General British politics discussion thread

Met Commissioner is gone.

Khan has actually done a favour for Boris here I think.

If the choice wasn't the chaotic, often contradictory policies, the insults to the electorate, the raw anti Jewish sentiment left run riot, the infighting, the dislike of pretty much everything, the nonstop misery of the Corbyn Labour years and the Tories, then Johnson would not have won.

The Tories just have to be less arrogant, snobbish, sanctimonious, hateful than Labour to win. It's a formula that has worked for most of the last century.

The innate ability of Labour members and activists to deliver the election to the Tories again can't be underestimated, once they start interacting with the electorate.

So the Liz truss European tour as foreign secretary is going well. Sergey Lavrov said in a press conference that truth “just bounces off her” and it’s like “talking to a deaf and dumb person.”

Not as welcome as The Grand Brighton but a pleasant surprise all the same.

The PM's 'people' trying to put the squeeze on the cops

And more important than that from Boris's POV, likely to be entirely counterproductive and ensure the police give him 'special treatment' of the opposite kind to that he is looking for.

So do we think the Met would be literally 'deciding who the PM is' if they slapped Boris with a fine. He seems intent on brazening it out whatever happens.

https://www.ft.com/content/04690772-e9af-4bd8-927a-1c1474efd3c0

My instinct would be he'd have to go; Matt Hancock was forced to quit over a quick grope in his office even though he wasn't in trouble with the cops. But Boris has survived so much sh1t over the years...

It's really bizarre. Is it multiple choice? Correct answers only? I've never heard of anything like it. Talk about bringing the office of PM into disrepute.

Even for the most minor thefts my witness statements were always taken by a visiting Met officer who always asked Mt permission to record on body cam. Why are they so afraid to send someone down to take statements.

My only guess is lying on a questionaire won't hold the legal ramifications that lying to police will.

The political issues is not whether Johnson broke the law. That's a police matter.

The political issue is whether Johnson lied to parliament about it. That's not something the police are going to investigate.

Johnson's supporters are clearly scared shîtless. They are desperately trying to focus attention on whether Johm\nson gets a fixed penalty notice, how serious or trivial a matter it is to get a fixed penalty notice, etc, etc. ("It's like a parking fine", they brazenly lie.)

The signficance of the FPN is not the amount of the fine, or the gravity of the offence, or whether it was understandable or excusable or whatever. It's that Johnson told parliament clearly and repeatedly that no laws were broken. If Johnson gets, and pays, an FPN then it is absolutely incontrovertible he lied to Parliament, and the Tory Parliamentary party will have to make an open decisions about whether it is going to do the one job it has and hold the executive to account. If that happens that iwll not be the Met deciding who the PM is; it will be the Tory party deciding who the PM is.

Downing Street have committed to revealing if he does

Are you drawing a distinction between 'Boris Johnson' and 'No. 10/Downing Street' and suggesting that the former might refuse to inform the latter of a FPN?

I presume the way this will work is the Met will inform the PM directly of the fine (if there is one) and he will tell the world through some sort of press release/public statement.