Monday 2 December 2019

Johnson: Liar, cheat - now plagiarist?

The prime minister has been accused of being all sorts of things from a pathological liar to a moral bankrupt but as far as I know nobody has ever charged him with plagiarism - until last weekend. I suppose it was just a matter of time. I am not sure if what follows is simply laughable or shocking. The PM is a man with what we might call a loose relationship with the truth and, as far as I can remember, no relationship whatsoever with details. Whilst he might, at a stretch, be able to recognise truth if it passed him in the street, he wouldn't know a detail from a brass bush.

So, his Twitter thread on Sunday morning about Usman Khan, the terrorist shot dead on London bridge last week, must have been quite an eye opener to his 1.3 million followers. It was packed full of microscopic background legal detail about the Khan's conviction, appeal and release. I assume it must have been like hearing your barber suddenly quote great sections of Wittgenstein in perfect Swahili.

Here it is:
The prime minister, better known in the past for big clumsy strokes rather than fine nib work and stumbling over simple things like NI contributions, gave us the benefit of his forensic legal knowledge:

"There are 4 distinct sentencing legal regimes that have been confused in this case: Indefinite Sentences for Public Protection (IPP); Pre-08 Extended Sentences for Public Protection (DPP); Post-08 EPPs & Extended Determinate Sentences (EDS) which came into force in Dec 12 (2/16)"

This went on for an amazing 16 tweets. Remarkable, eh?

Or perhaps not. One of his followers was a person who was perhaps more surprised than most. This was the 'secret barrister' who recognised a lot of the tweets immediately because they were very similar to the words he had written in his own blog the day before.

The anonymous blogger is apparently well known in legal circles and was obviously a bit miffed. He in turn replied to Johnson's tweet:
I assume the Twitter thread was not written by Johnson himself.  He probably has a minion do that sort of thing, especially when it involves detail. Unfortunately, the minion copied the secret barrister's blog and tweeted it under Johnson's name and Twitter account as if the idiot from Uxbridge was suddenly an expert on British law proffering a considered legal opinion. If anything, it makes Johnson look even more of an idiot than he normally does.

The American magazine Newsweek covers the story HERE.

The whole thing reeks of Alastair Campbell copying chunks of a PhD student's thesis and bunging it into what became known as the dodgy dossier.

This is bad enough but the government is trying to shift the blame for Khan's early release onto the Labour party, making it a political football, something the family of one of the victims desperately wants to avoid. Johnson and Patel are simply using two tragic deaths for political advantage. Nick Hardwick, a former chair of the Parole Board was on Radio 4 this morning also condemning the government's knee jerk policy reaction.

Now, to last night's debate on ITV. Rishi Sunak is not a well known name. He was Chief Secretary to The Treasury under Johnson and deeply ambitious. He must be anxious to get up the greasy pole, because he has now been chosen twice to replace Johnson in these public debates. But, assuming the Conservatives win this election, he should be remembered as the man who constantly and repeatedly promised to millions of viewers that voting Conservative would  'get Brexit done' in six weeks time and allow us to move on.

If anything, as we know, this is an even bigger lie than the £350 million a week figure on the side of the big red bus.  Sunak might be feeling pleased with himself this morning for sticking to his script but his future career will always be coloured by the lie he kept repeating ad nauseum last night.

Make no mistake, it will cling to him like a bad smell forever.
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