Boris stitch up

Boris Johnson’s detractors must be salivating with joy at the conclusions of the House of Commons Privileges Committee report into the ‘Partygate’ affair. It should be remembered that this was a wholly confected campaign promoted by the BBC and opposition parties to topple Boris when he was prime minister as outlined in this previous blog. https://bit.ly/3NDBXn9

The authors of the report have set out in great detail the background information about the various ‘parties’ about which Boris allegedly misled Parliament. So, although the facts have been accurately outlined, the conclusions reached are a disgrace. Boris was quite right to denounce the committee as a ‘kangaroo court’ engaged in a ‘witch hunt’ determined to find him guilty. As Jacob Rees-Mogg observed they ‘quite clearly made a deliberate attempt to take the most unfavourable interpretation of Mr Johnson’s activities’. Clearly the ninety days suspension is vindictive and the withdrawal of the parliamentary pass is petty.

The facts are that Boris received a single fixed penalty notice, bizarrely for accepting a birthday cake in his workplace. It is incomprehensible why he did not appeal against this grotesque travesty of justice. All the other fixed penalty notices relating to 10 Downing Street were handed out to civil servants. It is worth pointing out that Boris Johnson was not responsible for the management of No.10 or the supervising of staff compliance with the covid regulations. This work was delegated to civil servant middle managers. Boris Johnson’s role as prime minister was to focus on important national and international affairs, not to meddle in the running of the Downing Street workplace. So he would have no idea whether or not Downing Street staff were complying with the covid regulations.

So before answering questions in Parliament about this matter he would first have had to ask his private office civil servants to investigate and provide him with a form of words he could convey to his parliamentary colleagues. This is standard practice when ministers answer questions in Parliament. So Boris Johnson was entirely dependent on his private office staff providing him with accurate and honest information. They informed him that ‘the guidance was followed and the rules were followed at all times’. So this form of words, or slight variations on it, was how Boris answered the questions relating to ‘Partygate’ in Parliament. There was no intention to mislead Parliament, certainly nor ‘deliberately or ‘recklessly’. He was merely providing the answer given to him by civil servants upon whom he was reliant for establishing the true facts, about which he would be largely unaware.

The committee’s conclusion that Boris Johnson, because he was working in the building, must have been aware that covid regulations were not being followed, is an unwarranted exercise in mind reading, and not one based on evidence. Boris Johnson’s big mistake was to answer the question about the ‘parties’ himself. What he should have done, for example at PM questions, would be to say that a Cabinet Office minister would shortly be issuing a statement on this subject. Such a minister would then have said exactly the same as what Boris said, and that would have been the end of the matter. This shows that the committee’s objective was not to investigate the truth about ‘Partygate’ but rather to bring down Boris by means of a wholly prejudicial report.