Thursday 2 June 2022

Pressure builds on Johnson

I really don’t see how Lord Geidt can continue as Johnson’s independent standards adviser. As I wrote yesterday, in his annual report he openly admitted he had tried to “avoid offering advice to a Prime Minister about a Prime Minister's obligations under his own Ministerial Code.” This in itself is an incredible admission. But he did claim to have “repeatedly counselled the Prime Minister’s official and political advisers” to get Johnson to make a clear public statement about why he thinks he has not broken the ministerial code by breaking the law.

Geidt didn’t want to offer Johnson advice directly in case the PM rejected it, in which case as his standards adviser, Geidt would have to resign.  By passing the advice through officials and other advisers he thought he could postpone a confrontation.

However, last night Steven Swinford, the political editor at The Times, tweeted about what he calls a "major inconsistency":

Think about it. Johnson denies being informed and says he was unaware of the ‘weight’ of Lord Geidt’s concerns. Already the water is being muddied. Was he informed or not? Did he know but not realise the importance of the advice? The PM blames a ‘failure of communications’ between his office and Geidt.

Given this affair has been hogging the headlines for six months with Downing Street engaged in an almost daily firefight to the detriment of most government business, it is literally incredible that officials didn’t tell Johnson his own ethics adviser wanted him to make a statement and was on the brink of quitting.

Johnson has belatedly made the statement Geidt demanded but in it he claims firstly that he didn’t realise he was breaking the ‘regulations’ when he broke them and in any case a FPN is not a criminal conviction. Is that enough to satisfy Geidt?

I am not sure that it is. Geidt cannot be impressed with the way his advice was handled, either not being given to the PM or given without any real importance or weight attached to it or, more likely, the PM simply ignoring it.  He must surely consider if it's worth carrying on. How can you give ethics advice to a man who won't receive it?

When people get caught out in a lie they frequently reach for another and another, each less plausible until the whole thing sounds utterly farcical and the liar at the centre of it looks like an imbecile. So it is with Johnson and partygate. The whole sorry saga is full of inconsistencies and hopelessly unbelievable circumstances that can only be explained by one of two things - both equally likely.

Either Johnson has lied and lied and lied from the very start or he is so stupidly incompetent and chaotic that he shouldn’t be in charge of anything more complex than a sweeping brush.  

Nothing else makes any sense, least of all his version of events where he didn’t understand his own regulations, didn’t realise the parties were parties, had been repeatedly assured there were no parties, didn’t ask his own officials when it was clear the assurances were more lies, thought they were work events and now that his own officials didn’t tell him his ethics adviser was demanding he made a public statement.

Pressure is building on Johnson. His own MPs must be watching all of this in horror.

Mumsnet

As if that wasn't bad enough he gave an interview to Mumsnet, presumably his advisers thinking it would be a soft one. How wrong they were.

He was hit right between the eyes with the very first question: Why should we believe anything you say when it's been proven you are a habitual liar?

Naturally he denies it (a lie) but in a later exchange and like a Monty Python sketch, he talks about one of his most famous untruths - the £350m a week we are supposed to send to the EU.  Listen to this one:

Don’t forget even Nigel Farage and IDS said the figure was a mistake as did the head of the UK Statistics Authority Sir David Norgrove who wrote to Johnson to say it was wrong. Now, after being accused of lying as a matter of habit, he not only stands by the original lie but doubles down and declares he was not only right but £350 was an underestimate!  You almost have to laugh at the sheer unconstrained ability to tell fibs at the drop of a hat, at any moment and under any circumstances even when your truthfulness is being challenged.

It is a gift that many unscrupulous salesmen would give their right arm for.

Question: How can any Tory MP support him?


Posted by at