Kier Starmer has exposed the moral vacuum at the heart of this government. By declaring he will resign if he gets a fixed penalty notice from Durham police he has thrown the spotlight back on Johnson. Although portrayed as a gamble and mistake, Starmer’s decision was in fact cost free. He would have had to resign in any case but between now and whenever the police complete their investigations he would have faced a lot of difficult questions. They were all answered yesterday when he made his statement. I think he made the only decision he could and it was the right one.
Now, at future PMQs he can ask Johnson to do the same, revealing the chasm in integrity and honesty between the prime minister and himself.
The fact that the investigation has been restarted is all down to a campaign by The Daily Mail to muddy the water, I have no doubt about that. They have called for his resignation but now say he is putting undue pressure on the police! He must be doing something right.
Of all the people pushing ‘beergate’ for all it was worth, none can get close to Dan Hodges at the Mail. He has been tweeting like a madman on speed, several times an hour, accusing Starmer of everything imaginable and stuff which is not even that.
This one, now understandably deleted, is amazing:
Apparently, a lawyer on Twitter has also accused Starmer of "undermining the presumption of innocence" - quite a thing, eh? We are living in a madhouse
At his hastily arranged press conference, Starmer came under pressure for demanding Johnson resign in January when he first started to be investigated by the police. It’s a fair point but don’t forget, this was after Sue Gray had issued her interim report essentially saying she had found there had been a “a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of Government but also of the standards expected of the entire British population."
So, that argument is a weak one in my opinion, most people will I think believe Starmer is acting with honour and integrity in sharp contrast to the PM.
Jim Pickard, chief political correspondent at the FT is sceptical any of this will cause Johnson to step down voluntarily:
if you think Keir Starmer quitting would mean Boris Johnson feeling obliged to quit I have a bridge to Ireland to sell you
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) May 9, 2022
I am afraid he's probably right. It will need a crowbar to get Johnson out.
Harry Cole, Carrie Johnson’s partner at one time and now the political editor on The Sun sees conspiracies everywhere. He accuses Stamer of doing a "stitch-up" with Sky News because he called her first for questions, something which Beth Rigby at Sky had to correct:
Actually, the BBC were meant to go first and I arrived at the press conference before the other journalists, so asked if I could take the first question and they agreed. https://t.co/iBjM1GT8ii
— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) May 9, 2022
Later Cole said Starmer “only had himself to blame” because he called for Johnson to go. Having honesty and integrity is something to blame in the Cole household.
The Tory MP for Northwest Durham, Richard Holden, apparently wrote to the chief constable of Durham suggesting the local Constituency Labour Party (CLP) had invited members to an ‘in-person’ event, a quiz night where people were encouraged to drink to excess.
The CLP have now written to demand an apology in a furious letter, tweeted below:
Letter: Apology demanded from @RicHolden for the misrepresentation of theCity of Durham CLPSocial Event on the 30th April 2021: “You have smeared my reputation and that of many other innocent people. You must rectify this wrongdoing immediately.” 👉 https://t.co/jQ7KR5FuFP pic.twitter.com/SifSXsrtIi— City of Durham Labour Party (@CoDLabour) May 9, 2022
The Daily Mail, as part of a concerted onslaught over a period of days had all this from Holden on 27 April.
“Mr Holden asked the force to investigate the quiz, saying it was clearly a ‘social’ and ‘pre-arranged gathering’ which would be in breach of Covid rules.
"Mr Holden also claimed that in one of the online invitations to the event, Miss Foy had encouraged people to have a ‘greasy night’ – which he said was a term for drinking too much.”
Now the CLP are demanding a retraction from Holden, pointing out it was all held via Zoom!
Newspapers like The Mail can do an eight page ‘spread’ with multiple ‘dossiers’ because they have the staff and resources to run repeat stories with quotes from various rent-a-mouth types to fill in the pages day after day. The problem is when the story is thin and they throw in all sorts of accusations in every direction to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Holden has been caught out conflating events and getting his ‘facts’ wrong.
The whole 'beergate' affair was kicked off by a video shot by Ivo Delingpole son of James Delingpole who was an Oxford University contemporary of Johnson’s in the 1980s. He has written for the right-wing news website Breitbart and other outlets such as the Spectator and the Telegraph. Delingpole is also a climate change sceptic who often gets his facts wrong.
Wouldn't it be great if Durham police find no lockdown rules were broken, Starmer gets a big boost in the polls and Johnson is forced out by Tory MPs? We can only hope.
Today the government is to outline its legislative programme for the coming year, including a 'Freedom Bill' to start get rid of all those EU rules which have been holding us back. It will be interesting to see what they are. My guess is that the bill won't actually spell them out or if it does, it will be seen as a bit of tinkering at the edges. There will be nothing to justify the upheaval of Brexit you can be sure.
But I'll be looking carefully at that as no doubt will plenty of others.
