28 January 2022
Sometimes things are not straightforward.
And sometimes things just become more complicated.
Today was one of those times.
This morning the Metropolitan Police took it upon themselves to request that the Sue Gray report only makes “minimal reference” to matters in respect of which the police are investigating.
The effect of this intervention may be that the report is published without detail of the more damaging aspects of the Downing Street partying.
This truncated/redacted report may even “clear” the Prime Minister – at least according to his political and media supporters.
There would also be the prospect of the police investigation taking no further action, with the damaging details never being made public.
This is probably more an accident than a design – but the effect is likely to be to potentially cloak the more damaging detail from parliamentary and public view.
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It is difficult to understand the Metropolitan police position.
As breaches of the (obviously relevant) Covid rules are summary only then there is no risk of prejudicing a jury trial.
Perhaps they want to disclose information in their own way in any interviews with suspects – but such investigatory convenience should not be an absolute check.
The world should not be organised entirely for the benefit of the police – especially when they have been tardy.
Perhaps there are more serious offences afoot – the alleged direction that “mobiles should be cleaned” could, depending on circumstances, be perversion of the course of justice – and some are saying (with hope more than expectation) that there may even be grounds for charges for misconduct in public office.
But what makes the police position preposterous is that they delayed investigating at all until the Gray inquiry did the police’s job for them.
And now the police have belatedly decided to do their job, they now wish to interfere with the normal course of public business.
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All this continues to undermine political transparency and parliamentary accountability.
Inquires and investigations often take matters away from the floor of the House of Commons or the press conference, and ministers and their supporters get a rhetorical (and sometimes legal) basis for not answering questions.
“We need to wait for…”
And politicians don’t need much excuse to not answer questions.
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The Metropolitan Police have, of course, an interest in this matter.
The parties took place bang in the middle of no doubt the most heavily policed area of the UK – Whitehall.
And the parties took place while the police were freely handing out huge fines to those breaking Covid rules elsewhere.
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Had the Metropolitan Police investigated this matter properly when it should have done – and there can be no evidence before Sue Gray and her team which is not capable of being ascertained by the Police with their greater investigative powers – then the police would not now be disrupting the publication of a report.
And there is perhaps a lesson here for those who clamour for police investigations of politicians and their circles: be careful what you wish for.
Police investigations do not always go in accordance with wishful thinking.
Sometimes police investigations can pervert the course of public business.
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And when they have investigated No 10 will they investigate their own who were on the door and must have been aware?
Indeed. It is difficult to know how cynical one should be in relation to this latest development.
ps
I do not think that the Met’s intervention is a ‘stitch up’.
(Though it gives the appearance of one.)
The Met are just so used to clicking fingers for their own convenience, they may not have realised the effect of their request.
If so, arrogance here, not corruption.
It’s a difficult one. The Commissioner’s position was untenable after the Morgan Inquiry yet she still hobbles on. How can she survive? As this blog rightly points out these events went on in the most policed area in the UK.
It is either a stitch up or incompetence, neither of which should allow the Met to go unpunished.
Such important points and surely completely predictable for the Met. I just can’t understand them intervening so close to the envisaged publication date. Sue Gray had a difficult enough task before the Met muddied the waters further.
Yesterday there was a suggestion that Labour would table a Humble Address to force the publication of the full report.
Would this supersede (legally/constitutionally) the Met’s request? Could the Met end up trying to get an injunction to prevent the publication?
All the questions are being folded into one. They are all separate with, no doubt, separate explanations, not to investigate, then to investigate, then to ask for limited publication of the report. The question of officers who may have seen the offences committed at the time? Another, separate, question. It would be folly to join the dots into a conspiratorial cartoon (without evidence). Regarding the Met’s request… imagine if they did not make this request and publication did prejudice the investigation. I am sure there would be even greater criticism about them not warning the cabinet. In any case, the PM can take his own legal advice and does not have to agree to the Met’s request.
Parliament is soveriegn: if parliament asks for the report then they should get it, though they will look damned silly if their getting it somehow prevents a proper prosecution of the appropriate parties.
I was going to leave a very cynical comment to the effect that Cressida Dick’s own future is in the balance and that she might be doing Johnson a favour, however cackhandedly.
Now I see DAG’s postscript and pause.
But. (Sic a la DAG.)
Are you sure, David?
The Met has been variously called useless, corrupt, racist, misogynist, homophobic, etc – but can they really be that naive?
And Cressida Dick is deadly if the subject is Brazilian. What a short memory the public has!
It only seems to make sense if publication could prejudice a jury trial. And if there is evidence of serious offences, don’t we have a further political problem – the time lag between charges being brought and a trial taking place? Innocent until proven guilty.
What better way to ensure that all of the suspects have got their stories all straight than a report telling them what their stories need to be?
Though perhaps if they are clever, they could collude with Grey to set a trap…
I think they would have to be *very* clever though: that was one of those idea that seemed good only in the flash that it came in…
There is no way that the Met should be doing this investigation. They should be under investigation themselves as to how blatant infringements of the regulations were somehow not identifed by their officers or were being ignored by their own officers or if reported were not taken seriously at a higher level, or, heaven help us, were being suppressed at a higher level. They should also be investigated as to why, when it was apparent that regulations had been broken they did not then investigate. Their behaviour throughout this whole process is not easily comprehendable. I repeat they should not be carrying out this investigation, it should be handed to another police force.
Thinking a little more, this has gone beyond asking another police force to investigate. The other force’s investigation would need to be supplemented by involvement of some other appropriate, independent legal advice.
And also from whom is the Prime Minister getting his legal advice on what he is saying and doing? And who is paying for that legal advice? It appears that the legal apparatus of the Cabinet Office is being used to protect him personally. At what point does the Cabinet Office (whom it also appears may have been compromised) step back and hand it to the Prime Minister’s personal legal advisors?
Wholeheartedly agree with your points.
Security at Downing Street appears to be shockingly lax.
All it would have taken is a call to another force’s chief con, an offer to pay out of the Met’s purse with terms of reference set by the other force. Done.
It is difficult to conceive why a report by a senior civil servant, intended to swiftly establish a general understanding of the alleged “gatherings” at Number 10, would prejudice any police investigation. Why should there be any further obstruction and delay?
But, look, barely more than 7 months ago, we had a meticulous independent report that concluded the Met was institutionally corrupt, with the organisation roundly criticised for its lack of candour and lack of transparency, prevarication and obfuscation, concealment and denial of failings, at a level tantamount to dishonesty.
The Met is still led by one of the individuals who was picked out for criticism in that report, but they immediately rejected that report (more prevarication, obfuscation and denial) and nothing has changed.
So.
I’m sorry for the irreverance of the following (perhaps we’re long in to farce territory) but after the tone of disbelief with which David wrote the above, I found myself inexplicably drawn to a Twilight Zone version of a “Not The Nine O’Clock News” sketch (for readers of a certain age), with Mel Smyth and Griff Rhys Jones as a couple of uniformed Met officers on duty in Downing Street. Enter from stage right Pamela Stephenson and Rowan Atkinson… Pamela dressed a party frock, covered with ticker-tape and with a martini glass in hand; Rowan in his Mr. Bean suit, dressed like a civil servant, clutching a short. They sidle up behind the two duty officers and rap loudly on the door to No. 10, where the door is opened by Boris, holding a finger up to his lips in the universal symbol for “Sshhh…”. Just as the arrivals step up to enter, Rowan, who can’t resist the temptation, whips out a party blower and fires a full-volume burst in to Mel Smith’s ear. Smith frowns, expressively, applies little finger to agitate imaginary ear wax, turns to Jones and says, “You hear that?” Jones replies: “Hear what?” “Nuffin’, nuffin’…”
Yes, yes, I’ll see myself out.
I am a big subscriber of the “AJP Taylor conjecture” that history is a series of cock-ups rather than conspiracies, yet…. the Met have been inept, bumbling and clumsy… in fact a caricature of Mr Plod. I have argued elsewhere (in the FT) that this investigation should not have been down to the Met, which has a very long and seemingly indelible history of institutional corruption. Instead, like Operation Countryman, (the flawed but sincere effort to examine, uncover and prosecute corruption in the Met in the 1970s), and given the Met have been “guarding” every entrance and exit of Number 10 for years, yet none of this was reported upwards and if it was, was hidden in a dark corner by superiors, that the very suspicion of that means that the investigation should have been undertaken by another Force – Scotland, Wales, even NI Police Force. We need very bright lights shone into some of these dark corners of our polity. The cynics among us will think that Johnson may be happy for this to be endlessly delayed, but the damage to the already shredded reputation of the Met may not sustain many more assaults on what is left of its credibility.
I don’t want to undermine my post above, but it is of course entirely coincidental that Cressida Dick’s dad was Senior Tutor at Johnson’s Oxford College. The study of “friendship and familial relationship networks” was a budding element in the historical study of the dissemination of ideas when I was an undergraduate at TCD a million years ago.
I’m not sure what influence Marcus Dick may have had, as he died in 1971, having moved to become a professor at UAE in 1965, leaving his wife in Oxford (where she was a history lecturer and involved with the development of the new Wolfson College). They divorced in 1968.
If you want to study their “friendship and familial relationship networks” there are interesting connections to explore, involving Isaiah Berlin, and Mary Warnock, and others.
But Cressida Dick was in the first female undergraduate intake at Balliol (1979-1982). She graduated the year before Johnson matriculated in 1983.
I may be somewhat off topic but please forgive me. The apt words are
‘Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive’
but is this all intended to distract from worse than yet another Johnsonian lie … ? I suspect at the very least it helps.
People at the top, including Whitty, Vallance, van Tam, Harries et al, knew by May 2020 – ‘garden party month’ – that this wasn’t a ‘high-consequence infectious disease’. The government itself used this wording on 19 March 2020, although comments in the Daily Sceptic suggested very nefarious reasons for doing so.
Whitty made reasurring and fairly accurate remarks on 11 May 2020 about the disease, clearly forgetting he was on the ‘wrong script’. His thinking reflected the planned policy back in Jan/early Feb 2020, when we would have behaved the same as we did with Asian flu 1957, Hong Kong flu 1968, Russian flu 1977 et al. (The Amish in the USA did so; they all but ignored COVID, except for treating the few who got sick and most of their illness was over by May 2020 with a much lesser flare-up in autumn 2020. But I digress…)
From March 2020 the UK was subjected to a 18 month terror campaign to exaggerate the dangers of COVID-19. It left some traumatised, especially any who used the MSM and did not have the benefit of a sceptical nature and/or a science degree.
Dr. Mattias Desmet, a professor of psychology at Ghent University diagnoses the resulting prevalent state of mind as ‘mass formation’. Read ‘A State of Fear’ by Laura Dodsworth; vent your anger at those in SAGE/NERVTAG who led this campaign and haven’t been held to account. I suspect that Johnson is so uninterested in detail that he left these people to it.
Swine flu/H1N1 2009 demonstrated similar corruption in WHO. The crooks were never booted out. The crooks arguably weren’t politicians but those whom the politicians had appointed to these top jobs; some had unbelievable conflicts of interest.
Many people still seem to think COVID kills ~5-15% of people who catch it. The IFR was 0.05% for under 70-y olds in mid 2020; see papers by Prof J Ioannidis, Stanford Univ. The disease has gone roughly from severe flu to normal flu to a severe cold in 24 months … and it has far less effect than flu on the young to middle-aged, more on the retired and much more on the very elderly & frail in care homes. So why it needed lockdown of working-age adults, let alone univ students/school pupils is beyond me.
Why did those in power rely solely on ‘experts’ whose ‘professional advice’ resulted in the UK pouring ~£400 bn down the toilet? That’s a bigger question than why a few drinks parties for colleagues and partners have erupted into a messy police investigation.
The members of https://www.hartgroup.org make a refreshing change from SAGE, in the sheer lack of vested interests and their openness to any scientific evidence. But AFAIK none of its eminent members or others like them in academia or medicine have been approached for advice by HMG. HMG has only wanted pro-lockdown advice. Funny, isn’t it?
Perhaps the HART group were seen as too fringey, given that members variously came out with like the mRNA vaccines make you magnetic and that the whole programme is a crime against humanity. Tom Chivers wrote an interesting piece on them for Unherd.
Yes Norman, you are correct, it is off-topic and I see no reason to forgive you this indigestible word salad of conspiracy memes
The sheer lack of vested interests? Pull the other one.
Bunga bunga?
It’s definitely a) b) or c)……………………
I agree that this investigation should have been conducted by a force other than the Met, bearing in mind some of their own officers were close to the event – witnesses guarding perpetrators? Will this eventually lead to the Met taking no further action and then yet another complaint, made to the Office for Police Conduct, about the way the Met handled the investigation? This could rumble on for years.
The Met made a big mistake – they should either have become involved at the outset or kept out of the way. Sadly the current situation is the result of keeping an indecisive ‘lame duck’ Commissioner in post! Some of the senior officers under her command must be in despair
I’d guess they wanted to keep out of the way, but they were being challenged by the Good Law Project: was that what decided them to get involved when they did?
Jemima Puddle Dick?
As breaches of the (obviously relevant) Covid rules are summary only . . . is the topic worth the powder and shot?
Police “refusals to investigate” alleged hunting-related offences when there are witnesses willing to testify, video evidence and sometimes other evidence (eg medical / forensic evidence of assaults and squished hounds on railway lines) have consistently been barriers to prosecution in the experience of some “out-groups”. As has the police’s too credulous willingness to investigate alleged offences – repeatedly – against the same members of the “out-groups”, without there being any more evidence than the simple say-so of an “in-group” complainant.
Wouldn’t it be helpful if there were a statutory NATIONAL requirement for the police to investigate ALL alleged offences brought to them that were supported by defined evidential criteria? The only “get out” clause being that a Chief Constable could specifically give permission in writing to fail to investigate a particular offence (though he / she would be held accountable by their Police Committee , Police Commissioner and the Home Office for the decisions they took)?
I can’t imagine a local newspaper not publishing photos of cars forever parked on double-yellow lines at a notorious accident location. Especially if the authorities (police & government) had been repeatedly asked to do something about it.
Why should this be any different ? However embarassing to the same authorities (police & government).
It’s being reported that the Met have “asked” for the most sensitive (and, therefore, the most important) bits to be left out.
Is “asked” a euphemism for ordered, or could Sue Gray reply that she has considered carefully the request and decided that the public interest is better served by asking, in turn, that the Met Arkell v Predrams right off.
There should be a couple of question marks in that. Sorry.
‘It is difficult to understand the Metropolitan police position.’
I find myself in the depressing position of seriously entertaining the notion that favours are being traded between Cressida Dick & Johnson. I hate thinking this way.
Unless we are to believe that a “proper” criminal case will be mounted against one or more of the subjects of Gray’s report, the conclusion by the Met that the covid regs were breached would be met with summary fines levied by the Met itself against those deemed guilty (again, presumably on the strength of Gray’s report). Whilst Ms Gray ought not to be conductiong a “police” enquiry, unless they repeat her investigation (an investigation they have shown no zeal for, despite demands from opposition MP amongst others), they will surely act on its evidence.
Presumably, the names of those fined for covid regulation breaches is (could be) in the public domain, so there seems nothing to be gained by the delay. I cannot believe that the Met would open an indictable investigation so close to government – they have so many other cases involving HMG that they could have taken up already!
Honest Question, as far as i have undestood the Civil Service and the MET are Crown Institutions just like HMG or the UK Courts.
And Mrs Grey as part of the Cicil Service is kind of subject to the PM. My Question is to whom constitutionaly is the MET subject?
I would guess the Queen is not doing the daily business of the Crown, so could it be that the Head of the pivy counsel, the Lord President JRM is the Voice of the the Crown, who tells its Institutions what to do in the name of the Crown. Or are there other Layers of Power of the Crown, which i suerly could have
missed to guide its institutions?
On the ground, who was responsible and who was really in control? If ever there was a time when the junior police commander could influence the behaviour of Downing St tenents by clearing his throat then tilting his head and giving a stoney stare, it was no longer so by Plebgate.
Turn your backs and look outwards gents, we do not control what happens inside.
This passing of control to the politicians and their minions could have happened gradually, coming to a head under President Bojo.
I defense of HM Constabulary in general – and the Met in this specific instance – I think we might have to acknowledge the difficulty of the challenge you set for us.
Even at the height of the most intense lockdown, there were exemptions for “critical workers”. Given that No. 10 is in theory the seat of government, where critical decisions are made (no chortling at the back, please…) then it might be reasonable to expect that the Prime Minister’s core/critical staff would still be required to be present.
So the challenge for the Close Protection teams operating at the No. 10 complex would have been one of trying to figure out – from a list of pre-cleared individuals – who qualified as “essential” and thus required admission to No. 10 at that time.
Even assuming we could prepare in advance and have the foresight to communicate a “cleared” list to the security team, the problem remains – since of course it is entirely possible that those breaking the curfew were all No. 10 workers and part of the “essential” team list.
Slightly “abstracted” from the instant subject, it is apparent that in recent years we have seen a number of incidents that have involved parliamentarians and have also potentially included criminal activity – before the Covid lockdown legislation, we have had both the MP’s Expenses scandal and the “Cash for Questions” debacle.
Mentioning because these prior events rather suggest that, by now, there would be clear and unambiguous protocols in place, between “the Westminster Village” and the Metropolitan Police. What this suggests is that the moment the Prime Minister announced Sue Gray’s investigation, the terms of reference would have made it perfectly clear that she had the scope to unearth potentially criminal behaviour. The *moment* that realisation struck, Sue Gray should have every right to expect that she could simply turn to previously established, well understood and agreed protocols that would have enabled both her and the Metropolitan Police to work together seamlessly.
It should not be necessary for Sue Gray – or anyone else placed in a similar position – to be required to “figure this out”. More importantly, if it was potentially necessary for the Met to get involved, perhaps the investigation should have been turned over to them in the first place?
This all rather aligns with my view that no public official should be able to set the terms of an investigation in to their own conduct. It matters not what the post is or who the individual may be; for the preservation of our confidence in the system of government, there has to be complete independence.
Absolutely, but preservation of power is the reason why this is not the case.
Preservation of power has become the main, even the only motivator. Self above party above voters above country above truth. Right out of the Trump playbook, including the cloak of invisibility that is the claim “we have a moral duty to keep the other lot out”. No you don’t, your duty is to serve. Passed the need to brace, prepare to eject …