March 5th 2023.
The latest polls were released last week, showing Labour with 50% support from those polled and 22% supporting the Conservatives. Bringing up the rear were the Liberals (9%), Reform (7%) which is formed from the Brexit movement, Green 6%, Scottish Nationalist 4%.
As preferred Prime Minister, Keir Starmer is favoured by 34% and Rishi Sunak by 21%. Mischief makers pointed out that the poll was carried out by YouGov, which is the company founded by disgraced cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi, who was forced out by Rishi Sunak.
In fairness to Mr Sunak, he is having to clean up a lot of rubbish left behind by Johnson (and Truss) but if he is to succeed, he is going to need a bigger shovel.
Things just go from bad to worse to pure fantasy up here in the North.
Sue Gray, the ex-civil servant who headed the “partygate” enquiry into the frivolities occurring at Downing Street during the Covid crisis, has been offered a position as the Chief of Staff to Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour party. This has raised all sorts of comments about conflict of interest, what secrets she learned whilst the #2 in the cabinet office (and during her investigations) that may be useful to the Labour party. Ironically, she was in charge of ethics at the Cabinet Office. Investigations are taking place to discover what meetings she had with Labour personnel whilst she was employed by the Civil Service.
Ms Gray, who was second permanent secretary at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities until her abrupt resignation yesterday, is facing accusations she may have broken civil service rules by not declaring the approaches she had received from Sir Keir or her acceptance of the job before asking approval from the ACOBA watchdog.
In an interesting development, it is reported that Government officials are understood to have yesterday seized confidential papers and IT equipment from the home of ‘Partygate‘ investigator Sue Gray.
Adding to the mystery is the publication of the Commons Privileges Committee yesterday.
The privileges committee is made up of seven MPs – four Conservatives, two from Labour and one from the SNP.
The MPs are voted onto the committee by their colleagues and reflect the political make-up of the House.
Labour’s Sir Chris Bryant usually chairs the committee, but recused himself from this investigation as he had already made a number of public comments about the matter.
Instead, senior Labour backbencher and mother of the House Harriet Harman will take his place.
Source Sky News Friday 3rd March.
MPs investigating whether Boris Johnson lied to MPs over Partygate have said rule-breaking would have been “obvious” to him – because he was at some of the gatherings.
The Commons Privileges Committee released a bombshell dossier today with new pictures of the lockdown-flouting bashes that brought about the ex-Prime Minister’s downfall.
WhatsApp messages seen by MPs show that No10 officials were worried about potential leaks of images showing Mr Johnson at a “piss up” – SEVEN months before the Mirror first exposed lockdown boozing in No10 and Whitehall.
Mr Johnson’s comms chief was “struggling” to see how parties were within the rules and said one excuse “blows another great gaping hole in the PM’s account”.
The MPs are probing whether the ex-PM deliberately misled Parliament when he claimed no rules had been broken.
A 24-page report sets out the struggles by the committee to obtain evidence – and examples of No10 communications chiefs trying to find excuses for some of the bashes. This lays out a string of questions Boris Johnson will have to answer when he is summoned to give evidence in a live showdown in the week of March 20
It lays bare the questions Mr Johnson will have to answer when he is summoned to give evidence to MPs in a live showdown in the week of March 20.
Labour’s Angela Rayner said the evidence was “damning” against Mr Johnson – and said Rishi Sunak “sat on his hands” while the rule-breaking was going on.
Source Daily Mirror March 3rd, 2023.
Last week saw the release of 100,000 Whatsapp messages from Matt Hancock. Hancock was having a book written for him by Journalist Isabel Oakeshott. As part of the process, he gave her access to all his whatsapp messages. She of course signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement which she ignored and released the information into the public domain via the Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph had as many as 21 journalists working on it. Oakeshott stated that she ignored the NDA on the grounds of public interest (not to be confused with “of interest to the public”). In a previous reveal, in another demonstration of source-revealing leaked emails led to the jailing of former Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce. (Coincidence?) Did the Hancock opportunity, a big story with her at the centre of it, and which fitted her personal political agenda, prove to be more important than sticking to the terms of a non-disclosure agreement?
I haven’t the space to go through the ongoing revelations, but below are some extracts:-
On 1 October 2020, Mr Hancock messaged Sir Gavin Williamson, Education Secretary: “Cracking announcement today. What a bunch of absolute arses the teaching unions are.”
Sir Gavin replied: “I know they really really do just hate work.”
Boris Johnson had misgivings about the government’s shielding advice in discussions with the chief medical officer Prof Sir Chris Whitty. In August 2020 the then-prime minister suggested that if renewed lockdown restrictions were needed over-65s be offered a choice on shielding.
Mr Johnson, addressing Sir Chris in a WhatsApp group on 9 August, said: “If you are over 65 your risk of dying from Covid is probably as big as your risk of falling down stairs. And we don’t stop older people from using stairs. What do you think?”
Sir Chris conceded that he “would think twice before shielding unless it threatened the NHS”. Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance replied: “We haven’t found shielding easy or very effective first time round.”
George Osborne, the former Chancellor, had a pithy form of texting style, with gems such as ‘no one thinks testing is going well Matt’.
Also revealed was a suggestion to euthanise the UKs cat population in case they were a possible vector for Covid.
Source BBC
Turns out they were saying one thing in private and another in public, and Hancock’s public claim to have thrown a protective ring around care homes was matched in private by his rejection of the expert advice that all residents going into care homes should be tested. Hancock claims he was initially supportive of this advice, before being told it was not workable. Nevertheless, hypocrisy was confirmed.
Another odd coincidence, Oakeshott, a prominent anti lockdown supporter is the partner of Richard Tice, the leader of the Reform Party, the revamped Brexit party.
In yet another coincidence, a leaked email shows that at the time Sue Gray was understood to be negotiating to become Sir Keir’s chief of staff, she argued within Whitehall that she found the plan by the London Government to block Scotland’s new Gender Recognition Bill ‘difficult’.
The Bill made it easier to change gender and was backed by Labour in Scotland.
Just to show that Scotland is as inept as England Nicola Sturgeon resigned as leader. Almost immediately afterwards, in yet another coincidence, it was announced that her deputy leader John Swinney would resign from his post.
Private Eye reports that the week before her resignation Police Scotland started contacting witnesses as part of Operation Brainchild, which is investigating £600,000 of donated money given to the SNP for Indyref2. There was also an interest free loan of £107,620 to the SNP from Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell. Murrell, in another coincidence was the SNPs chief executive at the time of the loan.
When this loan was belatedly declared to the Electoral Commission it was listed as having been made by “executive management” rather than Murrell. Scottish Police are now obtaining detailed statements from Sturgeon, Murrell and Colin Beattie, the SNPs treasurer. What is unclear at the moment is whether Murrell and Sturgeon have a joint bank account, and if so, was the loan made from that account? Each time Sturgeon has been asked whether she has a joint bank account with her husband she has refused to answer.
Just to make things really murky, Rishi Sunak vetoed the Scottish gender reassignment bill and Sturgeon resigned. Sue Gray was averse to this bill. The bill was a difficult problem for Sunak. The involvement of Gray in the bill, Johnson’s partygate investigation and her move to the Labour party all seem to be coincidences, but to a suspicious mind would raise questions.
It’s going to be an interesting week and one thing is certain – Sunak is going to need an even bigger shovel than thought to clean up the mess. Something is definitely sniffy.