/status/1311751003545440260
Without wishing to detract from your point, isn’t it likely that any offence that may have been committed is now statute-barred, being a summary-only offence where prosecution must be brought within six months? I haven’t checked, so ther may be a statutory exception.
It could be that to make a confected complaint you are transforming a suggestion for police time to be spent on other priorities into a request for special treatment?
I assumed it might be difficult legally (and Robert+Zara offer[s] a plausible explanation of why), but it does feel as if it should come under the scope of some procedure – possibly parliamentary.
It can’t really be ‘bringing the Government into disrepute’ as that seems to be most of them, but illegal activity – which this surely would be, if proved – on Government premises ought to get a hefty penalty.
As for the question of whether the MP should be responsible for what goes on in Downing Street when he isn’t there: he sets the tone, so yes. I’m not convinced that would have happened on Thatcher’s – or even May’s – watch.
If members of the ruling party are no longer subject to national laws then the country is no longer a democracy.
Indeed: Brace, Brace.
There is a legal basis to argue that there was a conspiracy to commit a summary offence (which as an indictable offence is not subject to the shorter limitation periods associated with summary offences and that met officers in attendance could be committing the offence of assisting or encouraging comission of the conspiracy as well, (cf. https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/inchoate-offences)
… and today, we have the vacuous Mr Raab defending the said party on the basis that it was not a “formal” party. Other leading lights of “the party of law and order” have opined that it was a Shroedinger’s cat party – it may not have taken place, but if it did all of the relevant strictures would have been followed.
I don’t know if these people are simply stupid or if they are working on the assumption that we are. If the police do investigate, one imagines the worst that will happen is a fine will be levied and, no doubt, paid from the public purse. In a very real practical sense, Johnson et al are beyond the law (as shown by his unpunished and very open contempt of court over the Benn Act). Perhaps the best outcome will be a growing public revulsion with them which will sweep them from power at the earliest opportunity.
How low have we stooped and how much lower can we fall before the helots revolt? The self-styled spartans have got it coming sooner or later…….
Downing Street is saying the private individuals resident in, and/or visiting it, should be above those requirements of the criminal law, which it itself stewarded through Parliament using a majority the size of which, on its own, gives rise to huge accountability concerns.
The personal behaviour of the chief executive seems to me one of those areas falling within the scope of activities regulated partly by an in-term accountability function which includes the meaningful threat of losing a Parliamentary vote.
The aura of personal impunity reinforces for me how much a Westminster system which produces big majorities is both a) vulnerable to executive capture and undermining of its accountability functions via the selection of loyal and otherwise largely virtue-deficient Parliamentary candidates; and b) dependent for its accountability function on those (here all too meagre) personal virtues.
Far better to have hung or tiny-majority Parliaments, but in any case there needs to be a way of baking-in that accountability function so it can’t get swept away by the Dumification this episode exemplifies.
Good morn, by “tiny majority” do you mean PR?