Lord Geidt’s report about the missing text messages from the prime minister to Lord Brownlow in November 2020 asking for money to do up his flat has been published. Geidt is furious about being misled but says it doesn’t change his conclusion that Johnson didn’t break the ministerial code. He is I’m afraid in danger of appearing a bit like inspectors Clouseau in that Pink Panther film where the hapless French detective is desperate to find Maria Gambrelli innocent despite a mountain of evidence.
Johnson claims he didn’t have access to his WhatsApp messages because he changed his mobile phone. A lot of people are suggesting this isn’t true because those messages are not stored on the phone anyway. However, I think he says he was advised to change his number for security reasons, which may be different.
ITV have a decent report about it HERE. Geidt's letter to Johnson on 17 December is HERE.
So, in the style of Clouseau:
FACT: We have a man who is a known liar
FACT: He is known to take money for freebie holidays and the like
FACT: He is regularly criticised by parliamentary watchdogs for failing to declare money received.
FACT: He went to a lot of trouble to get someone else to pay for his wife’s expensive tastes.
FACT: He only offered to pay for the refurbishment when the whole thing burst into the public domain.
CONCLUSION: He is totally innocent.
Despite all this Geidt accepts assurances from the PM and seems to think he has been the victim of circumstances that made him appear guilty when in truth he is an entirely innocent party. One is inclined to think that Geidt was appointed for gullibility and the skill to write barely believable reports steering a careful course between the damning facts without hitting any of them.
Johnson doesn’t come out of it well and goodness knows how many hours have been wasted on this and the huge effort by Geidt to excuse the inexcusable.
There are still big questions for the PM.
Firstly, Robert Peston raises the issue that Geidt didn’t address at all:
The more I reflect on the exchange of letters between Lord Geidt and @BorisJohnson the stranger it seems. In his decision not to resign, Geidt is relying on his original curious judgement that it is OK for the PM’s lifestyle to be funded by the Tory Party and Brownlow, and that…
— Robert Peston (@Peston) January 6, 2022
Peston says Geidt seems to think that it is OK for the Johnson's extravagant lifestyle to be paid for by rich Tory donors like Lord Brownlow, and that the question of when and whether Johnson knew where the money was coming from, and when and whether Johnson disclosed it in the register of ministerial interests, is a second order one. But if that is really so, why not privatise all the PM’s salary and living costs to Tory donors?
Why not indeed? Johnson’s 'standards adviser' can't see anything wrong and thinks it's all hunky dory.
Next, in the WhatsApp messages Johnson volunteers that he is “on” the Great Exhibition, a pet project of Lord Brownlow which didn’t go ahead in the form originally envisaged but seems to have morphed into the Festival of Brexit and finally into Unboxed, coming later this Spring. It is as if this is a quid pro quo otherwise known as corruption.
The government's excuse is that the project didn’t proceed but it clearly shows Johnson was quite happy to discuss and link these things so the question is: how many projects did go ahead in return for money of one sort or another?
There are now calls for the Standards Commissioner to look at the flat refurbishment and the Great Exhibition.
In any other world, Johnson would probably have ended up an old lag with a prison record as long as your arm. Since schooldays he has believed rules are for us, little people, and not for him.
He was fortunate to be born into a relatively wealthy family and to go to Eaton and speak with aristocratic vowels (Mr Brine goes to tine with half a crine) which means you can get away with anything you like.
Johnson has taken advantage of his position his whole life but the day of reckoning must be coming soon.
