Wednesday 22 March 2023

Johnson and Sunak face the music

All eyes will be on the privileges committee hearing this afternoon when Johnson appears in front of seven MPs (four tories) to give his evidence in public about whether or not he misled the House of Commons in December 2021 on Partygate. It should be an interesting four hours. He had his 52-page defence statement published yesterday, which looks incredibly flimsy to me.  There’s a lot of evidence against him and his statement is convoluted and complex, as it always is when you are trying to make so many false and contradictory things add up. He is terrible at details and may well trip himself up this afternoon. Let’s hope so.

He openly admits misleading MPs but claims it was all done 'in good faith.'  One of his excuses is that he should have been able to rely on what his advisers told him. This is throwing his advisers under the bus for a start, but much more than that, he failed to tell MPs he was actually present at some gatherings.

Pippa Crerar broke the story in The Mirror on 30 November 2021 but the following day he told Kier Starmer; “What I can tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman is that all guidance was followed completely in No. 10.” He must have known questions would be raised and if, as he now claims, he was relying on his advisers, you would think he would have discussed the whole issue and perhaps remembered he was there himself.

The following week (8 December 2021), with more questions being raised, Johnson said this at PMQs; “I repeat that I have been repeatedly assured since these allegations emerged that there was no party and that no covid rules were broken. That is what I have been repeatedly assured. But I have asked the Cabinet Secretary to establish all the facts and to report back as soon as possible. It goes without saying that if those rules were broken, there will be disciplinary action for all those involved.”

But why did he need to be reassured if he was there in the room? Didn’t he mislead by omission? And given the papers were full of party gate stories why did he give such a categorical assurance? Didn’t he question aides and advisers? They were all exchanging WhatsApp messages about the 'parties' but Johnson claims nobody told him anyone even had the slightest doubt at all there were no parties. He could have been far more careful in his language and given himself some wriggle room, even said they were work events - but he didn't because his first instinct it to lie.

He should be in The Hague for a lifetime of committing crimes against the truth.

Sunak tries hardball. 

Rishi Sunak has his own worries. He warns the ERG that a vote later today against the Windsor Framework is a vote for “automatic alignment” with EU rules. 

His spokesman told reporters yesterday: "The legal default is automatic alignment ... The framework is the only avenue by which that default can change. So a vote against the brake in factual terms would lead to automatic alignment with the EU with no say at all." 

This will go down very badly with the DUP and the ERG and will backfire spectacularly.

Earlier in the day, the ERG’s rather self-important and grandly titled 'legal advisory committee' published their 137-page take on the WF and essentially trashed it.

It was tweeted gleefully by Jamie Bryson, a unionist blogger, and activist:

You might like to read the 'principal findings' as set out by The Centre for the Union which encapsulates it well, but the language goes much further than the report prepared for the ERG by Lawyers for Britain:

  • Different treatment under a treaty with a foreign power
  • Customs and restrictions on goods between parts of the United Kingdom
  • The ‘green lane’ is not really a ‘green lane’
  • Limited (and conditional) easings. 
  • The Stormont Brake is practically useless
  • There is no exit from the framework other than through a highly complex legal process
  • Doubling down (new commitments and undertakings)

The framework they say "risks incentivising the UK and its future governments to copy future EU rules, and adjustments to existing EU rules, so as to avoid the imposition of new checks across the Irish Sea." 

To the ERG and the DUP, it is the thin end of a very big and totally unacceptable wedge.

In telling the ERG it's the WF or alignment (BRINO) Sunak is delivering the final ultimatum; you can have Brexit but only at the cost of splitting the United Kingdom in two and accepting a permanent border between GB and NI. On the other hand, if you want to preserve the integrity of the UK, Brexit as you hope for must be ditched for all intents and purposes.  Now is the time to choose.

Brexit was always going to come down to this. If a hard Brexit was your preferred outcome - as it was the moment Theresa May declared we would exit the single market and the customs union - then there had to be a border, one that the UK could take back control of. The balance had been disturbed.

This meant one section of the community was bound to be upset. The UK, Ireland, USA, and the EU decided that could not be a border on land both for practical (300 km long, hundreds of crossing points) and political reasons. It would have risked triggering a violent nationalist reaction and a return to the late sixties.

But the sea border solution that Johnson opted for is no less likely to provoke loyalist paramilitaries to dig up old grievances too. I am not sure that Rishi Sunak understands the DUP mindset. Forcing legislation through will not solve it. 

Raoul Ruparel, a keen Brexiteer himself, doesn’t seem to realise the problem either. Look at this Twitter thread:

It would be a huge mistake to dismiss DUP and ERG fears and hope that opposition to the WF will become a 'spent force' somehow.  To believe that the government can simply go over the heads of the ERG and the DUP and they will just give up and accept it is to unlearn the lessons of history.

In fact, I would go as far as to say passing the Statutory Instrument later today will be like a red rag to a bull. Sunak and the rest of us may live to regret it.

The government is setting off down a very dangerous road.

The joint EU-UK joint committee meets Friday to finalise the deal but unless MPs vote to approve the SI later today, there is no point in it. I don’t think there can be any doubt the PM could get it through the House and the Lords but it would be a pyrrhic victory if the result sparks off sectarian trouble in Northern Ireland.

Chris Grey, book review 

I make a habit of reading Chris Grey every Friday. His blog posts are the gold standard for Brexit analysis, ruthlessly logical, and always fascinating. He popped an extra special post this week reviewing two books, one of which is: The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit, by Russel and James.

I haven’t read it (I've read the other one) but professor Grey picks out a quote from an unnamed Conservative MP saying; “right up until the indicative votes themselves [in 2019], a very large number of my colleagues had actually no idea at all what the Single Market or the Customs Union was [sic]” (p. 241). 

Think long and hard about that. It may help us to understand how we have arrived where we are today.

Professor Grey says that is actually "all too believable and yet also astounding, all the more so given that some of those same MPs were insisting that leave voters had ‘known exactly what they were voting for’ in 2016."

What a mess.

Posted by at