It's all falling apart alarmingly fast for Boris Johnson across the water. How long you reckon he has left as British Prime Minister? Hours surely?
How many parties are they talking about now? I've lost count.
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Monopoli
And?
it would appear that the Ukrainians seem to appreciate Boris.
Boris Johnson is to have an embankment named after him in the city of Vasylkiv, near the capital Kyiv.
The city's mayor, Natalia Balasinovich, made the announcement on Facebook.
"Great news, friends!" she wrote.
"Our new embankment on the Stugna River ... will now have the name of a great friend of Ukraine: Prime Minister Boris Johnson."
The UK prime minister was the first among European leaders to provide full-scale military assistance to Ukraine, and "supported the aspirations of our country and our people to defeat the Russian invaders", she added.
"Thank you Boris!"
Last month the town of Fontanka, near Odesa, announced it would be naming a street after Johnson.
BBC: Deadline for publishing Lebedev peerage documents missed.
I thought they would delay releasing the details, but I didn't think they'd just miss the deadline.
It's amazing how they manage to create a 'Reds under the bed' sentiment around Corbyn and labour generally, when they're the ones in the bloody bed with the Russians!
It was important not to publish it before the 5 may elections anyway. This will be unpopular for Johnson when it's published. They'll have to do as much as possible to abridge or redact the worst parts.
It staggers me that not a whisper of this got into the public domain until the Mirror broke the story late last year. Some of these photos/videos must have been circulating on Whatsapp groups and the like. If not one of the Downing Street staffers themselves, would not one of their partners/kids/whoever caught a glimpse of the PM in a comporomising position, took a screengrab and sent it to one of the tabloids or posted it on Instagram to make a few quid or just cause mischief?
Seems to give the lie to the idea that social media makes it much harder to cover up damaging info...
yeah 300 total. Some are by the official No.10 photographer so those photos will just be pics of Boris and staff posing (but not social distancing I bet). But the majority of photos are from staffs camera phones- thats where things could really get messy if they are published. Some of these parties were right proper sessions that ended up with staff sleeping under their desks and then continuing to work on the pandemic response the next day. It really sounds like scenes of chaos and carnage at no.10 while covid deaths were skyrocketing.
If photos emerge that show No.10 as being a party house during the pandemic I think he is a gonner, pictures paint a thousand words and all that and we havent really had anything salacious yet. It may not happen in the Gray report though as I dont think publishing photos is in her remit, she is just using them as evidence to base her report on. But when the 300 photos get into Labours hands at the Privledges Commitees inquiry then the leaks will begin in earnest and the tabloids will have a field day.
Kind of like the reverse of this...
300 Photos????? Ohh god i hope they all get published
The Times piece says the Gray report is 500 pages and 300 photographs, quite a substantial report.
Separately a Daily Mail opinion writer has claimed there are 46 letters of no confidence ready to be submitted after the local elections on May 5th. Not sure how credible that is but if it is true then its just 8 letters short of triggering a vote of no confidence and you'd imagine they will meet that threshold.
Other than that Boris is going to be fined for at least one other party but possibly up to five more.
It's interesting what you say, this girl used to go down to the pub in London wearing a mini skirt and very deliberately show off the marks and bruises on her thighs after heavy petting with Boris, thank God she kept her top on, strangely enough the new (latest) wife, Carrie, always wear flowing maxi skirts and rarely flashes her legs, I fear she may have something to hide.
As I say, exactly what you'd expect. A bully mainly, particularly to one of my friends. He was a senior prefect and one of the last to continue the "fagging" that allowed them to get younger boys to do pretty much anything. Weirdly he was known to be really smart.
I'm sure you wouldn't betray any confidences, but I'd love to hear some of the stories of what he was like.
I'm sure this has been pointed out before (haven't gone back and read much of the thread), but a huge amount will depend on what happens in the local elections in May. If, as predicted in some quarters, the Tories lose more than 500 seats it will be difficult for him to hang on seeing as he is clearly the cause of the "disquiet in the shires".
Good riddance to the queynt. I have a couple of friends who were at school with him and their stories are exactly what you would expect - lying, bullying and refusal to take responsibility.
Of course he might just brazen it out like he always does.
Could be..
They're hoping/anticipating the reaction of the Great British Public to the Gray report will be
It might still be too much and Johnson may have to go
but may still turn out to be
Is there a date for the report to be published?
The cynic in me thinks this reporting is to Johnsons advantage. They're preparing the public for how terrible the reprot will be, but then when they actually see the reprot, it probably won't be that bad. Civil service gargon will probably be very tame compared to the media narrative preceeding it. So they will be ready to say "there's nothing new in the report, nothing we didn't already know so let's put it behind us and move on... Ukraine, migrants, cost of living, NI Protocol and Brexit etc.".
Building up expectations of how terrible the reprt will be, weeks in advance of the report, can only serve to dull the impact of the actual report when it finally lands. It might still be too much and Johnson may have to go, but this reporting isn't all bad news for Johnson
I'm just after posting a link to the above Times article in the General British politics discussion thread but I reckon that it is being orchestrated so that people are less interested in the police report because of the damning Gray report which won't be as bad as it had been reported (as Alastair campbell says "It’s like being charged with murder and claiming manslaughter as a victory.")
So I guess the answer to the OP's question is yes then...
Wondering is it Sue Gray's judgements or the actual evidence she cites that is so devastating for Bojo...
"When I returned, Mary Jo and the car were gone." I can still hear Ted Kennedy saying that after all these years.
As for BoJo, he really did kind of lose it with Beth Rigby in India. She's a good interviewer, not as quick to destroy as Kay Burley, but good. Boris basically tried to brush away the questions with "Please stop asking me those!" His body language seemed defeatist though, maybe finally he knows it's time to go.
Maybe it would. But that's just not his brand. His whole shtick is to tell be big lie with a smirk and his people know its a lie, but they like that he's their guy. If he told the truth he would nver have made it this far in politics because he's not a details guy who reads and understands the issues in minute detail.
He's a buffer. His only real option is to bluff and he bluffed in this situation like he bluffed in every other situation. He couldn't really change tack and tell the truth at the beginning of THIS potential scandal and not do likewise in any other situation.
But he would have been admitting to breaking laws that his government had instituted and pressed very strongly on the general public. That would be uncharted territory for a PM and a massive gamble. And for that approach to work he would have had to come out with all the gory details right away, and we don't know the full story yet. Given the nature of the man, IMO it was inevitable he would deny, bluster, obfuscate and hope to muddle through somehow, as he has always managed to do through previous crises in his careeer.
The irony is that I think he probably could have drawn a line under the whole thing if he had fessed up immediately, admitted an error of judgement, apologised, and blamed it on the stress of the time. It would have been embarrassing, but it would have been survivable, and it would have been old news long before now.
Instead he doubled down by lying and by sacrificing others, prolonged the whole thing endlessly, brought multiple investigations on himself and burned all his political capital.
It's a graphic illustration of the validity of Kennedy's Chappaquiddick Theorem - "The sooner, and in more detail, you give the bad news, the better."
[Younger readers may wish to google "Chappaquiddick".]
yeah I think all those events you mentioned are going to be like death by a thousand cuts. He thought he had drawn a line under the whole thing after his apology but it hasnt worked. It looks like the hammer blows are going to keep coming for him.
Surely the writing has to be on the wall now? If they couldnt whip enough MPs to not abstain on the vote then how does he expect to survive potentially 3 more fines, the parliamentary inquiry and the grey report along with a high likelihood of any incriminating photos leaking once the privileges committee gets their hands on them.
I honestly think if the local elections go as badly as expected he will resign before the inquiry even happens.
Labours motion for an inquiry has passed without a vote meaning that despite the Tory 80 seat majority Boris couldnt whip enough of his own MPs to vote against it. This isnt over yet and he is due to get a further 3 police fines in the next week as well.
If the vote is won and it goes to an investigation by the Privileges committee then I think he could be toast, not immediately but when they release their findings. What is really missing here is photographic evidence of these parties which he keeps describing as work events when they sound like they were major late night sessions with staff so drunk that they were sleeping under their desks. This is all juxtaposed against these same staff supposed to be running No.10s pandemic response while thousands were dying of Covid.
There exists over 300 photos of these 16 parties which the Privileges committee can expose. If that happens that could be what tips him over the edge, it would be heavy photographic evidence that No.10 was party central during the pandemic all the while Boris was giving Covid briefings to the media at 3pm every day and telling people to stay at home and wash your hands over and over again. Its all these photos that could really expose his hypocrisy. Bonus points if there are photos of staff dancing on office tables in no.10 during a pandemic, it wouldnt surprise me if there is. Out of the 300 photos there is bound to be some in there that the tabloids will have a field day with and they will whip the public into a rage again over the whole sorry mess.
According to The Guardian last night it was the case... https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/20/boris-johnson-abandons-efforts-block-inquiry-on-misleading-commons-over-partygate
Anyway, the amendment has now been pulled, Tory MPs will have a free vote.
https://twitter.com/singharj/status/1517085699694112769
Long enough for what?
It's long enough to mean that a Privileges Committee finding that Johnson has lied won't be published before the local elections, but I think at this stage most voters don't need the Privileges Committee to tell them whether Johnson lied. The division is not between voters who think he lies and those who think he tells the truth; it's between voters who care that he lies and voters who don't.
So I don't think deferring the Privileges Committee investigation will necessarily do very much to shield the Tory party from the consequences of maintaining this bastard in office. What it will do is prolong the agony. The 5 May election results will be what they will be (and my guess is that they will be pretty torrid for the Tories) and the party will still have to face the Privileges Committee investigation, hearings, findings and report, and the debate on this in the House. And the further police fines that are expected. And the publication of the Grey report. And after all that Tory MPs will still be facing Owen Paterson moments where the party leadership is bullying them to ritually humiliate and debase themselves to save the tatters and shreds of Johnson's miserable career. But Johnson will have suffered even further damage than he has already, and have even less political capital to call on.
Johnson isn't trying to delay the vote on whether to investigate because it's a clever wheeze. He's try to delay the vote because he recognises that, poor at that is, at this stage its pretty much all he can do.
For Tory MPs, they need to realise that this is how it's always going to be, now. Johnson is who he is. He has behaved like this all his life. His behaviour is not going to change. His overweening sense of entitlement, his disdain for others, his moral incontinence - none of them are going to change. His future promises of reform will be as meaningless as his past promises of reform. If he survives partygate, some other manifestation of his gross character flaws will be along before much longer. They either commit to spending the whole of the rest of their political careers debasing themselves to protect him, or they show some respect for themselves and find a new leader. If not before 5 May, then after 5 May.
Not sure that's the case.
it seems they want to delay the vote on whether to investigate. After May 5 local elections would be long enough.
Looks like the inquiry by the Commons privileges committee will go ahead, Johnson wasn't able whip enough Tories to block it. All he can do is try to delay it until the police investigation is over. This ain't over yet.
Brutal onslaught today , Kerr stamers response was pretty good, liked the bit were he reminded the house it was he who prosecuted an MP would lied .
Tory backbenchers seem to be holding fire but the Sue Gray report, by-election and more fines might prove fatal for Boris , I thought the Ukraine crisis saved him, not so sure now but he's hanging on .
IMO the Gray report would do most damage if it featured some juicy photos or videos of the PM in mid carouse.
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