18th January 2022
It somehow keeps on getting worse.
Watch the Prime Minister’s interview today with Beth Rigby of Sky News in full:
In essence, the Prime Minister said he did not know what was happening in front of his very eyes was breaking the rules – because nobody told him.
He was head of the government that made the rules.
He gave press conferences and told the House of Commons about the rules.
If anyone had to know the rules – which were then unprecedented in peacetime – it would have been the head of the government formulating, implementing and enforcing them.
But he says he did not know that rules were being broken – for twenty-five minutes and in front of his face.
And this matters – and not just because of the current political drama.
At the same time as the Prime Minister’s drinks party, individuals up and down the country faced criminal liability for breaking coronavirus regulations.
We did not have the leisurely weeks of a Sue Gray investigation so as to ascertain if they broke the rules.
We had to make instant decisions.
And if we did not make the right decisions, the police had in turn to make their own instant decisions.
Everyone was expected to understand and follow the rules.
The situation is – utterly, literally – ridiculous.
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Not just a denial, but a categorical denial. Can someone explain the difference? Similar to an implicit understanding?
Depends on the ‘category’? Or does ‘categorical’ work like ‘clear’ in that actually it means the opposite of what the speaker intends (i.e. ‘categorical denial’ = definitely lying/definitely true)?
surely the difference is that “categorical” is always in opposition to “hypothetical”. To make a categorical statement is to say that it is true REGARDLESS OF ANY OTHER STATEMENT’S BEING TRUE OR FALSE. In contrast, a hypothetical statement’s truth depends on the truth of its antecedent statement, eg “If (but only if) it is sunny tomorrow, I will go to the beach”.
Johnson is clutching at straws here. It is completely unedifying. His authority has been completely shot by these events. How can he continue to lead the country. This has become a massive distraction which feels as if it has been running for weeks now..
So what is it that we are being distracted from?
isDealing with the economic crisis caused by fuel increases and rising inflation enough to be going on with?
It’s more than enough for a lower income family like ours. My power bills have gone up around £100 per month.
That’s £100 a month we don’t have for food, clothing etc.
It hurts.
I think we’re at the ‘Good Will Hunting court scene’ level of exasperation with his excuses and evasions to avoid his obvious impending punishment (though perhaps without Will’s encyclopaedic memory of legal precedent / mental agility).
I’m just waiting for Sue Gray to announce she’s had enough. “You held a party, you’re going in”
What is astounding is that, at that time, he should have known the rules and been able to make a simple mapping between the rules and the situation before him. But no – probably on either task he fails. On both, he is just useless. How can we possibly believe that he can make complex decisions that affect our lives, our security and the future of the state?. Hopeless.
How Rigby kept a straight face when he said that he went back to the office and got on with his work is beyond me.
What work?
Looking at restrictions, perhaps?
I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee I’m the leader
I’m the leader
OK what shall we do?
~Roger McGough
Great comment on Johnson. How true. Goes with the ‘toddler haircut’. (John Crace)
There is somehow something very appropriate about Johnson’s time as PM ending in such farcical circumstances. Very much in keeping with his style of government. Most PMs leave office to the sound of booing. Johnson got the booing while he was in office, and will leave to the sound of laughter.
Presumably he is now focusing on getting through to the end of the day in the hope that some scrap metal merchants will visit Tristan da Cunha.
Or some other helpful crisis arrives.
Events, dear boy, aren’t always unhelpful.
Though it’s hard to think of an event which would get him out of this hole.
(Eyes the Ukraine nervously)
Raab said Johnson did nor deliberately lie.
Perhaps, but did he just lie?
“Nobody told me not to use the nuclear weapons…” Questions of basic competence and fitness for office perhaps? (Understatement online whilst IRL I’m screaming)
Gosh.
Who’d have thought it?
Halfway through the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom uttered the following memorable phrase:
“I can’t imagine why it would have been allowed” ,
A classic example of why editors discourage the use of the passive voice: because it muddied who is responsible.
In the active voice the phrase (as used by the UK Prime Minister in respect of happenings in 10 Downing Street) would have been:
“I can’t imagine why I allowed it”
Which seems more relevant.
If you heard this man say, “Nuclear weapons; nobody told me we had nuclear weapons,” would you believe him?
As ‘Downing Street’ apologised to ‘Buckingham Palace’, was HMQ offered an equivocal apology, pending the outcome of Sue Gray’s enquiry?
DAG has already made excellent observations on the difficulties and contradictions of the Gray terms of reference.
As many in the world of Jamboree Johnson have advised; ‘We’re all in this together’.
Details, details – people, garden, drinks – party, who knew?? Nobody warned me that this is what a party looks like says the inveterate party goer.
Idiot.
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t realise when he’s at a party, because his entire life has been a party?
We are being taken for fools though we, the public, are powerless. MPs, particularly Tory ones, are being taken for fools though mostly willingly. The media are being taken for fools and yet remain unquestioning of the naked emperor either out of fear or complicity. We need a revolution.
As I understand it, ignorance of the law is no excuse. It’s a question of personal responsibility and you can’t hive that off to someone else by stating that no-one told you what was and wasn’t legal.
To take it to the absurd, it would be like a person arrested for robbing a bank whose excuse was that no-one told him it wasn’t legal. I defy anyone to put forward that line of defence and keep a straight face.
Quite frankly this government isn’t suffering from a moral vacuum, but a moral black hole which seems to be sucking the life out of the Conservative Party. Fortunately, Nemesis is drawing ever closer and hopefully the end of this woefully embarrassing saga is finally in view.
He is enacting, on air, his downfall as a Shakespearean tragi-comedy. Beth on top form.
A court would explain to a guilty party that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
“If anyone had to know the rules – which were then unprecedented in peacetime – it would have been the head of the government formulating, implementing and enforcing them.”
To be fair, he did spend the last year denouncing the Brexit deal that he spent the previous year negotiating, selling at an election and then legislating for. So he’s at least consistent in his inconsistency.
Johnson is making a complete mockery of our political constitution whilst at the same time trashing our international standing and reputation.
How the hell did we ever sink so low?
Unfortunately for the country this is his natural level.
You know it is possible to put a different construction on Johnson’s ‘no-one told me it was against the rules’ statement.
Dominic Cummings had just announced that he was ready to swear on oath that he’d told the PM that the party was against the rules. ‘No-one told me etc’ could be construed as a denial that Cummings (or anyone else) told him that.
I utterly detest Johnson. This is not a defence of him. But I suspect that that is what he meant, much as we all are delighted to crow over his apparent stupidity.
I think you maybe being too generous.
If he wanted to say that Cummings wasn’t telling the truth – he should have just said that.
There’s no reason anybody should have had to tell him – it should have been obvious to him from the off.
And to think this man has be trying to sell himself as modern day Churchill!
It is preposterous to think that no one had told the prime minister what the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 required at this time, 20 May 2020, given he and his ministers were on television daily telling everyone else what to do. [Link: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/oliver-dowdens-statement-on-coronavirus-covid-19-20-may-2020 ]
But perhaps some familiarity with what the law said between 26 March 2020 and 1 June 2020 might help to make this clearer (speculation, but perhaps proximity with the latter date and familiarity with the proposed changes made him more relaxed about compliance?).
Here we are:
“6.—(1) During the emergency period, no person may leave [from 22 April: or be outside of] the place where they are living without reasonable excuse.”
[Link: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/regulation/6/2020-05-20 ]
This event was in the garden of the prime minister’s London home and so that was ok for him to be there, perhaps (even though, as I understand it, the “place where [he was] living” is the flat above No.11, not the whole warren which doubles up as a place of work) .
But there is more:
“7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—
(a) where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household,
(b) where the gathering is essential for work purposes,
…”
[Link: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/regulation/7/2020-05-20 ]
So, from a legal standpoint, it seems to me the question is whether this drinks event in the garden was “essential for work purposes”, and whether the garden was a “public place”.
I doubt anyone closely considered the legal technicalities at the time. But is this where we are now, relying on loopholes like a footballer caught driving with a coffee cup in one hand and a mobile phone in the other?
Andrew, excellent, thanks for the heads up – I now know how they all get off!
I think Johnson could have said “we have been indoors for 10 hours. It’s stuffy Let’s get outside for 20 minute break. And then come back inside to finish off work.”
That presumably would be OK.
But by sending emails saying “it’s a party BYOB” they fell foul of the regulations?
Have I got this right?
The government, of which Johnson is the leader, wrote rules around social gatherings, the number of people who could attend, from how many households, and so on. The rules were there to try to limit the spread of the Covid virus.
So Johnson should be aware of what he wrote; memories might fail over two years, but then was fresh in the mind, not an antique from yesteryear.
Why did he think he needed someone to tell him what the rules were? Is this an admission of ignorance of what he was doing in government? Because it seems very strange that he needed a minder (a nanny?) to tell him what’s allowed.
Johnson has done well to pull so much wool over so many eyes for so long. Much like the boiling frog, nobody seems to have noticed the slide from sanctioning / attending the party, denying its existence, challenging its illegality, blaming someone else for not explaining to him what would’ve been obvious to a three year old.
Such is the thrall to which his half-witted colleagues are held, they — at least those who have pledged their support; those waiting for SG to report can probably see what’s coming — don’t realise the preposterous position Johnson has drawn them into in the defence of such naked idiocy.
For me, the key remark was ‘We should have gone back inside’. He still doesn’t understand.
If only he had been able to borrow Jacob Rees-Mogg’s nanny.
Absolutely, beautifully, succinctly, correct.
It’s said one can tell that a politician is lying, by when their lips move. So what a blessing masks must be for them! Seriously, even his mask couldn’t conceal this blatant whopper. I can only conclude he wanted some excuse, however flimsy and preposterous, but would be relying on his dwindling allies somehow to bail him out and get through.
Question: have British police ever interviewed a serving or past PM under caution, as a witness or suspect?
Yes; Tony Blair was interviewed several times in relation to honours, as I remember. Not sure about being interviewed under caution.
Blair was said to be the first PM to be interviewed by the cops.
One might be asking why Johnson isn’t being questioned under caution for all the honours he has bestowed in exchange for some very handsome donations to his party.
Ah yes, he’s a Tory.
With a broad definition of “police” and “PM”, I think the last time was in 1076 or thereabouts, when Bishop Odo of Bayeux, Earl of Kent, was interviewed under caution proir to his Trial at Penenden Heath!
The entire Vote Leave philosophy was about removing rules that would prevent their benefactors from exploiting the UK both as a laundromat and safe haven
How anyone can be in the least bit surprised by their behaviour in government is beyond me
The fact that the UK is a supplier of trusted professional services was another perverse incentive that allowed too many to look the other way whilst our democracy has been subject to State Capture
I absolutely agree. As soon as he came out with his excuse that nobody told him, it was patently preposterous.
If only we had all had expert advisers on hand throughout lockdown to advise us at any point as to what was and wasn’t allowable! But instead we had to make our own decisions and to stand and fall by those.
So should the prime minister.
Unless he’s suggesting that he’s incapable of making any decision for himself, based on the relevant facts and information? In which case that raises even bigger questions….
It’s interesting that this interview is with Sky News. Normally Johnson would have cut it short or moved it onto other topics (to be fair he did try). It seemed like he was being made to suffer a long and repetitive interview on a subject he did not want to talk about because he had no answers. Well done to the interviewer, but I think she had full backing from above, and it looks to me like Johnson has also been told by Murdoch to stand there and take it.
The interview was from Sky, but it was a ‘pool’ interview on behalf of all broadcasters. She refers to this a couple of times.
And that is why he couldn’t just walk away.
Thanks David – sorry I got bored listening to him, so I missed the bit about it being a ‘pool’ interview. In fact, I can’t stand listening to the man. He is like a twelve year old trying to get himself out of a scrape. He is insulting us on a daily basis by thinking we believe a word he says.
So, apologies Mr Murdoch, but it’s easy to get into ‘conspiracy theories’ mode these days.
All this bleating about Boris telling lies – we know, it goes with the territory and the man. The important thing is that he is (for now) a winner – a star player, albeit on a very poor team.
His mates don’t really want to get rid of him, no one with any sense wants the job at least for a year. So make a fuss and a show – but don’t get rid.
Now what annoys me is that some folk who got fined for lockdown breaches will plead ‘snot fair, if not him, my me’. With some justification. There may even be some sort of forced amnesty for lockdown sinners. Or another enquiry, a report etc etc. Another lawyer fest and waste of time, resources, and our money. Meanwhile the problems surrounding us mount up.
Still, yelling in Parliament and the meeja beats doing anything useful.
With the utmost respect, Jim, I fear you have got it wrong. Johnson has corrupted the whole government machine with his lies and sleaze. If he gets away with it and continues in office this will only get worse, to an extent that we may never recover from it. His successor may not themselves last very long because of all the troubles ahead, but that’s the way it goes if you are an ambitious politician. You can’t choose when you get the call.
I do find it interesting that this has received so many responses.
I think it may have struck a nerve.