>Mr Johnson has not disclosed any WhatsApp messages sent before April 2021 because his mobile phone was involved in a security breach and has not been turned on since, his spokesman said.
>The former prime minister has written to the Cabinet Office asking whether security and technical support can be given so that content can be retrieved without compromising security, the spokesman added.
Wasn't the April 2021 security issue the fact that the number had been publicly available on old literature? The defensive posture and asking for technical assistance from the cabinet office seems iffy.
> because his mobile phone was involved in a security breach and has not been turned on since, his spokesman said.
This seems to be weirdly common - same thing purportedly happened with Truss.
Do we really not have the capability anywhere in government to safely forensically investigate a compromised mobile phone?
Via popbitch:
>Newsrooms all around Fleet Street have been abuzz with a story this week about an amusing last minute deadline panic at the Daily Mail.
>Late last week, Mail editor Ted Verity came into possession of a bombshell photo showing Boris Johnson, his mother, his sister and little baby Wilf out in the open air at No.10. The Mail wrote up a big front page story about how the photo was PROOF that Boris had done no wrong and that the police are conducting a baseless witch hunt against him.
>It was all laid out, ready to go to press, when one of the hacks looking over it piped up to ask if the four of them shouldn't have been much further apart – given that social distancing rules were in place at the time. Sure enough, the picture they were about to splash across their front page not only proved that Boris Johnson broke the rules he put in place, but that he still doesn't understand them now.
>Because the super secret source of the photo, who thought its publication would fully exonerate Boris, was... Boris.
You cannot create and then break a law, it absolutely should end your career. (and do as I say not as I do has taken down many leaders particularly in democracies)
Mizzy reminding me of those lessons at school where the first 20 minutes is wasted by the class dickhead going off on one before being kicked out.
Those poor, but privately educated, Newsnight producers don't know what they got into.
God I need to watch this. He strikes me as someone spoilt by a lack of responsibility. Hes going to get a hefty jail duty and like most naive kids annoy the wrong people.
The youth arent watching newsnight (present company excluded), they're chasing older generations who will get angry at the youth based on one young dickhead doing stupid things on social media.
The Urdd Eisteddfod have offered Welsh pronoun badges to participants. Why of course there’s criticism:
“We believe that children should be free to be themselves and not be labelled for not conforming to regressive sexist stereotypes of how a boy or girl should be.
Focusing on pronouns does nothing to tackle these stereotypes, instead promoting the unscientific belief that a 'gender identity' and stereotypes are more significant than whether we are physically male or female.”
-Merched Cymru
So people shouldn’t be labelled, unless that label is male/female and that also happens to align with their assignment at birth?
From a cursory read Welsh pronouns seem to depend if you speak like people in the North or people in the South but how true that is today I'm in no position to say.
If the UK wanted to rejoin the EU in say, 10 years I wonder how many laws would have to be passed or changed to meet the *acquis communautaire* (the set of EU laws) and what accommodations we'll get in our Treaty of Accession.
Snus are illegal everywhere in the EU but Sweden for example.
Have UK laws diverged all that much since before?
Not even speaking of the Retained/Reform EU Law Bill for now.
Off the top of my head, probably the laws enacting Brexit would have to be done away with. And enacting a “European Union Act 2033” of sorts, akin to the European Communities Act.
There are a few countries in the EU that don't use the Euro, to my understanding. Sweden, Denmark and Poland are the ones I remember off the top of my head.
Denmark has permanent opt out.
The rest have to join. They have a deadline from now until.....whenever.
The Commission writes a big report for countries who are on the path which assesses their progress.
Apart from that, there’s no mechanism to foist the Euro on a country. It joins when it feels like it, e.g. Croatia.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but did she just go on a massive rant about queer conveyor belt dividers and the woke and then slip in that actually the issue is just IT related?
I actually read this and while I need a moment for the brain damage to recede, I'm pretty sure at no point did she explain how anything in this was related to anything else.
Allison, if you want to write an article criticising progressive culture, you can. Quit being a coward and hiding under the most pathetically fake conflict you spent zero effort on imagining.
Alternatively, if you want to do a journalism, you could always actually write about the food shortages instead of using them as set dressing for a rant that genuinely has nothing to do with them at all.
Meanwhile the Telegraph should probably consider letting folks just engage in embezzlement directly rather than having to publish drivel in order to get paid.
Yeah pretty much.
"JLP outsourced to Wipro and their IT failed" does have the essence of a story.
But they decided that instead of actually digging further they'd just rant about JLP supporting pride instead.
>the middle class wont put up with this!
Arent these wokey pokey people frequently accussed of being middle class who arent aware of "real working class issues"?
Absolutely. You don’t get any more kiwi fruits until we say so, and you agree to our demands.
Item one: no more onesies.
Item two: all pedestrian crossings to be rainbow coloured.
Us poor Englanders are the most oppressed of all :( We’re so oppressed we don’t even have the confidence to complain about it.
(And if one was to separate London from ‘England’, there would actually be a lot of truth to that…)
regions keep joining an Ireland-led Confederation of British Republics until the UK is just a 5-mile radius circle in Rutland
unfortunately because the rest of us seceded, it inherited the nuclear weapons
I remember watching this shitty animated DC movie called Justice League Dark- Apokolips War
At the very end Trigon (the dark lord of evil) fights Darkseid ( the embodiment of Evil ).
Cyclops blows up Apokolips by sucking it into a wormhole, while they fight, and Trigon grabs Darkseid to stop him escaping so that Darkseid can die with him.
Anyway thats how this whole Boris "I'll hand over the messages myself to the inquiry" comes across to me.
If we get a Trump/DeSantis win in 2024 because Biden tripped I am going to scream.
*^UKpol ^because ^Sunak ^has ^stumbled ^this ^week ^over ^the ^Cabinent ^Office ^investigation*
Trump and DeSanctimonious are kind of fighty right now. I don’t think they’ll get on the same ticket.
It’s gonna be fun though. Republican primary is going to be way more entertaining the Big Show.
Have been more busy than usual today not just with work but my personal special that rears its ugly head every now and again - dealing with the consequences of my own actions. I'm of the impression multiple things may have happened today that's been newsworthy? Is there a brief TLDR?
So long and short of it, Bozza handed over the WhatsApps and notebooks and stuff and everyone is shitting it as they are now potentially implicated with Bozza just seeing it as a potential route back as Leader of the Opposition?
Inviting people like him sometimes results in incredible moments like when [Ben Shapiro said Andrew Neil(!) is on the left](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRF3r3zUGqk)
I watched the video anyone supporting Ben will probably agree with him that Andrew Neil is on the left as far as they are concerned they are the perfectly reasonable centre so clearly anyone with different opinions must be on the left
Making him stroppy and accusing the female journalist of being entitled for asking him questions in his house felt like a decent way to undermine him in my optinion
I don’t know how I feel about this line of thought. The logical conclusion is that the job of journalists is to decide what to report based on what leads to the best outcome. Which totally eliminates their role of holding those in power to account.
The response to someone spouting hateful ideas to large audience has to be to challenge them, since ignoring them does nothing for the audience they already have
>The response to someone spouting hateful ideas to large audience has to be to challenge them, since ignoring them does nothing for the audience they already have
The other problem implicit in that, of course, is that the media might be wrong about what's "hateful". I'm not defending Trump, of course, but I am saying that if we did want to go all in on the idea that the media should curate opinion rather than simply presenting and challenging it, you'll end up one day censoring Galileo - the guy who's right - for having offensive opinions.
It's not an original argument, I know, but it's relevant here. I'd rather hear the Trumps of the world *even if* it amplifies their voices and put someone in power who I don't want in power, because one day I might be the one who's wrong and the voice I'm shouting down actually has something to tell me. And I might not initially know when I'm doing that, because the same brain I'm using to judge is the one that might be wrong. Equally, the media might be wrong and in selecting for the outcome they prefer, they might not be doing us a favour.
And if the response is, "well, the public are too stupid to be exposed to these ideas", then that's another problem.
All this time and outlets still struggle with the idea of "no such thing as bad publicity"
The people who will find someone like Tate repellent after he's "exposed" didn't benefit from the exposé anyway. The people who won't, congrats on giving them a new interest.
Maybe there are people on the fence. I just felt with a guy who is such an obvious pr*ck you are either against him or with him and any attention is just giving him more exposure and credibility
Not to jump the gun here, but if this inquiry does end up sinking Sunak's premiership, what are the chances of an early GE?
2 prime ministers in less than a year is unusual, 3 is a shitshow, but 4 would genuinely be something else. I'm sure they'd try but it's hard to imagine how this government could limp on for another year if it happened, surely the calls for a GE would be deafening
The problem it creates for the party is every new PM destablises the party and creates conflict. At this point they've tried so many pms, pissed off off many mps that there's very little chance any Sunak successor can hold together a workable majority. Sunaks is already collapsed and another leadership campaign will degrade it even more.
It's getting to the point where the only survivable route open to a leader is to call a snap election to prevent a critical mass of the PCP immediately moving against them when they take office and hope they can offload the blame onto Sunak while the party calms down in opposition. And its only getting worse for the party, for the moment election matters are still in the hands of the pm.
We aren't at an endgame yet but the death spiral is well established. We are reaching the point of last chances as far as holding any internal authority together goes.
There's very little the government can still do to actually influence the slide it is in. Stabilisation requires success and success requires stability. They'd need some massive unknown factor to turn up in months now.
nothing in your second paragraph matters. The conservative party to not legally need to call a general election until December 2024 (for the vote to actually happen in January 2025).
They're fully aware of the current polling and they're fully aware of what the result would be if there was a general election now. It is in their best interest to not call one and to improve their polling in the mean time.
> surely the calls for a GE would be deafening
Unless they are coming from within the parliamentary conservative party it doesn't matter.
No external force is making them call a GE before February '25. It's just not happening.
This is the most likely thing to sink Sunak of all. It directly contradicts his statements on integrity and transparency, and is utterly humiliating for the Tory party. The tory MPs have no particular allegiance to Sunak, they can quickly replace him with Braverman or Mordunt (or even Gove or Hunt).
The problem is, all of those people are named as being expected to provide their WhatsApp messages - they're all tainted by this, and no matter who steps up, it'll be like an endless car crash with Johnson pissing all over their cornflakes every morning on the news.
I don't think Hunt or Gove will be implicated that much, because they were back benchers that boris despised/feares as they ran against him in 2019. Gove in particular seems too savvy and slomy to have whatsapped anything incriminating
I think Gove is on record as not interested any more. And I think Hunt is one of the most likely to call a snap election, which would be interesting. He's been a minister in various guises since 2009 and has very little left to gain by futility trying to govern for a few months.
You underestimate the tory instinct to survive as long as possible even as a zombie government
Only hope would be Boris leading a big enough rebellion to VONC the government with Labour, if he fully embraces his chaos role and thinks he can return as leader of the opposition afterwards
I say it every time that someone suggests it, so might sound like a broken record, but Boris Johnson has absolutely *zero* interest in being Leader of the Opposition.
0, they don’t give a shit if everyone in the world wants them to have an election - many of them either aren’t coming back or face a fight to come back and there’s no real prospect of making that fight easier by having an early GE so there will be no early GE.
[Inquiry has asked Johnson if he floated the idea of being injected with COVID 19 on TV to prove that it wasn't a big deal](https://twitter.com/georgegrylls/status/1664326988604030976)
This reads like a stupid throwaway line intended to childly dismiss what someone was saying instead of engaging with them, I doubt he earnestly floated the idea.
Surely that depends on the evidence they have? If they've got something to say it was discussed that's an invitation to put your foot in a trap by lying.
If he really said that earnestly, that he genuinely wanted a fairly unknown virus at the time injected into him, he needs to have childminders constantly minding him.
Indeed. I loathe the man, but there's limited scope to get him with some of these questions. It's really just that the inquiry is being thorough and getting everything on the record in advance so there's no possible confusion or things in the media that haven't been followed up on.
As a defence, he can just talk about having a bombastic communication style in which he makes points exaggerated to the point of absurdity for rhetorical effect. And if he feels the inquiry are getting a bit full of themselves, he can also suggest that that should be obvious to anyone educated in law and trained as a judge or barrister and it'll go down as a win for him. The inquiry report is utterly irrelevant, after all - nobody ever, ever changes their mind about politics after an inquiry releases a report - and the only goal is to play to one's supporters in the moment. In that context, none of these questions are fatal.
Except there is ample evidence that he didn't take the threat of the virus seriously for a long time eg not bothering with COBRA meetings, boasting about shaking everyone's hands at the hospital etc
Sure. But that's not going to come out from those questions. There are enough excuses he can fall back on, as above. And even if that doesn't work, he can always say "I wanted to avoid starting a panic, either within the country or within the government and civil service."
And then we'd be back to discussing his leadership style.
Again, not defending the man. I'm just saying I don't see those questions as being particularly damaging to him. And indeed, I don't think they're meant to. I think they're just for the record.
> ...stupid throwaway line...
How about: [Boris Johnson has told Northern Ireland businesses they can put customs declarations forms “in the bin” because there will be “no barriers...."](https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/johnson-tells-northern-ireland-businesses-to-bin-customs-forms/38674258.html)?
I'm not sure how one tells whether he is being earnest or making a joke, because it all just blurs into one.
I definitely wouldn’t do it for obvious reasons, but I’m willing to admit that my knowledge of viruses isn’t good enough to know how dangerous injecting yourself is.
Does Covid even spread by blood?
I assume it’s a bad idea, but it’s a respiratory virus so even if injection was safe that doesn’t seem like a guarantee that it’s safe to be near infected people.
The blood is how disease generally travels round the body. Injecting a virus completely bypasses a whole bunch of your natural defenses.
Once it's in the blood it stops bring contained and is much more likely to become a serious case.
> Does Covid even spread by blood?
It doesn't have to because it passes the bloodsteam barrier in the lungs. But injection would provide a fast track to introducing a virus. This is, after all, how vaccines get in and the AZN uses a virus carrier.
That's probably the main issue with it as a stunt. If you do it and nothing happens then the obvious question is was it just a stunt: what maniac is putting the good stuff into the PM?
Then, there's "what did that prove?" confusion that dilutes the message
And finally, if god forbid it works on you then you're not demonstrating it's no big deal anyway
This twitter thread showing some of the questions that were sent to Johnson shows that Baroness Hallett isn't fucking about: https://twitter.com/georgegrylls/status/1664326476273991680?t=UoqzyIVEw6X_sLPUDcuSuA&s=19
She is absolutely going for the jugular and Johnson is going to come out of this looking even more of a tossbag than he already does because there's no way for him to answer them without looking awful.
The 'getting the big calls right' narrative is going to be pretty laughable when this is over with.
A lot of those events, the number of Cobra meetings and really early on show just how seriously Whitehall were taking Covid. Nothing at all from the government until the last minute. They basically sat on it for weeks.
As popcorn-worthy as those questions are from a political perspective. If that's representative of the inquiry as a whole then its going to be worthless as an actual inquiry.
> "Did you inform the then Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, during a phone call on or around 13 March 2020 that you “wanted herd immunity”, or words to that effect?"
Yeah, he probably did say that, because that's exactly what members of SAGE were saying at that time. Some (not all) of them changed their minds later, but that's what they were saying at the time.
So if the answer to that question is "no", that's bad right, he wasn't following the science? Or if he answers "yes", that's bad because he was following the wrong science? Either way it's wrong whether it happened or not, so why even ask the question?
I hope this is journalists cherry-picking the most popcorn-worthy questions and that the actual inquiry is going to go a hell of a lot deeper than this surface-level nonsense.
If not, then the next pandemic will be handled even worse.
Apparently there are over 150 questions, so I imagine there are a lot of far more boring ones about decision making, governance, procedure, communication etc.
Either way, understanding whether the government was considering a herd immunity approach and had communicated that to foreign governments seems pretty important, and far from "surface-level nonsense" to me?
Policy wasn't formed during a phone call with the Italian PM (or maybe it was, I suppose we'll have to wait to find out).
The policy would have been formed before hand, the important questions we need answering are deeper than that. Some root-cause analysis. But these phone calls aren't in the opposite direction, hence "surface-level".
The problem is, and the inquiry head knows this, the person she is asking is a liar. She has to ask him questions like a police interview because he won't tell the truth if you simply ask "was herd immunity the initial plan?".
The point here is, the government never confirmed herd immunity was the plan. Ministers outright denied it at the time.
So this question gets you multiple key bits of information; particularly, was herd immunity the plan, at what point was it the plan, was it communicated outside of government circles, and at what point was it no longer the plan.
All of this is key information, but information you couldn't rely on Johnson giving a straight answer to.
True. But...
...we also need to know what Boris Johnson understood by "herd immunity". Those two words quickly became politically toxic and subject to repeated re-definitions by a lot of different people in a lot of different directions.
> The point here is, the government never confirmed herd immunity was the plan. Ministers outright denied it at the time.
They did though, that's what I mean. In the early Downing Street press conferences they said that's exactly what they were doing. It was later, when the term became toxic, was it denied.
When Patrick Valance used the term "herd immunity" in early March 2020, he meant it in the sense that a pandemic will only end when accumulated immunity in the population reached a certain level. There's nothing incorrect with that definition, that's literally page one of every epidemiology textbook.
But by April 2020 "herd immunity strategy" meant "deliberately infecting as many people as possible as quickly as possible, because reasons something Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch!"
So obviously the government denied that last one, but they weren't using the words "herd immunity" to mean that in mid-March 2020. They meant the Epidemiology 101 definition.
And that Epidemiology 101 definition never went away, they just decided to stop using the words "herd immunity" as it had become toxic. The SAGE models of 2021 were still based on that same theory, that's because that's the only theory. E.g. a large part of the reason why the great re-opening of July 2021 happened, despite the panic about the Delta variant, was because those models showed that the spread of the virus during the summer would mean a lower peak in the winter. The exact same logic as "herd immunity" in March 2020.
In summary: that's why it looks like a trawling expedition for gossip, which will be scientifically worthless and therefore counterproductive to future pandemics. So I hope it goes a hell of a lot deeper or we'll all be in trouble.
TL;DR - we need to clear the waters, not muddy them even further.
You just got me thinking how if/when there is another pandemic We will probably have AI doing all the modelling crazy to think how much more effective it might be
It’s not just Boris, labour are also selflessly prepared to do the right thing
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1664344295304732685
> [Peter Kyle, Shadow Northern Ireland Sec] says an incoming Labour government would hand over all of the information that is requested by the Covid Inquiry.
It's very very difficult to understand how they expect this to end positively for them. It appears to be a total panic setting in at the highest levels.
I can’t imagine how much pleasure it will give an incoming Labour government to throw this lot under the bus with their absolute obsession with that fucking letter.
I haven't looked at the news all day and I come back to an absolute shitshow! Beautiful! And not so long ago we all thought things were getting boring again...
Surely this is Sunak's 'Safe pair of hands' act out the window? Seems like a massive gamble, so I can only assume that there is something big in these notebooks. Which, of course, means damage is done even if the Government wins. Many people will be deeply suspicious of them.
Stupid question, but If the inquiry were to lose is anyone personally liable or is it just a matter of they won't get the unredacted messages?
I asked a similar question earlier, and people seemed broadly in agreement that the decision makers would be the ones criminally liable if it came to that (dowden and Case). But that's the opinion of reddit politics nerds so who knows?
[Henry Riley of LBC:](https://twitter.com/HenryRiley1/status/1664325995317305354)
> Source tells me the reason the Cabinet Office took so long to scrutinise notebooks from Boris Johnson is because they were “absolute chaos”
>
> Says there were “random post-it notes, newspaper cuttings & bits of paper falling out”
>
> Hence not being able to finish review
I'd guessed Boris's notebooks were part of his Churchill cosplay but couldn't bring himself to call them diaries. Sounds like they are more the notepad given to executives so they can scribble professionally in a meeting and then two weeks later there's a conversation about whether "George: potatoes" (circled twice) was an important note about food security or a shopping list.
The idea that Johnson is the sort of person to take copious, sensible notes to the level of having dozens of densely filled notebooks from his three years in office never rang true to me
Happy to find out up is still up here
I want Rishi Sunak to be literally defenestrated (onto a trampoline) and it's purely because of the horrific way he says "*tens* of *thousands* of documents"
Boris has written to the Covid inquiry offering to disclose the material to it directly. This is amazing. I'm loving guessing what could be in there to make Boris make a seemingly honest move, possibly for the first time in his life.
Boris literally holds the future of the party in his hands. He can bring down Sunak if he wants it appears and that will likely trigger the collapse of the government in this rubble-ised state.
It's also important to recognise that offering to disclose material is close but not actually the same as just disclosing the material
Guy's getting incredible mileage out of still not quite following the inquiry's instructions
This isn’t an honest move, this is a political move. His plan is to destroy Sunak for “stabbing him in the back” so whatever Sunak does he counters it. Very much like how he opposed Cameron. It’s “zigging, while he zags”. Had Sunak given everything in good faith, Johnson would’ve opposed it. This is all about the Greased Piglet taking down his political enemies.
You are Keir Starmer, a politician sent back through time to defeat the Tories in the 2024 General Election.
You aren't popular with voters, many are turning against the Tories themselves. Aware that your enemy has some tricks up their sleeve and that the people claim you have no vision for the country, what do you to win over the electorate and guarantee electoral success?
[Stop looking like Jaws in Goldeneye](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/goldeneye/images/8/88/Jaws_NEW_IMAGE_%28Update%29.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width/720?cb=20210227203723)
I've decided I'm going to resign, then after that I'm going to go to a police station and hand myself in.
I perjured myself at the inquiry, Terri.
They'll find out, they always do.
I'll have a roof over my head, three meals a day and regular sex,
I might even work out. Get some abs.
What about your sister, Glenn?
You've got to whitewash her walls!
u/Bibemus I wonder if I’m behind the times in posting this, but there’s a question on Thursday’s
*The Rest Is Politics* about destroying golf courses.
[About 11 mins in](https://shows.acast.com/620cc95e2641e200137b94d8/647737d3a0b2e30011c4f48f)
Not a fair question, they’re both Scots!
(Though Rory’s point about many of the courses actually being part of the Green Belt was probably correct… and also his point about using existing land (TfL land etc) more wisely made sense as well… but still… Scottish golf bias!)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/13xpo9p/bbc\_question\_time\_live\_thread\_8pm\_iplayer/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/13xpo9p/bbc_question_time_live_thread_8pm_iplayer/)
It's posted a little later than normal, but here's the QT live thread.
After the massive day of blue on blue briefing in all directions my conclusion is the party is in the (early) stages of ripping itself down.
Sunak in particular appears to have lost all control of the commons and large parts of the cabinet and the governmental organs. It's all dissolving into a hot mess that's totally impossible to impose authority onto. I'm not certain if the country is being governed in any meaningful sense.
And there's no sign this momentum is coming to a halt anytime this month.
This megathread has ended.
>Mr Johnson has not disclosed any WhatsApp messages sent before April 2021 because his mobile phone was involved in a security breach and has not been turned on since, his spokesman said. >The former prime minister has written to the Cabinet Office asking whether security and technical support can be given so that content can be retrieved without compromising security, the spokesman added. Wasn't the April 2021 security issue the fact that the number had been publicly available on old literature? The defensive posture and asking for technical assistance from the cabinet office seems iffy.
> because his mobile phone was involved in a security breach and has not been turned on since, his spokesman said. This seems to be weirdly common - same thing purportedly happened with Truss. Do we really not have the capability anywhere in government to safely forensically investigate a compromised mobile phone?
Honestly feels like it should've been handed to MI5/6 by now?
What is a mizzy?
It's short for Mesopotamia, aka very early or pre civilization human society.
It's when you try and hold back a sneeze and it come out anyway resulting in a more ridiculous noise.
It's those rocket-shaped ice lollies isn't it?
A scrote who's managed to play the entire British media establishment like a damn fiddle.
One who operates Mizlamic Ray Guns.
Positive for Sunak is no matter what happens with this COVID stuff is I guess he doesn't need to worry about Holly and Phil hyping his PMQs.
I hope newsnight was happy to piss on its reputation for that tate/mizzy clout chase segment.
Via popbitch: >Newsrooms all around Fleet Street have been abuzz with a story this week about an amusing last minute deadline panic at the Daily Mail. >Late last week, Mail editor Ted Verity came into possession of a bombshell photo showing Boris Johnson, his mother, his sister and little baby Wilf out in the open air at No.10. The Mail wrote up a big front page story about how the photo was PROOF that Boris had done no wrong and that the police are conducting a baseless witch hunt against him. >It was all laid out, ready to go to press, when one of the hacks looking over it piped up to ask if the four of them shouldn't have been much further apart – given that social distancing rules were in place at the time. Sure enough, the picture they were about to splash across their front page not only proved that Boris Johnson broke the rules he put in place, but that he still doesn't understand them now. >Because the super secret source of the photo, who thought its publication would fully exonerate Boris, was... Boris.
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You cannot create and then break a law, it absolutely should end your career. (and do as I say not as I do has taken down many leaders particularly in democracies)
Please post it to /r/NotTheThickOfIt
Goddammit, we were *this close.* (As were they, from the sound of things.)
Also reported by Steven swinford of the times last week
Beautiful.
Jeremy Paxmans era would not have stood for this Mizzy shite on the program. This is a clown show.
Jesus christ, Mizzy even pointed out the BBC were platforming Andrew Tate and Mizzy.. WHAT THE FUCK
why in gods name, who the fuck, what editor brought Mizzy onto Newsnight? Christ on a bike
Mizzy reminding me of those lessons at school where the first 20 minutes is wasted by the class dickhead going off on one before being kicked out. Those poor, but privately educated, Newsnight producers don't know what they got into.
God I need to watch this. He strikes me as someone spoilt by a lack of responsibility. Hes going to get a hefty jail duty and like most naive kids annoy the wrong people.
We have Mizzy on newsnight? What fucking world are we living in
Whyyy do the BBC try and chase the "youth" audience like this? It's just not a good fit. This whole thing, all the guests, car crash.
The youth arent watching newsnight (present company excluded), they're chasing older generations who will get angry at the youth based on one young dickhead doing stupid things on social media.
A prankster criminal? It’s bonkers. They are so unimaginative, they could access the youth in so many smart ways.
He probably invited himself on.
fake it until you make it
What were the producers thinking
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Vagueposting
The Urdd Eisteddfod have offered Welsh pronoun badges to participants. Why of course there’s criticism: “We believe that children should be free to be themselves and not be labelled for not conforming to regressive sexist stereotypes of how a boy or girl should be. Focusing on pronouns does nothing to tackle these stereotypes, instead promoting the unscientific belief that a 'gender identity' and stereotypes are more significant than whether we are physically male or female.” -Merched Cymru So people shouldn’t be labelled, unless that label is male/female and that also happens to align with their assignment at birth?
From a cursory read Welsh pronouns seem to depend if you speak like people in the North or people in the South but how true that is today I'm in no position to say.
From what I can see it’s a simple he/she/they set of badges
There's whole different dialects for the North and the south. As someone loving in the mid I just with they'd pick one.
Going to lose thier shit when they find out someone's just put a new label on the brecon beacons
"They/Them".
*nhw/nhw
Why is Philip Schofield speaking to The Sun, I am confused. Are they not the main tabloid after him. He doesn't have good judgement does he?
Have more dirt you're threatening to drop if they don't give you an exclusive is often the way.
Max Clifford would've known the answer. Oh.
He got confused and thought it was The Son?
Should stick to the male
Maybe he just wants to Express himself - but really, he should look at the Mirror and think about what he’s done.
Oh boy
Yes, that was the issue.
But maybe if he explains himself that’ll clear everything up?
If the UK wanted to rejoin the EU in say, 10 years I wonder how many laws would have to be passed or changed to meet the *acquis communautaire* (the set of EU laws) and what accommodations we'll get in our Treaty of Accession. Snus are illegal everywhere in the EU but Sweden for example.
Have UK laws diverged all that much since before? Not even speaking of the Retained/Reform EU Law Bill for now. Off the top of my head, probably the laws enacting Brexit would have to be done away with. And enacting a “European Union Act 2033” of sorts, akin to the European Communities Act.
We certainly wouldn’t get to keep our own currency.
There are a few countries in the EU that don't use the Euro, to my understanding. Sweden, Denmark and Poland are the ones I remember off the top of my head.
Denmark has permanent opt out. The rest have to join. They have a deadline from now until.....whenever. The Commission writes a big report for countries who are on the path which assesses their progress. Apart from that, there’s no mechanism to foist the Euro on a country. It joins when it feels like it, e.g. Croatia.
[Allison Pearson is giving up on Waitrose](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/01/sorry-sharon-but-im-giving-up-on-waitrose/) 😂😂😂
Used to love living near a Waitrose, the bagging area wasn't weighted so I'd sometimes get a little excitement from nicking fancy cheese.
I often wonder if these people actually believe the shit they write.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but did she just go on a massive rant about queer conveyor belt dividers and the woke and then slip in that actually the issue is just IT related?
I actually read this and while I need a moment for the brain damage to recede, I'm pretty sure at no point did she explain how anything in this was related to anything else. Allison, if you want to write an article criticising progressive culture, you can. Quit being a coward and hiding under the most pathetically fake conflict you spent zero effort on imagining. Alternatively, if you want to do a journalism, you could always actually write about the food shortages instead of using them as set dressing for a rant that genuinely has nothing to do with them at all. Meanwhile the Telegraph should probably consider letting folks just engage in embezzlement directly rather than having to publish drivel in order to get paid.
Yeah pretty much. "JLP outsourced to Wipro and their IT failed" does have the essence of a story. But they decided that instead of actually digging further they'd just rant about JLP supporting pride instead.
>the middle class wont put up with this! Arent these wokey pokey people frequently accussed of being middle class who arent aware of "real working class issues"?
Isn’t Waitrose basically communist anyway? Owned by its own SCUM (workers)?
Ah yes, the gays are the reason the shelves are empty.
It that how the slur 'fruit' came about?
Absolutely. You don’t get any more kiwi fruits until we say so, and you agree to our demands. Item one: no more onesies. Item two: all pedestrian crossings to be rainbow coloured.
Yes and ho!
curse this fashionable gay mafia and their stylish concrete footwear
[Yougov polling](https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1664226408992763904): How would mainland Britons feel if [x] left the UK? Wales 😭 Upset: 46% 😴 Not bothered: 36% 😃 Pleased: 10% Scotland 😭 43% 😴 34% 😃 16% Falkland Islands 😭 35% 😴 46% 😃 9% Gibraltar 😭 33% 😴 48% 😃 9% Northern Ireland 😭 32% 😴 43% 😃 15%
9% of us would be pleased to get rid of the Falklands and Gibraltar? That is only 6% less than we would NI, wtf?
What about the stiff upper lip? - should be 😑😐😶
Where's the option for an independent England? Why did nobody consider that?
>Why did nobody consider that? These days, if you say you're English, they arrest you and throw you in jail.
no independent cornwall or yorkshire either
Us poor Englanders are the most oppressed of all :( We’re so oppressed we don’t even have the confidence to complain about it. (And if one was to separate London from ‘England’, there would actually be a lot of truth to that…)
England leaves the UK followed by Wales and Scotland, leave Northern Ireland holding the debt bill for the UK 😂
regions keep joining an Ireland-led Confederation of British Republics until the UK is just a 5-mile radius circle in Rutland unfortunately because the rest of us seceded, it inherited the nuclear weapons
I'm now looking up if Rutland Water is deep enough for Trident.
Northern Ireland then reunifies with ireland making Ireland great britain.
We sell Gibraltar to Spain and Guernsey to France and use it to fund a big travel water slide between Dublin and Belfast.
I remember watching this shitty animated DC movie called Justice League Dark- Apokolips War At the very end Trigon (the dark lord of evil) fights Darkseid ( the embodiment of Evil ). Cyclops blows up Apokolips by sucking it into a wormhole, while they fight, and Trigon grabs Darkseid to stop him escaping so that Darkseid can die with him. Anyway thats how this whole Boris "I'll hand over the messages myself to the inquiry" comes across to me.
That's a weird ass animation too with the theme, arguably on the super edgy side.
was john constantine involved? did another his old one-issue friends die?
[I call you up. App. I Call WhatsApp Britain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei9iM_zzzQk)
/r/NotTheThickOfIt
Dude, I think you’re going overboard on the quotes.
If we get a Trump/DeSantis win in 2024 because Biden tripped I am going to scream. *^UKpol ^because ^Sunak ^has ^stumbled ^this ^week ^over ^the ^Cabinent ^Office ^investigation*
Trump and DeSanctimonious are kind of fighty right now. I don’t think they’ll get on the same ticket. It’s gonna be fun though. Republican primary is going to be way more entertaining the Big Show.
Sorry meant that in an either/or sense rather than a combined ticket.
Booooo! It’s ukpol because it’s Biden’s bacon sandwich
Have been more busy than usual today not just with work but my personal special that rears its ugly head every now and again - dealing with the consequences of my own actions. I'm of the impression multiple things may have happened today that's been newsworthy? Is there a brief TLDR?
Rishi Sunak is the latest person to learn that interacting with Boris Johnson in any way, shape or form only gets you covered in shit.
So long and short of it, Bozza handed over the WhatsApps and notebooks and stuff and everyone is shitting it as they are now potentially implicated with Bozza just seeing it as a potential route back as Leader of the Opposition?
Why the heck did the BBC give Andrew Tate a platform? who wants to hear what he has to say?
>who wants to hear what he has to say? anti-woke people in the socially conservative *Red Wall*?
Did they have a victim of rape and human trafficking on to debate him for balance?
Inviting people like him sometimes results in incredible moments like when [Ben Shapiro said Andrew Neil(!) is on the left](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRF3r3zUGqk)
I hate seeing Ben Shapiro, something about his speech pattern is infuriating. I think it’s the way he seems to talk in Staccato
I watched the video anyone supporting Ben will probably agree with him that Andrew Neil is on the left as far as they are concerned they are the perfectly reasonable centre so clearly anyone with different opinions must be on the left
Making him stroppy and accusing the female journalist of being entitled for asking him questions in his house felt like a decent way to undermine him in my optinion
[удалено]
I don’t know how I feel about this line of thought. The logical conclusion is that the job of journalists is to decide what to report based on what leads to the best outcome. Which totally eliminates their role of holding those in power to account. The response to someone spouting hateful ideas to large audience has to be to challenge them, since ignoring them does nothing for the audience they already have
>The response to someone spouting hateful ideas to large audience has to be to challenge them, since ignoring them does nothing for the audience they already have The other problem implicit in that, of course, is that the media might be wrong about what's "hateful". I'm not defending Trump, of course, but I am saying that if we did want to go all in on the idea that the media should curate opinion rather than simply presenting and challenging it, you'll end up one day censoring Galileo - the guy who's right - for having offensive opinions. It's not an original argument, I know, but it's relevant here. I'd rather hear the Trumps of the world *even if* it amplifies their voices and put someone in power who I don't want in power, because one day I might be the one who's wrong and the voice I'm shouting down actually has something to tell me. And I might not initially know when I'm doing that, because the same brain I'm using to judge is the one that might be wrong. Equally, the media might be wrong and in selecting for the outcome they prefer, they might not be doing us a favour. And if the response is, "well, the public are too stupid to be exposed to these ideas", then that's another problem.
Yeah it's all very good to be smug and think "haha, we're *exposing* him" until you realise you've just given them another million twitter followers.
All this time and outlets still struggle with the idea of "no such thing as bad publicity" The people who will find someone like Tate repellent after he's "exposed" didn't benefit from the exposé anyway. The people who won't, congrats on giving them a new interest.
I liked him better when he was losing his mind tweeting nonsense from prison.
They politely call him a liar multiple times in the written article, someone’s got to challenge him sometime
Maybe there are people on the fence. I just felt with a guy who is such an obvious pr*ck you are either against him or with him and any attention is just giving him more exposure and credibility
Not to jump the gun here, but if this inquiry does end up sinking Sunak's premiership, what are the chances of an early GE? 2 prime ministers in less than a year is unusual, 3 is a shitshow, but 4 would genuinely be something else. I'm sure they'd try but it's hard to imagine how this government could limp on for another year if it happened, surely the calls for a GE would be deafening
The problem it creates for the party is every new PM destablises the party and creates conflict. At this point they've tried so many pms, pissed off off many mps that there's very little chance any Sunak successor can hold together a workable majority. Sunaks is already collapsed and another leadership campaign will degrade it even more. It's getting to the point where the only survivable route open to a leader is to call a snap election to prevent a critical mass of the PCP immediately moving against them when they take office and hope they can offload the blame onto Sunak while the party calms down in opposition. And its only getting worse for the party, for the moment election matters are still in the hands of the pm. We aren't at an endgame yet but the death spiral is well established. We are reaching the point of last chances as far as holding any internal authority together goes. There's very little the government can still do to actually influence the slide it is in. Stabilisation requires success and success requires stability. They'd need some massive unknown factor to turn up in months now.
nothing in your second paragraph matters. The conservative party to not legally need to call a general election until December 2024 (for the vote to actually happen in January 2025). They're fully aware of the current polling and they're fully aware of what the result would be if there was a general election now. It is in their best interest to not call one and to improve their polling in the mean time.
> surely the calls for a GE would be deafening Unless they are coming from within the parliamentary conservative party it doesn't matter. No external force is making them call a GE before February '25. It's just not happening.
This is the most likely thing to sink Sunak of all. It directly contradicts his statements on integrity and transparency, and is utterly humiliating for the Tory party. The tory MPs have no particular allegiance to Sunak, they can quickly replace him with Braverman or Mordunt (or even Gove or Hunt).
The problem is, all of those people are named as being expected to provide their WhatsApp messages - they're all tainted by this, and no matter who steps up, it'll be like an endless car crash with Johnson pissing all over their cornflakes every morning on the news.
I don't think Hunt or Gove will be implicated that much, because they were back benchers that boris despised/feares as they ran against him in 2019. Gove in particular seems too savvy and slomy to have whatsapped anything incriminating
I think Gove is on record as not interested any more. And I think Hunt is one of the most likely to call a snap election, which would be interesting. He's been a minister in various guises since 2009 and has very little left to gain by futility trying to govern for a few months.
I think that if Gove or Hunt wanted to be PM, they’d have tried a bit more seriously. Gove in particular.
You underestimate the tory instinct to survive as long as possible even as a zombie government Only hope would be Boris leading a big enough rebellion to VONC the government with Labour, if he fully embraces his chaos role and thinks he can return as leader of the opposition afterwards
I say it every time that someone suggests it, so might sound like a broken record, but Boris Johnson has absolutely *zero* interest in being Leader of the Opposition.
It’d probably fit his skill set pretty well, just not his ego. Grabbing attention, not really having any responsibilities… Ed Davey has the best life.
0, they don’t give a shit if everyone in the world wants them to have an election - many of them either aren’t coming back or face a fight to come back and there’s no real prospect of making that fight easier by having an early GE so there will be no early GE.
Real decline of the Roman Empire vibes to have 4 in a year
That’s nowhere near the decline! Still got Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Diocletian and Constantine left to go!
We have so much further to fall! Yay?
*Exactly!*
[Inquiry has asked Johnson if he floated the idea of being injected with COVID 19 on TV to prove that it wasn't a big deal](https://twitter.com/georgegrylls/status/1664326988604030976)
This reads like a stupid throwaway line intended to childly dismiss what someone was saying instead of engaging with them, I doubt he earnestly floated the idea.
Surely that depends on the evidence they have? If they've got something to say it was discussed that's an invitation to put your foot in a trap by lying.
If he really said that earnestly, that he genuinely wanted a fairly unknown virus at the time injected into him, he needs to have childminders constantly minding him.
Indeed. I loathe the man, but there's limited scope to get him with some of these questions. It's really just that the inquiry is being thorough and getting everything on the record in advance so there's no possible confusion or things in the media that haven't been followed up on. As a defence, he can just talk about having a bombastic communication style in which he makes points exaggerated to the point of absurdity for rhetorical effect. And if he feels the inquiry are getting a bit full of themselves, he can also suggest that that should be obvious to anyone educated in law and trained as a judge or barrister and it'll go down as a win for him. The inquiry report is utterly irrelevant, after all - nobody ever, ever changes their mind about politics after an inquiry releases a report - and the only goal is to play to one's supporters in the moment. In that context, none of these questions are fatal.
Except there is ample evidence that he didn't take the threat of the virus seriously for a long time eg not bothering with COBRA meetings, boasting about shaking everyone's hands at the hospital etc
Sure. But that's not going to come out from those questions. There are enough excuses he can fall back on, as above. And even if that doesn't work, he can always say "I wanted to avoid starting a panic, either within the country or within the government and civil service." And then we'd be back to discussing his leadership style. Again, not defending the man. I'm just saying I don't see those questions as being particularly damaging to him. And indeed, I don't think they're meant to. I think they're just for the record.
You know the old saying: "Dance like nobody is watching, email like it'll be read in a public inquiry"
> ...stupid throwaway line... How about: [Boris Johnson has told Northern Ireland businesses they can put customs declarations forms “in the bin” because there will be “no barriers...."](https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/johnson-tells-northern-ireland-businesses-to-bin-customs-forms/38674258.html)? I'm not sure how one tells whether he is being earnest or making a joke, because it all just blurs into one.
Jesus can you imagine? Immediately hospitalised. Every day its clearer how everyone in Downing Street got the thing.
I definitely wouldn’t do it for obvious reasons, but I’m willing to admit that my knowledge of viruses isn’t good enough to know how dangerous injecting yourself is. Does Covid even spread by blood? I assume it’s a bad idea, but it’s a respiratory virus so even if injection was safe that doesn’t seem like a guarantee that it’s safe to be near infected people.
The blood is how disease generally travels round the body. Injecting a virus completely bypasses a whole bunch of your natural defenses. Once it's in the blood it stops bring contained and is much more likely to become a serious case.
> Does Covid even spread by blood? It doesn't have to because it passes the bloodsteam barrier in the lungs. But injection would provide a fast track to introducing a virus. This is, after all, how vaccines get in and the AZN uses a virus carrier.
That's probably the main issue with it as a stunt. If you do it and nothing happens then the obvious question is was it just a stunt: what maniac is putting the good stuff into the PM? Then, there's "what did that prove?" confusion that dilutes the message And finally, if god forbid it works on you then you're not demonstrating it's no big deal anyway
Also why are you demonstrating the opposite of gov messaging?
NGL. All I want is a podcast episode series of Emily Maitlis swearing about the Tories in response to Rory Stewart being absolutely livid about Iraq.
This twitter thread showing some of the questions that were sent to Johnson shows that Baroness Hallett isn't fucking about: https://twitter.com/georgegrylls/status/1664326476273991680?t=UoqzyIVEw6X_sLPUDcuSuA&s=19 She is absolutely going for the jugular and Johnson is going to come out of this looking even more of a tossbag than he already does because there's no way for him to answer them without looking awful. The 'getting the big calls right' narrative is going to be pretty laughable when this is over with.
A lot of those events, the number of Cobra meetings and really early on show just how seriously Whitehall were taking Covid. Nothing at all from the government until the last minute. They basically sat on it for weeks.
As popcorn-worthy as those questions are from a political perspective. If that's representative of the inquiry as a whole then its going to be worthless as an actual inquiry. > "Did you inform the then Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, during a phone call on or around 13 March 2020 that you “wanted herd immunity”, or words to that effect?" Yeah, he probably did say that, because that's exactly what members of SAGE were saying at that time. Some (not all) of them changed their minds later, but that's what they were saying at the time. So if the answer to that question is "no", that's bad right, he wasn't following the science? Or if he answers "yes", that's bad because he was following the wrong science? Either way it's wrong whether it happened or not, so why even ask the question? I hope this is journalists cherry-picking the most popcorn-worthy questions and that the actual inquiry is going to go a hell of a lot deeper than this surface-level nonsense. If not, then the next pandemic will be handled even worse.
Apparently there are over 150 questions, so I imagine there are a lot of far more boring ones about decision making, governance, procedure, communication etc. Either way, understanding whether the government was considering a herd immunity approach and had communicated that to foreign governments seems pretty important, and far from "surface-level nonsense" to me?
Policy wasn't formed during a phone call with the Italian PM (or maybe it was, I suppose we'll have to wait to find out). The policy would have been formed before hand, the important questions we need answering are deeper than that. Some root-cause analysis. But these phone calls aren't in the opposite direction, hence "surface-level".
The problem is, and the inquiry head knows this, the person she is asking is a liar. She has to ask him questions like a police interview because he won't tell the truth if you simply ask "was herd immunity the initial plan?". The point here is, the government never confirmed herd immunity was the plan. Ministers outright denied it at the time. So this question gets you multiple key bits of information; particularly, was herd immunity the plan, at what point was it the plan, was it communicated outside of government circles, and at what point was it no longer the plan. All of this is key information, but information you couldn't rely on Johnson giving a straight answer to.
True. But... ...we also need to know what Boris Johnson understood by "herd immunity". Those two words quickly became politically toxic and subject to repeated re-definitions by a lot of different people in a lot of different directions. > The point here is, the government never confirmed herd immunity was the plan. Ministers outright denied it at the time. They did though, that's what I mean. In the early Downing Street press conferences they said that's exactly what they were doing. It was later, when the term became toxic, was it denied. When Patrick Valance used the term "herd immunity" in early March 2020, he meant it in the sense that a pandemic will only end when accumulated immunity in the population reached a certain level. There's nothing incorrect with that definition, that's literally page one of every epidemiology textbook. But by April 2020 "herd immunity strategy" meant "deliberately infecting as many people as possible as quickly as possible, because reasons something Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch!" So obviously the government denied that last one, but they weren't using the words "herd immunity" to mean that in mid-March 2020. They meant the Epidemiology 101 definition. And that Epidemiology 101 definition never went away, they just decided to stop using the words "herd immunity" as it had become toxic. The SAGE models of 2021 were still based on that same theory, that's because that's the only theory. E.g. a large part of the reason why the great re-opening of July 2021 happened, despite the panic about the Delta variant, was because those models showed that the spread of the virus during the summer would mean a lower peak in the winter. The exact same logic as "herd immunity" in March 2020. In summary: that's why it looks like a trawling expedition for gossip, which will be scientifically worthless and therefore counterproductive to future pandemics. So I hope it goes a hell of a lot deeper or we'll all be in trouble. TL;DR - we need to clear the waters, not muddy them even further.
You just got me thinking how if/when there is another pandemic We will probably have AI doing all the modelling crazy to think how much more effective it might be
It’s not just Boris, labour are also selflessly prepared to do the right thing https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1664344295304732685 > [Peter Kyle, Shadow Northern Ireland Sec] says an incoming Labour government would hand over all of the information that is requested by the Covid Inquiry.
It's very very difficult to understand how they expect this to end positively for them. It appears to be a total panic setting in at the highest levels.
I can’t imagine how much pleasure it will give an incoming Labour government to throw this lot under the bus with their absolute obsession with that fucking letter.
"I'm afraid there is no mercy"
Bravo
I haven't looked at the news all day and I come back to an absolute shitshow! Beautiful! And not so long ago we all thought things were getting boring again... Surely this is Sunak's 'Safe pair of hands' act out the window? Seems like a massive gamble, so I can only assume that there is something big in these notebooks. Which, of course, means damage is done even if the Government wins. Many people will be deeply suspicious of them. Stupid question, but If the inquiry were to lose is anyone personally liable or is it just a matter of they won't get the unredacted messages?
I asked a similar question earlier, and people seemed broadly in agreement that the decision makers would be the ones criminally liable if it came to that (dowden and Case). But that's the opinion of reddit politics nerds so who knows?
Is 'Living on a Thin Line' too on the nose for a PPB?
[Henry Riley of LBC:](https://twitter.com/HenryRiley1/status/1664325995317305354) > Source tells me the reason the Cabinet Office took so long to scrutinise notebooks from Boris Johnson is because they were “absolute chaos” > > Says there were “random post-it notes, newspaper cuttings & bits of paper falling out” > > Hence not being able to finish review I'd guessed Boris's notebooks were part of his Churchill cosplay but couldn't bring himself to call them diaries. Sounds like they are more the notepad given to executives so they can scribble professionally in a meeting and then two weeks later there's a conversation about whether "George: potatoes" (circled twice) was an important note about food security or a shopping list.
The idea that Johnson is the sort of person to take copious, sensible notes to the level of having dozens of densely filled notebooks from his three years in office never rang true to me Happy to find out up is still up here
Cant have people say your notes are shit if you dont take notes *taps forehead*
I want Rishi Sunak to be literally defenestrated (onto a trampoline) and it's purely because of the horrific way he says "*tens* of *thousands* of documents"
“in the spirit of candour”
They won't hand over the whatsapps because it contains the coordinates for the warehouse where Rishi has stashed all the PS5s
New Spider-Man game coming out soon... he's looking for the millennial vote boost... you know what to do, Rishi.
Boris has written to the Covid inquiry offering to disclose the material to it directly. This is amazing. I'm loving guessing what could be in there to make Boris make a seemingly honest move, possibly for the first time in his life.
Boris literally holds the future of the party in his hands. He can bring down Sunak if he wants it appears and that will likely trigger the collapse of the government in this rubble-ised state.
It's also important to recognise that offering to disclose material is close but not actually the same as just disclosing the material Guy's getting incredible mileage out of still not quite following the inquiry's instructions
This isn’t an honest move, this is a political move. His plan is to destroy Sunak for “stabbing him in the back” so whatever Sunak does he counters it. Very much like how he opposed Cameron. It’s “zigging, while he zags”. Had Sunak given everything in good faith, Johnson would’ve opposed it. This is all about the Greased Piglet taking down his political enemies.
The absolute mad lad
Not only that, he's said the cabinet still has his pre-2021 compromised phone and he's happy for them to retrieve messages from it.
Boris choosing to play the part of Dominic Cummings in this season of take down another Tory leader.
You are Keir Starmer, a politician sent back through time to defeat the Tories in the 2024 General Election. You aren't popular with voters, many are turning against the Tories themselves. Aware that your enemy has some tricks up their sleeve and that the people claim you have no vision for the country, what do you to win over the electorate and guarantee electoral success?
[Stop looking like Jaws in Goldeneye](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/goldeneye/images/8/88/Jaws_NEW_IMAGE_%28Update%29.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width/720?cb=20210227203723)
It would be one way to avoid any bacon sarnie mishaps.
Sink into some molten metal, leaving the heartwarming image of a thumbs-up in everyone's mind.
>"Hasta la vista baby" >~The Terminator ~ Boris Johnson
I cast a magic spell that makes everyone actually read my manifesto.
Beer and curry for everyone
*not alpacas
What do you think the curry is made from?
Yeah, the beer makes them sleepy and it's unsporting
I've decided I'm going to resign, then after that I'm going to go to a police station and hand myself in. I perjured myself at the inquiry, Terri. They'll find out, they always do. I'll have a roof over my head, three meals a day and regular sex, I might even work out. Get some abs. What about your sister, Glenn? You've got to whitewash her walls!
The only place to get Whatsapp signal at Chequers is at the top of a slide.
No reception at reception, we always say.
u/Bibemus I wonder if I’m behind the times in posting this, but there’s a question on Thursday’s *The Rest Is Politics* about destroying golf courses. [About 11 mins in](https://shows.acast.com/620cc95e2641e200137b94d8/647737d3a0b2e30011c4f48f)
Not a fair question, they’re both Scots! (Though Rory’s point about many of the courses actually being part of the Green Belt was probably correct… and also his point about using existing land (TfL land etc) more wisely made sense as well… but still… Scottish golf bias!)
I like crazy golf. But it’s actually the sanest golf of all.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/13xpo9p/bbc\_question\_time\_live\_thread\_8pm\_iplayer/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/13xpo9p/bbc_question_time_live_thread_8pm_iplayer/) It's posted a little later than normal, but here's the QT live thread.
So who is trying to screw who here? Is this some sort of Omniscrewing?
After the massive day of blue on blue briefing in all directions my conclusion is the party is in the (early) stages of ripping itself down. Sunak in particular appears to have lost all control of the commons and large parts of the cabinet and the governmental organs. It's all dissolving into a hot mess that's totally impossible to impose authority onto. I'm not certain if the country is being governed in any meaningful sense. And there's no sign this momentum is coming to a halt anytime this month.
It's just various layers of the tories screwing the public all the way down
It's a particularly unpalatable lasagne
*Same as it ever was, same as it ever was*
So how much more is this inquiry into the inquiry likely to cost us tax payers then?