Good to see the far left of the Labour Party and the Government diehards teaming up tonight to get #StarmerOut trending on Twitter when Johnson is in the biggest crisis of his career.
The Corbynistas really are determined to make their party the one of permeant opposition aren't they. The Tories must be laughing their heads off at this.
The ghost of Jeremy Corbyn really does continue to haunt the Labour party.
Corbyn was just a totemic figure for them. Ultimately it is a individual narcissistic approach to politics, dressed up in flowery language, like solidarity and empathy.
The will to change anything is not there and would deprive them of the cause and passion that opposition gives.
That's not how Twitter works. It's well known the best way to make something trend on Twitter is to hashtag something controversial and watch both pro and con sides drive the hashtag
As a hardcore Corbyn supporter who signed up to the Labour party because of him ( and has since left ), didn't vote for Starmer as leader and lived in a bubble of similar minded people I am 100% sure this is BS designed to deflect from Johnson and try dent Starmers massive poll lead
There's a good correlation between investment in nuclear power and corruption.
EDF recently lost 20% of value because of faulty welds. But they've been given £100m for Sizewell C described as an option fee, "will be invested by EDF into the project to help bring it to maturity, attract investors and advance to the next phase in negotiations"
The UK have been negotiating with them for years. The price agreed for Hinkley C depended on whether Sizewell C went ahead. EDF have constructed two of this type of reactor in China reactor and whole plant in Finland , with more being built in France and the UK. So on paper it should be turnkey.
It's like Brexit in miniature except this time the UK holds all the cards as EDF need the money. EDF have a history of cost increases so it's not like the money could be re-cooped off the final cost.
If the project goes ahead it will add £1 a month to consumer power bills.
Is there not a fear that EDF are too big to fail?
If EDF run out of money, who suffers? The UK would be left with a half built nuclear plant, and a big hole in their electricity supply model. To complete the plant without EDF would cost a lot more that bailing out EDF.
More public money into private pockets.
Hardly "private" pockets. EDF is 85% state-owned. It's just not owned by the British state.
Met have totally changed tack this morning and now say they want all details of Number 10 parties removed from the report as it could prejudice the investigation.
To describe it as a cover up, doesn't do it justice, it stinks of another word beginning with C for them to change their tune totally on this suits one person very much.
It's playing out exactly as I predicted a few days ago
The long suffering people of the UK deserve better than this.
The delays are just part of the tactic. Delay, obfuscate, argue over insignificant details and claim that those "inconsistencies" mean that everything else is fine, brazen it out, it's up to the electorate etc. etc.
Police position unfathomable: first, nothing to see here and spent months not willing to investigate anything, Then, after Sue Gray conducts a proper investigation, they prevent a report which would have laid bare Covid rule-breaking under the noses of the Police in Downing Street by saying it can prejudice their own investigation that they spent months saying they couldn't open, but somehow suddenly are able to do so.
Doesn't say a lot about Cressida Dick really does it. But I bet she's popular in Downing Street right now.
I wonder if the MET taking over is down to the possibility that some of them may be implicated themselves ?
This is the way it's clearly heading
In other news, Boris is said to be "wobbling" over the 1.25% increase in National Insurance (which, as Martin Lewis has pointed out in a tweet is actually an overall 10% increase in tax).
Could Rishi Sunak accept such a U-turn? Losing chancellors is never a good omen for a PM.
Would probably help get him some lost votes back with his Tory peers however (same reason Covid restrictions being dropped); they are not keen on the idea of higher taxes and let's be honest here by borrowing he can push it on the next PM to deal with instead (which is very much Boris style of doing things and if they are not in government so much better to blame Labour for tax rises same way Reps does to Dems in the USA).
More borrowing would not be a "Conservative" way out of the funding issue (although one wonders if the present UK government has abandoned all principle, including Tory principle, for populism and jingoism).
However I still think that Sunak would be completely undermined if the increase was long fingered.
In many ways, the current government is not "Conservative". However, the party retains a healthy degree of fiscal hawks who will prove truculent if Johnson pushes with the proposed increase. I suspect he'll back down and just borrow.
I hope someone leaks this report. It is an absolute outrage that the MET and the Tory party are colluding to keep Johnson in power.
There should be riots in the streets over this
The police timing absolutely reeks, the whole mind changing, clock stopping timing over this week.
I can understand partially why it's a mess, a Civil servant doing a report that now holds the reputations of the Prime Minister, the UK civil service, the Met police; that must be legally watertight and procedurally clear as it will be spun, analysed, and dissected to pieces. Jesus they've made such a mess of this over something as simple as 'Was there a party?'
"Making such a mess" of the report is a great way to eventually discredit it.
Thought this was a good summation of why so many people feel hurt at what has gone on in relation to the parties, but also in how far the Tories have drifted from some sort of principled ideological foundation, however ill-founded it may have been.
The fact that his spoof of the Gray report was taken as fact is just a measure of how far down the rabbit hole politics in the UK has gone.
On the other hand, doesn't the witholding of the juicier bits of the report not put a massive onus on the Met to secure convictions and fines, if not of the Big Dog himself at least of somed of his senior people, and suggest that the cops themselves are pretty convinced that will be the outcome of their investigation? And if you're objective is to force BoJo out, wouldn't a fixed penalty notice in six months a year be just as effective to that end as a really embarrassing Sue Gray report today or next week?
doesn't the witholding of the juicier bits of the report not put a massive onus on the Met to secure convictions and fines,
Absolutely not, in my view. The cops have no interest in this given how they didn't want to investigate, and have now asked Sue Gray to withhold information.
This is a cover up in absolute plain view.
Is it possible that they might have uncovered something a lot more serious than the parties? Wishful thinking I know.
This would suggest not.
They probably uncovered that Dick or other high profile MET officers were at the birthday party.
So why was there that report about them wanting very little mention of the incidents they are investigating ? Jesus wept it’s like keystone cops in Whitehall.
Isn't it obvious?
So that it doesn't become impossible to acknowledge that does appointed to investigate knew for sure that rules had been broken.
The Met will dish out meaningless fines or reproaches, then Sue Gray will say that given the Met have concluded their investigations, it has been dealt with.
Think of this from the perspective, not that they are trying to find out what laws were broken, and by who, but that they are trying to get away with having broken the law and then it will be easier to understand why it's playing out like this.
Problem is, this is all too public now. People are actively watching for them to try water all this down, and any attempt will even further destroy any credibility of both Johnson and The Met.
I mean Johnson is shameless and has nothing to lose. But for the Tory Party and the Met to sacrifice so much credibility and public standing in Johnson's name is mind boggling.
As always it'll be leaks that'll destroy their plans. Too many people now know stuff it'll be impossible to keep a lid on it. The well publicised but unseen photos of Johnson at a party with wine bottles alone will eventually come out, and show he lied to parliament
Update from the Met
I assume they are talking about the report itself?
The process they describe seems to have a lot of possible exit points for an accused.
Johnson may well survive this but the problem remains that the next story is already bubbling away, whatever it is.
brillant machiavellian manoeuvres by Johnston although suspect he has assistance,he really is like Heisenberg in Breaking Bad.Will make great tv in the years to come.
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