What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Tonight it's starting to get pretty down and dirty as the war between the PM and Dominic Cummings moves into another stage, shifting up a gear as it were in an attempt to get Johnson into the effectively terminal position of being proven to have lied to Parliament.

This is how it's unfolding. Yesterday in the Sunday Times journalist Dominic Lawson made the claim in his regular column that the PM had been asked about the propriety of holding the May 20th party before it was held. In the House he had told the Commons from the dispatch box that he had no prior knowledge of the party, before he had attended it, and that doing so he had thought it to be a work event. Today on his blog Dominic Cummings has not only corroborated the Lawson claim (albeit that it might have come from him in the first place) but has gone further. Not only was the PM consulted about the party, but he himself also gave it the okay, telling Cummings and others who were expressing their reservations to effectively stop fussing.

Cummings has said that he is prepared to swear to this occurrence and further more, that other people present would also be prepared to swear likewise. Rather ominously he concluded his blog with the sentence that there are plenty more pictures around ready to be unveiled.

If there is a grain of truth in any of this it will have Johnson sweating bullets. Lying to Parliament is about the only thing that can demand an immediate resignation from a Minister, and there is no reason to doubt that the same would pertain in the case of a PM. But it would have to be proven in a completely airtight, open and shut manner. Multiple swearings might just do it. Photos of the PM at more than the one event he has admitted to being at might also hammer the last remaining nails into his coffin. The PM, if he is following his usual path and telling fistfuls of porkies (and attending any party where there is likely to be an open bottle of champagne and a few tasty birds about), is likely to be deep in the shit. At these bash's there is bound to be scores of twats snapping away with smart phones - selfies, group shots, video footage and the like - any one of which could hang him. He'd be absolutely at the mercy of any clown with an incriminating image who wanted to bring him down - and let's face it, he won't have made any friends within his own civil service staff (or in any other dept who's party he might have attended) what with his threats to engage in a bloodfest of scalping in order to save his own skin.

No. If there is any truth in this then he is likely screwed. How events would unfold I'm not quite sure. Downing Street have already vigorously denied the Dominic Lawson story, but with the Cummings claims behind it, this is going to be more difficult to sustain. Obviously Labour are going to be all over it in the PM's question time on Wednesday (if they have any sense......there has been some speculation that they don't actually want Johnson out of office just yet on the grounds that if your enemy is in the process of killing himself, don't interfere to stop him, and Johnson is certainly killing the Tory Party chances in the next election simply by being there). We shall have to wait and see, but rest assured, Cummings is out in the arena now and will not ease up on the pressure until either he or Johnson lies mortally wounded on the ground.

(Edit; That was posted last night; this morning (Tuesday) about half of the headlines are leading with the story - most significantly the Times and the Guardian. This will give it enough coverage for the BBC to take it up - and given the attack to be made on the corporation's finances in short order by the Johnson Government, it is most likely that they will avail themselves of the opportunity to further weaken the PM (and by extension his administration). The administration is sitting on a chair with three legs: cut one more away and down it goes. The BBC has unparalleled power in this country to focus public attention on pretty much any subject it chooses. If it elects to push this Cummings accusation to the hilt then Johnson could well be done for.)

[peter]

Well it wasn't the BBC but rather Sky that got the drop on the big story of the day, with Beth Rigby (no easy-going, one eye on the revolving door Laura Kuenssberg is she) conducting a long interview with PM Johnson as he raised his head above the parapet for the first time in days. Visiting an NHS drop in screening centre, the PM was nailed by his nemesis interviewer (who for years he has blackballed since she gave him a rough time early in his premiership) and asked all of the awkward questions arising from the Dominic Cummings allegations, including whether he would resign if it were found that he had lied to Parliament.

Looking rough round the edges (to put it mildly) the PM at one point appeared near to breaking down, but he maintained his earlier position that he had known nothing of the putative party on May 20, that no-one had warned him it was against regulations (he didn't appear to know this for himself, or even what the regulations were) and that we must wait for the Sue Gray inquiry to report.

Later it was confirmed that Cummings would be interviewed by Gray in the course of her investigations, and he of course will state that Johnson was made aware that the said party was going to be held, and actually approved it. Johnson will clearly state the opposite, so the nub will be whether Gray can find anyone else who will corroborate Cummings' version of events.

Kier Stamer said in interview that it was clear that Johnson was on his last legs, so now all eyes will be on the pair as they confront eachother across the dispatch boxes tomorrow.

It's at 12 o clock and I'll be there!

[peter]

Dubbed the 'pork-pie rebellion' (because one of the conspirators happens to come from Melton Mowbray), a group of twenty plus Tory MPs, many from the 2019 new 'north-wall' intake, have reportedly met with a view to brining down the beleaguered PM. A number have by all accounts already written their letters of no confidence and are holding them ready to submit later today if they feel that the PM does not pass muster at the dispatch box at lunch time.

Many were apparently unimpressed by his interview with Beth Rigby (see above) in which the PM seemed to be close to blarting under the remorseless questioning he was subjected to. While the new intake MPs are more generally the ones that are up in arms against the PM (to not altogether sympathetic understanding from their colleagues - one described them as "a bunch of nobodies"), the old-guard tend to be more behind their man. (Oddly, this is in contravention of normal practice where it is usually the longer standing, more established in their own right MPs who become troublesome.)

The Ministers of Johnson's cabinet seem on the whole to be behind him, but with notable exceptions. Dominic Raab (demoted from foreign secretary to deputy PM not so long ago by Johnson) said unequivocally on breakfast television that any Minister, including the PM, who had broken the ministerial code and lied to Parliament would have to resign. Chancellor Sunak, emerging from the cover under which his silence has been deafening for the last few days, said that "of course [he believed] the PM". But then he spoiled it all by abruptly truncating the interview just as the question was being asked whether he gave the PM his unequivocal support. Jeremy C.....sorry, Hunt had something to say as well, but nobody listens to him and I didn't either. Michael Gove is of course nowhere in sight. He'll wait until Johnson is finished before tossing his hat into the ring - but rest assured, he'll know everything, every move that Cummings is about to make. Cummings was his man long before he was Johnson's and it is by no means impossible that this Machiavellian plot has been cooked up between the two of them: their ties are longstanding and deep.

So today there is a real possibility that the magical number of 54 letters could be reached - there were thirty five or so estimated to have been already submitted to the 1922 Committee, and if the 20 or so plotters decide to deliver theirs in a concerted group submission, it could tip the balance.

And Dominic Cummings is, by all reckoning, not done yet. He's well out in the open now as the Prince of Darkness behind all of the revelations - revenge is a dish best eaten cold style of thing - and it is beyond question that another, even fairly trivial, revelation would finish the PM for good. But timing is all in his game. The PM has to appear at the dispatch box to face the opposition leaders questions later today (12 o clock lunch time, to be precise) and if he is forced to say something that further information could be released to counter, then the incriminating burden could simply become too great for Johnson to bear.

This has been like a game of chess in which Johnson is the loosing player and is now at that final stage where he has little to no pieces left and is being forced hither and thither in order to avoid the final check-mate. In chess, at this point, the player in his position would probably knock over their king and concede defeat. Well Johnson always wanted to be king - but I somehow doubt that this was what his pre-adult imagination had in mind for his kingship!

[peter]

At last!

Finally someone has crunched the figures in the Office for National Statistics and has come up with the number of deaths of people who have died of Covid rather than simply with it.

These figures are somewhat different from the 150,000 figure that the media and Government have been putting out - almost gleefully on the part of some commentators, accompanied of course with the appropriate degree of hand wringing and faux sombre tones.

It transpires that from the very beginning of the pandemic up to up to the end of quarter three of last year - a period not far shy of two years - a total of 17,371 people died of Covid-19 who had no underlying co-morbidities that contributed to their deaths.

You cannot take away from the grief that each and every one of these deaths must have caused; taken singly, any death is a tragedy because we are all human and share in it - but we are not talking about single deaths here. We are seeking rather to put the risk of this disease into context so that we may guage our response to it, both individually and as a society as a whole.

Now I am perfectly aware that there will be different degrees of underlying contribution in respect of co-morbidities - individuals over and above these nine thousand or so per year will have had their lives cut short by this virus most certainly - but this would be the case with any flu or cold virus strains, and at least the figure gives us a starting point from which we can begin to make our assessment. And by any reconning our assessment would be likely different to that elicited by the 150,000 figure that has been pushed at us from all quarters up to this point.

Now that the winds are turning in respect of the pandemic, there seems to be a definite change in tone in the way it is being reported. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Leader of the House of Commons actually made the observation in the chamber, dare I say a little bit sheepishly, that "perhaps the restrictions were a little bit harsher than they needed to be". Top prize for understatement there Jacob! The leading daily tabloid in Denmark has apologized to its readers for not being more critical of Government presentation of the figures - they used the same test based death figures as we did - and not being more dutiful in holding their Government to account in respect of its policies. I won't hold my breath waiting for a similar apology from our media.

That we have torn our society asunder to no end is beyond doubt now. That the pandemic would have taken its own course, run its race and come to the same faltering balance that it has, without any of the lockdowns, restrictions and huge expenditure of effort and resources is becoming increasingly obvious. Those of us who have taken a more questioning approach to the policies we have so avidly embraced have been pilloried for doing so. If I was a conspiracy minded individual I would say that you could not come up with a better one than the idea that the whole thing has been a gigantic plot by the Chinese to damage the western economy and give itself a leg up in the world leadership stakes - and that we in the West have sucked it up like a child with a milkshake. I'm not however and I don't believe this. I think it was our own stupidity, a sort of collective madness, a mass psychosis if you like, that brought us to this place - a misplaced bowing down to the predictions of science, elevated to the status of religion - but the end result is the same whichever position you take, and beyond question we are significantly, if not mortally, damaged by it.

But there you have it. What is done is done and we must live with it. A woman came into the shop last night triumphant that the restrictions were ending. "Do you really believe that?'', I asked. She looked at me. "It's been announced. Next Thursday. It's all over."

"Because the regulations have been lifted does not mean it's all over," I explained. "The powers that the Government took have to be given back. Have you ever seen a Government willingly hand back powers that it has taken? They retain the power to do the same thing again, and again, and again, whenever and however they like. It's not over - it's just beginning."

-----------------------------------Here it comes------------------------------------------

Just a quick precis of what is going on in the Johnson affair. Yesterday saw the PM come out onto the dispatch box in bullish mood, particularly given that moments before the session of PM's Questions, one of his backbench MP's had 'crossed the floor' and joined ranks with the Labour Party.

This was a serious blow, but in fact has seemed to rally support around the PM, such that today there is what might be described as a bit of a lull in the situation as MPs actually decide to take the PM's advice and wait on the Sue Gray report before making any decisions as to what they will do in respect of the affair. That was until......

But I get ahead of myself. The question time session went back forth - Kier Stamer seemed to be enjoying himself and Johnson was a different man to the downcast and broken figure we saw in the Beth Rigby interview (some have suggested that this must have been an act - either that or the PM has access to some heavy duty uppers in his medicine cabinet). All went much more in his favour until senior backbencher and ex Minister David Davis took the floor. Briefly telling of the good things that Johnson had achieved, he then raised audible gasps in the House by changing tack and saying it was expected that a PM would take responsibility for what happens under his watch, but this Johnson had singularly failed to do. He finished by quoting the Leo Avery words to the then PM Neville Chamberlain, "You have stayed to long for any good you have done - for God's Sake Go!".

This notwithstanding, the backbench Tory MPs seemed to be in a more settled mood following the PM's strong performance and this morning's press reflected this. The PM was not out of the woods, but the atmosphere was at least less febrile.

And then William Wrath, MP and vice chairman of the 1922 committee stepped into the picture. Speaking to a committee of which he is a member, Wragg accused Downing Street of using strong-arm tactics, including threatening to withdraw funding from their constituencies and the revealing of personal stories pertaining to the members, of individuals who were rumoured to be party to the attempts to unseat Johnson and have him replaced. This was, he said, tantamount to blackmail, a criminal offence, and he said that any member who had been approached in this way should contact firstly the Speaker of the House and then the police.

These are very, very serious accusations. The PM in questioning by Anushka Asthana said that he was unaware of any such allegations or activity by his office, and in the usual manner tried to divert the questions back to the economy and how well he was doing elsewhere. She responded that she had spoken to MPs who said that they "recognised" the type of behaviour she was describing.

For sure, this, if there is truth in it, is going to damage Johnson's credibility beyond measure. He has to be given the benefit of the doubt, so serious are the claims, but it will be impossible for both his backbenchers and Sue Gray to ignore, and if the claims can be substantiated then it has to be game over for Johnson.

So here is where we stand. Do we have the next best thing to a mobster for PM? Was he willing to make his dissident MPs an 'offer they couldn't refuse'? Let's hope none of them keep a pony for their daughter at home!

[wayfriend]

We are seeking rather to put the risk of this disease into context

That isn't what you are doing, I am afraid to say. You are doing quite the opposite. Effectively, you are condoning logic like this: This person had the flu when his car hit a tree at 220 kph - therefore it wasn't the car accident that killed him.

In other words, this 17,000 number is the number of Covid deaths that no one is able to blame on something else regardless of how unlikely.

Is it true that an older person, or a person with diabetes, who dies from Covid, can't blame it entirely on Covid? Yes. But it is equally true that you can't blame it entirely on age or disease ... they would have lived had it not been for Covid. So is it fair to say it's not a Covid death? No.

So that's not "putting it into context". That's ignoring stats for damned stats and lies. It's misinformation designed to support a pre-supposed claim.

[Forestal]

As Wayfriend says, the number of deaths of which Covid is responsible is likely far lower than the 150,000, however, as I estimated in a previous post due to excess death data it is likely closer to 66,000 than to the new figures of 17,000.

I find it quite convenient that now the government wants to open everything up to boost the economy, Covid isn't as big of a problem “as we thought it was before”. Again, I suspect that cherry-picking of statistics is to blame for this – except in the opposite direction than it was a problem previously. I am quite satisfied to believe that somewhere between 66,000-90,000 is the actual realistic UK Covid death rate, rather than 17,000 or 150,000. This number is both realistic, and enough to warrant the concern that was realised through this period.

[peter]

Absolutely the case that the Government is using the statistics to bolster any particular position it is taking on any particular day - and has been doing so since day one of the affair.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid was asked in interview a couple of days ago if he was concerned that three hundred people had died of Covid in recent days (given the moves to open up the country he had announced) and his answer was "Well, you have to understand that not all deaths included in the figures are people who have died of Covid - many will have simply tested positive in previous days."

Now this may come as news to some but I have been bleating on about it from day one. It didn't take more than a few days of listening to those few extra words tacked on to the end of the death figures every time the BBC gave them for me to realise that something was wrong.

Now as to your criticism Wayfriend. Come on - be fair. I was perfectly clear that the figure of seventeen thousand represented the lowest figure that could be presented as a statistic for Covid deaths (just as the 150,000 figure is the upper). The seventeen thousand figure is, if you like, the figure upon which a healthy, non geriatric individual may base their own personal risk assessment, of how dangerous this thing is to them. What the two figures do, is set the lower and upper points, between which - somewhere - the true figure will lie. Forestal has come up with his ballpark figure based on excess deaths and while I think that this is problematic in itself (for the reasons I gave above) I'm perfectly willing to say it's as good a figure (as any other) between the upper and lower limits.

But this is not the point. All we have established is that the true death toll is simply unknowable - or at least unknowable without number-crunching the data even further to distinguish (or attempt to) the degree of contribution of Covid to each death and then agreeing what level of contribution you are going to class as an actual 'Covid death'. Establishing a 'true' figure is always going to be an arbitrary affair - but the one figure it is not, is the one that the media have been ramming down our throats for the past two years. This has been used as a 'nudge' tactic (one part of a wide ranging campaign of propoganda and behavioural manipulation) to get people to accept intrusions into their private lives and activities that they would not otherwise have tolerated. There are people, perhaps less aware than us that have been terrified - terrified - by this. It has blighted their lives and continues to do so. Did our Governments truly have the right to do this to people? And there is yet another ethical question here that our politicians, media and society more broadly, have not yet begun to address. Do we really want to be herded into places that our Governments off their own bat, decide that it is 'good for us' to be in - or can we expect to be treated like adults, provided with the facts accompanied by rational discussion, and be trusted to come to our own judgements? I'm under no illusions about the public's capacity for getting it wrong - they voted Trump and Johnson into power after all - but I still believe the latter option to be the better one.

----------------0-----------------

Not much movement in the partygate affair this morning. The steam seems to have gone out of the story for the while. The blackmail and threats allegations have been taken up by a few papers, but there seems to be an understanding that this is pretty normal behaviour for the whips office, so most MPs are pretty casual about it. Ex Tory leadership candidate Rory Stewart gave a damning interview to Sky news about Johnson's unfitness for the position he holds - but everyone knows this already. He said that the story, if nothing else, shows us how dysfunctional and chaotic his leadership and the administration he runs is, and that there is something deeply wrong with a system that concentrates wholly on the winning and holding of power to the exclusion of all else, in particular doing what is actually good for the country you are running.

One significant piece of news is that by accounts, Sue Gray has been presented with emails that establish that Johnson was warned about the inapropriateness of the May 20 gathering that he attended - and that he later told the Commons that he had no knowledge that it was a party. This is going to put Gray into a really difficult position. Johnson has after all, appointed her to carry out this investigation - he is her boss and it is to him that she reports. She can hardly report that he has lied to Parliament in the report that he commissioned and that she has to hand to him. In her position, and given the stock that Johnson has placed in her report (smugly assuming that it will exonerate him and deflect the blame elsewhere) she could do for Johnson by resigning from the inquiry - this would finish him, but I don't expect this to happen. She will fudge it somehow (and this itself will not placate the Johnson critics in the party) and he will get off, effectively condemning the party to 'death by a thousand cuts' between now and the next election as Johnson continues to screw things up. (As an aside, one Tory MP interviewed did express suprise at the degree to which Johnson was sheltering behind the inquiry results. He thought this to be unwise and liable to backfire on the PM.)

That is of course, unless Dominic Cummings has different plans. I'd be surprised if he's shot his last salvo yet and wouldn't bank against a further revelation or even a photo, appearing in the press in the next day or two. The Sunday papers would be the optimal place for such a release - that's where I'd expect it to show up if it's going to.

(Edit; Interesting little snippet of information I've just picked up from listening to Peter Hitchens talking to Mike Graham is that virtually nothing is known about Sue Gray, the woman leading the partygate inquiry upon which Johnson's future is absolutely staked. Her Wikipedia entry is brief in the extreme - neither her date of birth nor even her school is known. There is virtually no information about her career other than the positions she has held in recent years and she remains an enigma, even to the people who have worked with and known her over the years. I heard a story about that one top politician (was it Gordon Brown - I forget) was walking with friend through Westminster when they passed her in a corridor. He turned to his companion and said sotto voice, "If you want to know the person who truly runs this country, you've just walked past her!")

[peter]

Well bless my cotton socks!

Last night, on the 6pm BBC news broadcast, for the first time ever, they reported the daily 'death figures' and gave me usual "within 28 days of a positive Covid test spiel, but then followed it by saying "but not all of these deaths will be because of Covid".



If this is not proof positive that they have been rumbled, that this whole nonsense is beginning to fall apart under their noses then I don't know what is.

What has basically happened is that the true figure of people that have actually died of Covid - and that has come out as a result of a 'freedom of information request' submitted by some inspired (or instructed) individual to the Office of National Statistics - is beginning, despite the best efforts of our media to avoid the story, to filter through into the general public awareness. The figure, which was actually released by the ONS a month ago, has, despite its incredibly high pertinence to our situation, not received a mention in either the printed or broadcast media. It is only via the auspices of YouTube that the information has become more widely known and what we are seeing is a desperate attempt on the part of the BBC to appear 'in tune' - to present themselves as the voice of 'fair and responsible news presentation' when in fact they have been the vehicle of the propoganda and weaponisation of fear that I have been going on about for months.

And they still are.

Because of course, nothing in this sorry business can ever be done in a straight and honest fashion. Nothing is as clear as it at first appears.

It now, given its current fight for its very existence (and this is where the Covid and the partygate stories weave together once more) becomes critical for the Government in general and Johnson in particular, that something be done to draw attention away from the party scandal and the Gray report. The entire situation was becoming too febrile, was inexorably achieving 'critical mass', such that it was threatening their very survival. Hence the brought forward plans, the sudden release of Plan B restrictions, the presentation of the administration (by themselves) as the saviours of the nation by virtue of the successful fight they have orchestrated (in their narrative at least) against Covid. Smoke and mirrors. If this was a magician you'd be pelting him with tomatoes by now, the trick is so transparent.

But how to turn off the fear taps that you have successfully racked up to a scalding blast, reflected in a question from a journalist to the Health Secretary, "But what of the 300 plus deaths a day Mr Javid - aren't you worried about them." "Well of course - not all of those deaths will actually be of Covid, will they?"

And so the twisty snake turns, coils back in on itself so that you can't see the woods for the trees. Why is this information about the actual deaths of Covid coming out now? Seems very timely for the Government in terms of justification of the hastily brought forward reductions in Plan B restrictions. Or is it the other way around; the figure has come out via this freedom of information request (who was this nameless requestor anyway?), becomes more widely known (via alternative media outlets - yet more conspiracy within conspiracy?) and so Javid has to include it in his responses (but as it happens it supports his new narrative - offers him a 'get out of jail card' for the still high daily death tolls {by the old system of 28 day reckoning} it's not actually so bad).

Who the frick can pick the bones out of this lot? Not me, that's for sure. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

But this I do know: we have been ill-used from the start of this business and we continue to be so. Our Government whose job it was to administer the nuts and bolts day to day activity of our country have instead moved from the role of servant to master and rent our lives apart in the doing. Our media whose job it was to act on our behalf as Watchmen against such abuse have instead become co-conspiritors and the route and means by which underhand manipulation of public behaviour and understanding have been distorted.

Wake up people - Wake Up! For God's Sake see what has been done to you!

Edit (after a few minutes of quiet reflection): The fog of war. I begin to see what this phrase actually means. After such a strident declaration as I made above, I suddenly feel the ground beginning to shift below my feet, my certainty beginning to evaporate. Am I seeing connections here that don't exist? Am I deluding myself here: are my Government actually playing with a straight bat and it is me that is creating this false narrative which is distorting my thinking, rather than the other way around? I have the feeling that this is what it must have been like in Soviet era Russia where the state could say up is down, down is sideways and everything became clouded in a haze of unreality that made anything approximating to a clear perception of reality an impossible ask. As at the end of a film I saw in which a priest in the Roman Catholic church had been accused of inapropriateness by a sister of the order he worked in, like that sister, when sat questioning herself, I find myself saying, "I have such doubts. I have such doubts." The central question I must ask myself here - a starting point from which to begin a navigation back to solid ground must be, "Do I trust my Government?" At least, I know beyond question what the answer to this is.

[peter]

A quick blast on that FOI request that gave us the number of people that had died of Covid with no underlying co-morbidities (a figure of seventeen thousand plus, compared to the 150,000 plus figure that was being touted in the media as the number of Covid deaths).

It was pointed out that this was the number of deaths that "no one is able to blame on something else regardless of how unlikely".

No. This is the number of people who have died from Covid who were otherwise healthy prior to infection with the virus. Who died in hospital of Covid with no contributory factor from something else.

The excess death figures from the same period, contained in this same FOI request, are something of the order of 127,000. For certain in amongst these excess death figures will be numbers of individuals who have perished in large part due to the Covid virus, but will not be recorded in the 17,000 figure. But it will also include the people who have died at home as a result of non-presentation at hospital while suffering catastrophic medical emergencies (at the height of lockdown 100 people per day were dying at home unattended), it will include those who perished as a result of missed treatments, undiagnosed conditions that resulted from our hospitals being virtually closed with their A&E departments lying empty. It will include those who took their own lives as the toll of the lockdown (not to mention the constant fear propoganda they were being subjected to) added to their existing mental health problems became too much to bear.

And not in any way to make light of the deaths where Covid was a contributing factor, the average age of death of this group was 82.5 years (actually higher than the national average for the population as a whole), and so measured in terms of 'quality life years lost' (considered by the medical profession as a more significant measure than the brute number of deaths) the net cost to society of the virus itself, has been very low.

The same cannot be said for our response to it.

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The Sue Gray report will be being eagerly awaited in many households in the coming days, not least amongst Tory backbenchers still to decide whether they should throw their lot in behind the charlatan they have as a leader (lest he actually survive this) or jump ship and try to get onto a different log in the game of political manoeuvring that is Westminster these days.

The PM has by accounts spent the weekend at his country retreat Chequers, telephoning known 'wobblers' in an attempt to shore up their support - but all of this may be to no avail if rumours of a deal-breaker event turn out to be true.

Because a hazy story is emerging of a new party revelation, and one that would blow the PM out of the water. Because it was by accounts held in his private flat. By his wife. To celebrate the sacking of her hated rival Dominic Cummings. Granted, the story comes from Cummings himself, and the attendees can probably justify their presence under the guise of 'this is a work event' (see trolling of Downing Street video on YouTube), but if Gray decides to dig a bit deeper than she might, then it could be significant.

Oh goodness, wouldn't that be a beautiful irony!

But this aside, the PM's idea that he might be able to use the Gray report to fudge his way through this crisis in his leadership could be built on less solid ground than he would like. Both Labour and the Lib-Dem's are calling for the report to be published in full with all details of all events held in contravention of the law to be made public, together with their attendees. This will not suit Johnson a bit, who as the investigation's instigator, would expect to have it placed solely into his hands, and it to be for him to decide what should be disclosed from its findings, and (more crucially) what should be withheld.

But there is a feeling that this will not satisfy his own backbench MPs, who remember, will have been labouring under the same lockdown rules as the rest of us while the PM partied, and who now want total transparency in order to satisfy the righteous chagrin felt by their constituents, angered by what has been reported. If it is thought that the Gray report whitewashes the affair, or that Downing Street does not present the findings n full, but rather gives out a sanitised version in which the PM gets to shift responsibility onto other shoulders (which he can then sacrifice in a 'night of the long knives' of his own) - then said backbenchers are likely to be pissed, and letters are likely to be flying into the 1922 office faster than starlings into the South at the onset of winter.

No, the entire political class and every media outlet in the country will be waiting on the release of the Gray report and there will be very little room for manoeuvre for Johnson if he isn't going to fuck it up. Being exonerated by the report will go down like a lead balloon. Withholding its findings isn't going to work. A balance will have to be struck of enough blame falling on his shoulders, but not enough, and not in the right places such that he must resign. The leadership challenge is all but inevitable, but whether it happens this week, or in a few months time will be absolutely dependant upon how the Gray report is handled - and she has her own reputation to consider. As a civil servant, she will be in place long after Johnson has hit the speech circuit, and already has a formidable reputation to protect. She is unlikely to want to throw this under a bus for any PM's benefit, let alone one as worthy of contempt as Johnson.

So in short, Johnson's reliance on the Gray report to get him out of this bind could be ill-judged: and if the Carrie Johnson party story has legs, then it could be irrelevant anyway. Not alas likely, but one can dream.

[peter]

And so begins the week that could be make or break for the Boris Johnson premiership.

Those papers that are not avoiding the subject this morning (possibly because they realise that their man is a busted flush) are pretty pessimistic about his chances.

There are all sorts of conflicting rumours flying around - one has it that Johnson already has the report in his possession and is currently redacting and bullying it into a shape that can be presented to Parliament without bringing about his immediate downfall.

This seems unlikely given that it is believed that Sue Gray will today interview Dominic Cummings for the second time and that reports in today's press say that she has been interviewing the Downing Street police officers who were manning the gates at the times of the alleged events. One source told the Times (I think it was) that their testimony was damning. They would by virtue of their position have intimate knowledge of what was transpiring in the property and its gardens at any time, and would also have a complete register of who was entering and leaving the property and at what times. This source is reported as saying that if Johnson was still the PM by the end of the week they'd be surprised.

Other reports are a bit more positive. Johnson is still convinced of his innocence of any wrongdoing and intends to come out fighting and "own the report" when it is published, we are told (that latter bit sounds about right). Be that as it may, I think that the issue of the parties is secondary in terms of its ability to unseat Johnson. It may well be that he did indeed only briefly visit the party on May 20 to say thanks to his staff for all their hard work (not that they seem to have been doing much - they seem to have been pissed most of the time). This sounds like the man to me - I can't see him mixing with the hoi-poloy jobbers any more than he has to, even if there are birds and booze in the offing....... though the idea that he "didn't know it was a party'' is indeed ridiculous.

No - what will finish him, if anything does, will be incontrovertible proof that he lied to Parliament. This was what brought John Profumo down and it would finish Johnson off all these years later as well. It would be Johnson's casual laziness with the truth, even in that most sacrosanct of places, that could do for him. The parties, he can skirt around, throw blame of others and confusion about what was legal and what wasn't into the mix, and get away with it - just. But lying to Parliament, no. The fact that Downing Street partied while the rest of us stuck by the rules - the insult to the people who sat in carparks while their loved ones died, who missed funerals and weddings, the most significant lifetime events - this can be dealt with by some carefully redacting releasing, some sackings of the usual sacrificial lambs, and some carefully crafted words and cod-remorse. But the lying to Parliament - this is not to be tolerated. And if this - and this alone - can be demonstrated, then he will be out.

[peter]

Well, I was a couple of days late, but sure as Christmas, the next set of allegations of partying in Downing Street came around last night - again from ITV News (I should have seen that actually - it seems to be Cummings' preferred route of getting his salvos out at present) - and this time pertaining to a sa-called birthday party held at the instigation of PM's wife Carrie, in which 30 or so staff gathered to wish him happy birthday.

To be honest, this 'revelation' is pretty weak, and isn't really a revelation at all. Gray already knows about this affair (at which the PM was present for only 10 minutes - as apparently, was Rishi Sunak) but embedded in the morning's reports are a more significant rumour that a later party within the PM's flat was held, attended by his family and friends. While the staff birthday bash, technically illegal, will not raise too many hackles, a full on birthday gathering up in the flat would definitely be beyond the scope of the laws of the day.

For the first time Downing Street have admitted that Johnson was there at the staff gathering (which as I say, while technically beyond the Law, was only a brief transgression to sing him happy birthday, and that a gathering was held in the garden later in the day. It's whether the evening get together went up into the PM's flat that is the question, and if it is found to be have done so, then it becomes much more serious.

But whatever, the front pages are plastered with the story and the public will just see it as further evidence of the difference in the way rules are applied at the top as compared with the rest of us. MPs will be even more pissed at having to field off questions and the discontent of their constituents, and will take this out on Johnson. In addition, it places further pressure on Gray not to go easy on Johnson in her report. How can she produce a whitewash if days before the report is submitted the papers are full of reports of transgressions - and knowingly understood to be so - by the very PM himself. It simply wouldn't cut it.

So this is misery heaped on misery for the PM. Personally I'm not bothered one way or the other. If Johnson survives it will only be to exact more damage on the Tory Party - quite possibly terminal damage, because if their donor support dries up then they are done for as a political force (and Johnson is becoming toxic indeed in the eyes of potential donors). This is a consummation greatly to be wished for. Or if he's chucked out - well, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy could it?

[Avatar]

Can't wait. Almost anybody would probably look better in comparison.

--A

[Forestal]

a brief transgression to sing him happy birthday

Lest we not forget that at the time, indoor singing was strictly forbidden and was so for a considerable time afterwards.

[peter]

Update: The metropolitan police have decided that now is the time to begin an investigation into whether any laws were broken in the Downing Street gatherings. Cresida Dick, announcing their decision, said that it would be open minded about the possibility of legitimate reasons for people being present. I am minded to wonder if that would include the people on the PM's two years old son's swing - in possession of a suitcase full of booze?

Johnson himself says he welcomes the investigation. Yes - I believe that he might well do so.

In the first instance it was reported that the holding of a criminal investigation would mean that the release of the Gray report would have to be postponed; so much the better if the Gray investigation was not going to provide the get out of jail card that he required. Also, if a police investigation finds he has no case to answer (it will) then if the Gray report is critical, well it is effectively overruled by the police report. If the Gray report just does what it says on the tin - ie reports, but makes no recommendations - and confines itself to the civil service aspects of the case, then the police report covers this deficiency by clearing Johnson. It's a slam-dunk to the PM. Sure - the people will be pissed, but Johnson will have bought himself the time he needs and a good war in the Ukraine will soon bring the plebs back onboard.

No - this late in the day decision by the met has Johnson's sticky paw marks all over it.

But lets face it; there is a hypocrisy in all of this, an elephant in the room that e are not addressing. The crime here - and we all know that Johnson is lying, that he's been partying through the whole thing like it's 19999 - is not what the PM has been doing..... we were all doing the same. Squeezing through the cracks in the regulations, nipping a bit of our normal lives here and there, going for a drive that was technically outlawed or whatever. We had in order to stay sane. Johnson is human too - it's just that his normal has always been a bit more hedonistic than yours or mine.

No - the crime of this was that he had to do it at all. This was a crime perpetrated against each and every one of us - and none more so than those who were excluded from being in the presence of their dying relatives, whether suffering from Covid or other conditions. There has been a story circulating in the media (Kier Stamer has been on about it) about the account of a nurse who, railing about the Johnson parties, told how she had watched a man crying in his car in a hospital car park. She had ejected him from a ward on the hospital where his wife lay dying - she was, she tells us, doing her job. How could Johnson hold his head up, how could he continue against the backdrop of such scenarios when he had flouted the rules that he himself had been central to putting in place, she asked. (Fair play - but I have an additional dimension to add; how could she have justified what she did in any world, Covid ridden or not. Was not her excuse - I was doing my job - not the same one as given by any good Nazi back in the thirties. What she was being asked to do - and did - was inhuman. She, herself, does not escape the blame. She too, had choices she could have made, choices that she took.)

The man like this one, and the thousands of others, alongside the lesser victims - the ones who missed the funerals, the weddings, scaling down to each of us as we spent a Sunday away from the family that we would normally have been seeing - this is the crime that has been committed. Johnson's acts are simply the human reaction to a set of laws that were immoral in conception, unworkable in practice and ridiculous in hindsight. The denizens of 10 Downing Street knew this at the time - trouble was that the old game of 'King for a day' (where the village idiot is raised for a day of mayhem, to the position of king) was in practice there every day. What else could be expected with Johnson at the helm. Every day was Christmas Day. Truly had work events and partying fused into one indistinguishable whole.

But this was just Johnson being Johnson - the good time Charlie who craved to be liked. Like a school kid, normally shunned by his classmates, who suddenly becomes the center of attention, he behaved according to kind. And as for the Covid rules , they were an annoyance that could be slithered around. Johnson's crime was the same as our crime - yours and mine - but just in Johnson form. The true crime is that it was ever a crime in the first place.

[peter]

And while we are on about this, let's take a look at our 'NHS heroes' who have been front line and centre in this whole business.

I mentioned in the above post, the story of the nurse who had kept a crying man in the carpark while his wife died in the hospital behind the doors he was forbidden to enter through.

Last night in a special report on the six o clock news, breathy voiced presenter Clive Myrie revisited the case of a nurse he had spoken to in the thick of the pandemic, who he told us,had as a result of "burnout" upped sticks and moved to Australia to find a new life away from the cut and thrust of a front-line hospital ward in the UK.

Pictured walking along a golden beach in the antipodes, the nurse told how she had spent her time phoning relatives of people on life support machines, telling them that there was no prospect of recovery for their family members, then turning off the machines and effectively ending their lives in doing so. In a moment of epiphany, she told us, she had suddenly realised what she was doing, that it had become simply a routine task that she did without feeling or empathy, and realized that she had to get away from it. And so here Myrie found her, barefooted walking across the powdered sands of an Australian beach, rejuvenated and restored to her humanity in the idyllic setting that she now found herself in.

Well bully for her.

Can I be the first to point out that walking out of your job, tearing your life up by the roots and moving to the other side of the world is not something that would usually be done by someone suffering with burnout. More usually in fact, the response is a collapse of both the mental and physical kind that results in the sufferer being able to do little more than get out of bed in the morning, not involve themselves in the organisational upheaval that relocation to Australia from the UK involves.

And as for the business of talking to relatives and turning off machines: I spent the bulk of my working life in a veterinary practice where we did the same thing in respect of people's much loved pets, and yes, it's maybe not the same thing, but I do understand that the tasks are never - never - done lightly or without empathy for the families involved.......at least not by workers worth an ounce of their salt in the profession. But it is simply part of the job. It goes with the territory. And when it is done, when you have shared in the grief - and if you are worth a spit in the job, you do - you shake yourself down and go on. Because there is always another one, another case that has to be fought for, another serious situation to address - and that's the way it goes. You can walk away as this woman did, or you can buckle up and get on. If you can't stick the heat....... so be it, but spare us the bleeding heart stuff. There are tens of thousands of nurses doing exactly the same job - yes it's hard, it's been hard - but you show me a job where people don't come home exhausted at the end of the day, where tears are shed and where stresses threaten to pull you under on an almost daily basis. This is the modern world. This is the world we all live and work in, nurse, dustbin man, shop assistant - you name it.

And I saw the NHS staff buckling under the strain in the first weeks of the pandemic at my local hospital. They were so strained by the emptying out of the wards and emergency outpatients waiting rooms that they were unable to do anything but come out and lie on the grass in the beautiful June sunshine in their hospital scrubs.

Now don't get me wrong, the NHS is a fine institution with fantastic people staffing it. But let's not turn it into a religion. Let's not deify its staff and turn them into martyrs. They do a difficult job in challenging surroundings - but they go home at the end of the day just as you and I do. They have good days, and they have shit days. They have days when they want to throw in the towel and (like us) the odd few that make them actually like their job. They are not heroes, not martyrs, not villains either - they are just people like you and me doing a job. Sure - they made a useful focus point for a Government that 'needed' an entity to draw the attention, to collectivise the public awareness on, but this is all it ever was. The Myrie report is no more than a continuation of that by a news office that still doesn't get it that the story is dead - that the sand has been washed away from under it and the blinkers are rapidly falling away from a public who's awareness is fast catching up to what has been done.

So BBC, do us a favour and can it. Try if you can, to return to some proper balanced journalism, some programming that doesn't simply reflect the views of a Guardian reading liberal elite at the expense of everything else, and then, just maybe, you will be able to justify the people's support in the forthcoming battle for survival with an administration bent on your destruction.

[peter]

Despite every journo in the country being camped outside Number 10, eagerly awaiting the delivery of the Sue Gray report, nothing has as yet surfaced.

There are two conflicting reasons being given fot the delay - the first being that it is necessary for Gray to 'edit' the report such that none of the information contained therein compromises the ongoing police investigation into the same matter. The second, which I suppose could actually be consistent with the first if the contenders are Gray and the Met, is that there is "a conflict" going on as to what the report to Johnson will actually contain. Given that the Government are said to be involved in these discussions, I can see that they will want the report handed to Johnson (which he has pretty much implied that he will publish in full - not that this should be given any credence) to be as minimal as possible: the less it says, the less he will have to explain - but if indeed Government advisors are indeed in the ongoing discussions with Gray, then it may be assumed that Johnson will already know the full scope of the investigation's findings, and thus the actual report he is handed will be nothing other than a hot potato that he will exert pressure to be as small as possible.

As I've said above (I think), the Gray report will be minimal, concerned only with the civil service aspects of the infringements, make no recommendations - and Johnson will use a clean bill of health from the metropolitan police criminal investigation (which he will get) to stopper up any shortfall in expectations of the public and his backbenchers in respect of its contents.

He's going to get away with this (despite an embarrassing story that came out yesterday in which his propensity for telling porkies is once again demonstrated). But as I say, it's neither here nor there really. Many Tory MPs will know and see the carnage that having him as a leader is causing - it will be being shoved down their throats at every weekend surgery they hold in their constituencies - and the magic number of 54 letters could easily still be achieved in the next few days. But put to a vote in the House, it would be unlikely to meet the hundred plus votes that would be required to initiate a leadership contest, and Johnson would be secure for a year (only one vote of no confidence against a PM can be held each year). He'd be happy enough with that result I'm thinking.

[peter]

Johnson is stalling, prevaricating, bribing, manipulating - in short using any and every tactic available to him to get through the partygate scandal.

It's worth just going through the arsenal of different approaches he is utilising, because if nothing else it gives a clear picture of the man - of what he is prepared to do simply to survive.

Firstly the Sue Gray report. He is saying that the report is going to be published in full the moment he receives it. So it is. What he isn't saying is that Downing Street lawyers are going through the report word by word, with Gray, and altering wording, redacting and changing anything that could seriously damage the PM in the draft that is handed to him. He already knows all of the incriminating stuff, the really politically damaging stuff, that her investigation has uncovered - but this will never make it into the final version he gets. Like a sub-prime mortgage bundle, the killer material will be lumped in with the banal, in critical, but not terminal statements.

The Labour leadership and political commentators have been saying for weeks that this scandal is paralysing Government, and they are right. But this next aspect goes to an entirely different level in that it involves the bribing of the Tory right, the buying of their support, by the placing on hold of a policy that the treasury say is essential if we are to get to grips with the seven percent inflation (the highest for thirty years) that is battering the economy as I post. Part of the chancellor's strategy for this was to raise National Insurance Contributions by 1.5 percent in the next week or two. Reports this morning say that Johnson is "wobbling" over this, because it will infuriate right wing MPs who's support upon which, the PM could be dependent. So here we have a situation where what might be good for the country is being placed second to what is good for the PM. This is not the way that a country should be run and that Johnson is considering the option tells us all we need to know about his priorities. (NB. I make no observation on the rightness/wrongness of the hike in NIC's - just that it's introduction or otherwise should not be predicated on what Johnson needs in order to survive.)

For days now the press and the country have been waiting for this report. It's coming, then it isn't. Then it's back on again. In the meantime, new and different stories enter the public domain via the media...... and attention spans are exceeded. This tactic of now, not now, look at this, is a tried and tested one and again Johnson is utilising it to the full. He is banking that if he can put even days of waiting before the neutered report is placed in the public domain, then public attention, public anger, will dissipate even further, and this will make his survival so much the easier.

Yes - he's a crafty one is Johnson. He has no intention seeing his premiership dissapear in front of his eyes just when it is getting started. He's had no proper time to enjoy the fruits of his success in getting to the top of the tree - the Covid pandemic has seen to that - and he's buggered if he's going to loose it all now, just as things are (in his eyes at least) coming right.

He's been telling us how well he has done - Brexit is done (it isn't), the economy is surging (it's screwed), the pandemic is beaten (if it is, it's no thanks to him). As they say, you can always tell when the man is lying - his lips move!

[peter]

In an absolute blinder, the metropolitan police have today announced that they have requested that Sue Gray include "minimal reference" in her widely anticipated on partygate report, pertaining to aspects of her inquiry that overlap with areas of interest in their ongoing investigation. Specifically this refers to eight of the party's that occurred at No 10.

In other words, hold off on the very stuff that is of any significance in respect of the PM. Any comment on his involvement, his presence or anyone else's, the nature of the events themselves. In short, anything which makes the report worth handing out at all.

In a statement laced with 'cod-suprise', the cabinet office (who have been in contact with the metropolitan police for weeks) said that they had "no idea that this request was going to be made".

Yeah right! And the moon's made of green cheese.

Kier Stamer, taking the bland route, said that it was important that both the Gray report and the metropolitan police investigation were concluded with all haste as the business of government was paralyzed while the situation remained unresolved. Ed Davey of the Lib-Dem's was more courageous. "It's a stitch-up between Downing Street and the metropolitan police," he said. Even James O'Brien said it was hard not to think that the politics of the situation had been allowed to enter into the police thinking and actions, and that if this were the case then we were in deep trouble indeed. The rule of law, the freedom of the judiciary and the impartiality of the police were the only things that stood between us and the North Korea's, the Bolsonaro run Brazil's of this world.

And it is impossible not to see that something is far from right here. On Tuesday when the met announced their investigation, they specifically said that this would not interfere with the reporting of the Gray inquiry. Now today they request that all of the significant parts of the report be withheld. These police investigations will take months, and it has even been suggested that we might never see the full Gray report at all.

Johnson is himself not to be found to comment on the matter, but Jacob Rees-Mogg said that it would be a strange thing for the Prime Minister to help himself by subjecting himself to a criminal investigation - but this is bullshit. Rees-Mogg knows as well as the rest of us that the police investigation will lead to absolutely zilch. That the investigation will find no wrong doing in terms of criminal activity and that will be the end of it.

It's in the bag, sewn up, a slam-dunk for Johnson.

Clever bastard!

[peter]

Reports have it this morning that Johnson's supporters in the Tory ranks are satisfied that he has taken the sting out of the partygate scandal, that the heat is off, the head of steam released. They are correct, but at what cost.

Parliament is in the UK supposed to be sovereign. I mean that in both ways. It is supposed to be sovereign and it is supposed (in people's minds) to be so. So we have a bizzare state of affairs where the sovereign body of the nation (the legislature) is denied the information it needs in order to hold the lesser entity (the executive) to account. The ramifications of this one act on the part of failing metropolitan police chief Cressida Dick will as Ed Davey pointed out yesterday, run down through our future for decades. By this he means that the integrity of police's impartiality is gone. Caput. Finished. Cravenly torn up by a chief on her last legs, embroiled in so many scandals herself that she takes the final hurdle and throws her lot in with the administration of the day, for what thirty pieces of silver only time will tell.

Do these people think that there will not be a price to pay for all of this? Do they not see the anger that people feel, that they feel like they are being taken for mugs while the laws and the system and the very ground upon which the solidity of the nation rests is being shaken to its foundations beneath their feet. The sovereignty of the legislature, the separation of the judiciary, the impartiality of the police. These are the fundamentals upon which our nation rests, so big that we never give them thought. We have never been under any illusions about the lengths that the Tories will go to in order to win and retain power, but surely this - this - will stretch even their elastic morality to beyond its breaking point.

Retention of power is one thing - but the undermining of our fundamental structure as a nation in order to do so is quite another.

[peter]

A stitch up between Downing Street and the metropolitan police designed to get Boris Johnson off the hook, or the met simply doing its job n the investigation of crime or potential crime with a view to bringing the perpetrator(s) to book.

You decide.

For weeks now, the met have been in contact with the cabinet office - ever since the first news of the Downing Street party was run by the Sunday (?) Mirror - but did not feel the need to investigate the matter since, they bizarrely told us, they were not pursuing retrospective actions against historical breaches of lockdown regulations. (As a by-the-by, they were actually doing just that in many cases, and are still doing it to this day if reports can be trusted.)

On Tuesday the met announced that it would be opening its own investigations, having seen the Gray report, but that this would not stop the report from being released into the public domain as per Johnson's 'promises'. Rumours began to circulate in Westminster that the report was pretty incendiary, but for some reason it failed to appear. By Wednesday with no sign of the report it was being suggested that there were significant differences between what Gray wanted to be in the report and what the police wanted, and as a result she was having to rewrite it.

Over Thursday the excitement was reaching a fever pitch but still no report came and suspicions were beginning to be voided that Downing Street was involved in the delay. On Friday it was announced that the met had requested that all details pertaining to the areas that they were investigating were given only minimal reference in the report submitted to Johnson. The reason given for this was so that the police investigation's would not be "prejudiced" in any way. Now as numbers of commentators observed,as the maximum penalties that could be handed out in these circumstances were fixed penalty fines and no jury hearing would be involved, then there was nothing to prejudice. To hold something of such critical public interest (in both senses of the word) back on this basis seemed excessively cautious to say the least. Later in the day a new explanation was given, that the police did not want any potential interviewees to be in the knowledge of what had been said by others in the Gray inquiry interviews.

Fair play (we took some time getting there), but what is undeniable is that the move has undoubtedly worked in Johnson's favour. It's bought him the one thing he didn't have - time. Time (maybe months) for the public to forget. Time for the press to loose interest. Time for other events to intervene and become the pressing story of the day.

And Cresida Dick herself is no stranger to calls from the press for her to resign - and has herself shown no more inclination than him to do so. Could we suspect that she might have a bit of sympathy for Johnson in his current straits and is leaning a bit off-kilter in her responsibilities in respect of impartiality thereby.

As they say in the TV show - you decide!