Not investigating Starmer's fully attended festival of beer either, are they? So fair's fair. Sorry for the hyperbole, but I just thought I'd join in with the general playing down of what has been going on, that is so much a feature of this thread.
No, but she may make an official complaint either as a member of the party, or as an employee of Parliament. The choice is hers. If she was advised to go to the party (forgive my little jest), I would suggest the reason was because she was complaining about a member of the party. But either way, it is her own responsibility to make a complaint, and to know the correct channels through which to make it. Approaching the party leader was improper, and she must know this. Now, the first thing the inquiry must do is have her complaint dealt with. I would be interested to know what non-executive action you were expecting Boris to take, other than advising her to under take an official procedure. Please do tell. What was there for her to gain from taking her complaint to someone who is, taking away his executive powers, simply another member of her party, or just another employee of Parliament. He is an executive. Any action he decides to take regarding a complaint would be deemed 'executive'. Indeed, it could be said that he took executive action not to be involved, so as not to interfere with a case he is not permitted to become involved in. A wise decision I think. As a union rep, if a person makes a complaint to me and expects me to make it for them, I make it clear that it must come from themselves. When people choose not to persue an official complaint when they realise they must do it themselves, you often find that they are less enthusiastic to take things further. I am very much afraid that as often as not, the lack of enthusiasm comes as much from the weakness of the case as it does a wish not to put
Good point well made. They are not employed, and, even better, "no one may tell them what to do". And that answers the riddle of "Why did Boris refer her to party procedures and not Parliamentary procedures, or simply take executive action? The answer is that MP's are generally members of political parties, and party members are obliged to adhere to the rules on conduct and standards set out in the party rules. So, in the case presented, the party is the only body that may sanction a member for their behaviour. The ultimate sanction is to remove a member from the party, and is reflected in the treatment of Claudia Webbe (who threatened a woman with an acid attack and distribution of naked photos) by the Labour Party, which could take no further action than to expel her. Ultimate action, to remove an MP, is down to their constituents, by way of a re-call or simply voting them out at the next election. So that clears up that particular question. My naive assumption that Parliament was the employer of MPs was a poor one, making an ass out of both myself and Umption. And therefore I now agree that Industrial relations does not play a part in this. However, although the relationship within the party is not 'industrial', unless a person is being paid by the party, the rules and standards they have are applied in a manner to members that is identical to how an employer's rules are applied to employees, in industry. Again, I have experience of similar situations, having represented union members against the union. Just as with employers with employees, it is required that if a party includes members, its constitution must include "the process and rules governing that membership". Below is the Conservative Party's code of conduct for representatives, which includes the procedure I alluded to. Stage three describes the situations that make Boris being drawn into a formal complaint, that he is not directly involved in, inappropriate. References to respect within the code, two of them, indicate where, firstly, the complaint sits within the rules, and, secondly, where the need for integrity is required to ensure fairness. https://www.conservatives.com/code-of-conduct If anyone still has a question of "but why couldn't Boris have done something", the answer is there in the document; the absence of any other procedure for official complaints, meaning no other procedure exists within the rules for making an official complaint. The only alternative would be to make an informal complaint, which would have required no action to be taken by anyone, certainly no judgement of guilt or sanction. I don't think I got any of the lawful or procedural elements of the case wrong.
I personally think the cake story is one of the least damning for Boris. Although it serves as a beautiful “Carrie Antoinette” metaphor, with the culture, which he is accountable for, being so out of touch with how everyone else was living their lives at the time. And sure, you want the person making the rules and taking away freedoms to not make you feel stupid for giving up hugely important moments, when he didn’t. But we also want to know that he understood how hard the rules were to stick to. And how could he, if he wasn’t able to keep them as strictly as the public? If the rules were too silly, or inhumane, or difficult to follow in their entirety, the rules were wrong and needed to change. Which begs the question whether the rules would have remained so tough, if the PM himself actually had to abide by them.
All of Johnson’s defences rely upon the notion that he had no intuitive sense of when rules were broken. The rest of us knew that we couldn’t invite others inside or go into a shop without a mask or stand in groups in the park. A bell would go off in our heads. It’s plausible that Johnson does not have this. He is a person that appears to lie to others without much of a thought, who believes his interests are exceptional. But that makes him a terrible person to lead or make law.
But Henry, as someone who hasn’t frequented this forum very often, you don’t look, to me anyway, as someone who doesn’t reinterpret the rules to fit the scenario, you play a straight bat so to speak. The rules/laws prohibited what happened, right?
Does anyone know what the difference between the words 'authorised' and 'prioritised' is? If so, please contact @AdamBienkov, and any of his twitter followers who are less well versed in the English language, to explain the situation to him. How on earth does anyone perceive that this twitter nonsense is anything but an embarrasing revelation that the author, of the tweet, has a serious case of Boris Derangement that trumps his desire to appear literate.
Finally, the comment on yesterday's PMQs (from an impeccable source) we have all been waiting for: https://twitter.com/MarinaHyde/status/1486270190996307968
Last night "Man of the People" Jacob Rees-Mogg was wheeled out on Newsnight and showed his 'grasp' of the UK's parliamentary system:
Insulting the Queen too. I'm she will be less than impressed to know that we are, according JRM, a republic now!
I am afraid this seems to be another case of Boris derangement trumping literacy once again. We do not have a presidential system, but because of the nature of voting on personalities, it has essentially become parallel with a presidential system. I agree with Rees-Mogg in that respect, and I find it very regrettable, but that is all I agree with him on in this. It is a valid argument to make, but personally I believe it is a weak one; a change of PM is not an essential reason to go to the polls, and despite having lost the huge faith I had in Labour in 1997, I said the same when Brown replaced Blair.
So ZZ Top left the forum to drive Bozza around in a bin lorry. You know what, after the last couple of weeks, I can believe it.
WORKPLACE STRESS LEVELS? This composite image of 'before' and 'after' show the effects of our patented "MOOG_B_GONE"...
After his 'braying' performance yesterday, Sue Perkins was compelled to comment: Well worth following the thread for the Secret Barrister's reply: https://twitter.com/sueperkins/status/1486783339449270273
Just after talking about Sue Gray's report BBC R4's 'Today' team made an odd, and definitely unrelated comment, that there is a superinjunction about something or other. Guess the report's been leaked?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60166997 The fix is in. Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. Met Police seeks limits to Sue Gray No 10 parties report Published 27 minutes ago It's Pie in The Sky time We'll have a right time Following the man Who's shouting the loudest I've got a theory Brothers can you hear me Are we Getting taken for a ride? Oh we're all in it together We're all in it together Don't it wanna make you spew?
Well, people wanted the police to investigate and now they are. This was always the inevitable consequence of that. Personally I think the Met should have kept on keeping out of it, given the criminal element of this was always trifling compared to the political ramifications, but they've been under tremendous public pressure to intervene. Anyway, I agree this likely kills off the saga. Boris will point to the ongoing police investigation as a reason not to address the substance of whatever remains of Sue Gray's report, will fire a few No.10 staffers and hangers on and by the time the police investigation concludes with no or negligible action being taken some time later in the year or next it'll be a political non-issue.
The timing is amazing. We don't look at historic crimes Wait for Sue Gray Wait for Sue Gray Here comes Sue Gray We're going to investigate We don't want report delayed Sue Gray has finished report Could you take out all the worst bits please?
I am absolutely spitting. Waiting for someone with a large media presence to organise a march on Downing Street.
Yep, I think you are right. I wonder if this was Sue Gray's get out of jail free card? She was in a bind. She obviously found evidence of what could be construed as criminal activity. Refering it to the Met was always going to restrict the contents and timing of her report. She is now off the hook. Her political masters have the "police investigation" debate shut down comeback and any really damning evidence is not going to come out now for months, if ever, as it's in the hands of the Police. The chances of the Met doing anything is next to zero. You have to admire the strategy. It is very clever.
Also I would suggest that, the recently re-instated past her agreed contract length, Met Commissioner Cressida D i ck will be a 'head' to roll with no collateral damage to anyone.
Unfortunately, the Met have an apparent conflict of interest here, as the report may be about to highlight that not only were the Downing Street Police aware of the comings and goings, but so were their senior officers. There must be a question over whether they should refer the case or aspects of it to another force.
The chances of the Met doing anything of any real value were always next to zero. They'll dole out a handful of fixed penalty notices and that'll be the end of it. That's why I never really understood the clamour for them to investigate. Even the much-mocked point about not looking at historic breaches was perfectly logical in the context of the gravity of the offence and the maximum punishment. I don't see it as a cover up. All the information will come out. It'll just come out far too slowly to seize the political moment/opportunity that had presented itself.
My question would be why bother? What will we learn? The more formal this becomes, I'm pretty certain the less satisfying it's going to be for anyone other than Boris. For a start, a lot of the coronavirus laws had exemptions for those on the Crown estate and/or in government buildings. No politician is going to want to go around shouting that on high as it looks like a weaselly excuse - Boris rightly got slapped down for even floating the 'it was a work event' exemption - but the Met and CPS happily will. And then we have to remember that Downing Street is a protected building yes, but the police are there to look outward for threats, not inward to actively police those on site. I'm not saying they're there as useless mannequins but my bet is any cop posted to protect a government building who showed more interest in those in the building and their activities than goings on outside would likely be moved on from the role pretty quickly.
I think it’s pretty obvious why to bother. We have a PM and his associates who lie routinely feel confident to do so and the agencies of the state cannot hold them to account. There is the tremendous unfairness of those thousands fined for breaches of rules made by lawmakers who simply ignored them. You seem happy to let this evaporate in sophistry, but fortunately I think you are over-confident that this will blow over. It’ll be a running sore, aggravated when the next Johnson misdemeanour or blatantly unfair governance emerges. We’ve rarely had many weeks in between each one.
