Breaking news Johnson fined over lockdown parties

[rebbonk]

News just coming in that Johnson, his wife and Sunak are facing fines.

Source: https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/uk-world-news/live-boris-johnson-rishi-sunak-23669704

I would suggest that their days are now numbered, despite the bluff and bluster that will no doubt accompany their faux outrage.

[dutchman]

Being a man of huge integrity surely he will resign as Prime Minister?

[rebbonk]

One set of scenarios as to what might happen...

Will Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak resign? Five potential scenarios they face after being fined over Partygate

The Prime Minister and Chancellor both face calls to resign from across the House of Commons – and even among their own party – but who will stay and who will go?

One of several scenarios could be played out after Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rushi Sunak were among dozens of people who were fined by the Metropolitan Police Service over the Partygate scandal on Tuesday:
1. The Prime Minister and Chancellor both quit

Perhaps the most unlikely scenario but the one outcome all opposition parties are united on should happen. Public opinion had already turned against Boris Johnson in particular in recent months, with around 75 per cent of voters having already said the Prime Minister should quit if he were to be fined. Just 16 per cent wanted him to stay in those circumstances, according to February’s Savanta ComRes survey.

Tory MPs – some speaking on the record, some off – had also said Mr Johnson’s position would become “completely untenable” if he faced any kind of police sanction. Expect renewed pressure on the pair to go now this scenario has come to pass, regardless of how well his party believes the Prime Minister has handled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in recent weeks. Mr Sunak may feel his position is untenable if his boss decides to quit over the same fine he has been given.

Bereaved families who have lost loved ones to Covid have called on both the Prime Minister and Chancellor to resign immediately.
2. Sunak quits, Johnson stays

Having once been the most popular Cabinet member, Mr Sunak’s popularity has also nosedived after it emerged his wife paid £30,000 a year for non-domiciled tax status, allowing her to avoid paying UK tax on her considerable foreign earnings. Aides had already suggested Mr Sunak has come close to quitting in recent days – the Partygate fine may push him over the edge.

It has been a disastrous week for the Chancellor during which time his political judgement was questioned. His wife’s tax affairs and further revelations about the family finances has clearly threatened his chances of succeeding Mr Johnson in No 10.

Mr Sunak had denied attending parties when asked if he was at reported Christmas gatherings in December 2020. Although the Met has not confirmed which parties the fines relate to, the Chancellor could take a moral victory – and a parting shot – at the Prime Minister by falling on his sword. It could also be his Geoffrey Howe moment; Margaret Thatcher’s long-serving deputy resigned in 1990 with a withering attack speech that described the “conflict of loyalties” he faced. Mrs Thatcher was gone in two weeks.

Mr Johnson has faced numerous calls to resign in the past two years but is likely to plough on. He has been accused of misleading MPs over Partygate, however, he still has a large majority and it is unclear whether enough of his own MPs would combine to force him out.

A large number of Tory MPs would need to rebel or abstain from a vote for him to be unseated – a scenario which has not happened since 1940 and one which has never happened in the context of a Prime Minister being removed for lying to Parliament.

Mr Johnson still has some support among his own party. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross – previously one of the leading voices calling for the Prime Minister to resign over Partygate – said his removal now would “destabilise” the country as it tries to deal with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
3. Johnson quits, Sunak stays

In early February, Mr Johnson refused to say whether he would resign if he was fined for breaching lockdown restrictions by police, arguing that the investigation needed to run its course. The Prime Minister has been the face of the Partygate scandal – he is understood to have been present at six of the at least 12 events being investigated, many more than the Chancellor. If anything can save Mr Sunak and sink Mr Johnson, this is it.

Sir Keir Starmer had suggested Mr Johnson should resign for misleading the House by denying the allegations of wrongdoing at the parties during England’s coronavirus lockdowns. And Mr Johnson has repeatedly denied the allegations to the House of Commons. It does not help the Prime Minister’s cause that his wife, Carrie Johnson, has also been given a Fixed Penalty Notice.

The Ministerial Code does say that ministers who knowingly mislead the House should resign, but there is one get out clause: “Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister”, is the wording of the rulebook, which was never designed for a Prime Minister. It would be Mr Johnson’s most brazen defence of his actions yet if he went down this route to save his job.
4. Johnson forced out

In February, roughly 20 Tory MPs were understood to have written to the chair of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, saying they no longer had confidence in the Prime Minister. However Andrew Bridgen, MP for North West Leicestershire, withdrew his letter the following month arguing that it would be an “indulgence” to vote on Boris Johnson’s future in the middle of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Although the number of letters is likely to grow now that Mr Johnson has been fined, that could be balanced by the fact the war looks like it will drag on for several months. Ukraine’s President Zelensky has praised the UK and Mr Johnson as his country’s strongest support so some MPs minded to push the PM out could hold back. It is inevitable though that at least some MPs yet to show their hand will declare Mr Johnson’s position untenable in light of the fine.
5. They both stay

Both men may consider it in their own, and their party’s, interests to stay on and fight the next election, especially as Mr Sunak was widely seen as the person most likely to succeed Mr Johnson. Having been at loggerheads in recent weeks over issues, such as the future energy strategy, the pair could strike an entente cordiale to see them through the next two years at least. The down side is that both men’s standing among MPs and the public is unlikely to recover to what it had been pre-Partygate.

After all, the Government has yet to fall despite a turbulent few years. Mr Johnson has faced numerous calls to reign and defied them all – most notably after he was accused of misleading the Queen over proroguing Parliament in 2019. But the Prime Minister just kept calm and carried on.

Source: https://inews.co.uk/news/analysis/boris-johnson-rishi-sunak-resign-potential-scenarios-fined-partygate-1570920

Interestingly, Farage, in a piece for GB news, thinks Johnson will be gone before Christmas.

[dutchman]

Mum calls for PM to go after son's lockdown death



A mother whose son died last year has called for Boris Johnson to resign after he was fined for breaking lockdown rules.

Michael Harrison died of a brain tumour and his mother Hazel said she had been unable to do the things she would have liked with him due to the lockdown.

Ms Harrison, of Warwickshire, added she felt as though she should have disregarded the rules instead.

The prime minister has apologised but there have been calls for him to quit.

Michael Harrison was undergoing chemotherapy when Covid-19 emerged in 2020. He died in February 2021.

His mother, 39, of Bishop's Itchington, said: "We gave up so much, and Michael missed out on so much in those last few months of his life."

Her son's clinically vulnerable status meant he needed to be protected by his family and he had to attend scans and appointments alone.

"We weren't able to have the support that we perhaps might have had from friends and family," Ms Harrison said.

"It makes me feel like... we should have disregarded the rules ourselves."

Only 30 people were allowed to attend the funeral while no celebration was permitted afterwards, she added.

"I cannot believe that he's still in his position as Prime Minister," Ms Harrison said.

"I just think how can he possibly stay where he is when he's broken the law?"

[dutchman]

Justice minister quits over PM’s failure to resign after lockdown fine

The Justice minister, Lord Wolfson, has publicly resigned from government over Boris Johnson’s decision to stay in office, following his fine for breaking Covid laws.

Lord Wolfson denounced the PM’s actions, saying: “The scale, context and nature of those breaches mean that it would be inconsistent with the rule of law for that conduct to pass with constitutional impunity.”

Elsewhere, Conservative MPs backing Boris Johnson after he was fined by police for breaching Covid laws are endorsing dishonesty and lawbreaking, Ed Davey has suggested.

The Liberal Democrat leader said the prime minister should resign as a “matter of principle”, after he and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, were handed fixed penalty notices for attending a birthday gathering for Mr Johnson in the cabinet room in June 2020.

“Conservatve MPs who are coming out on programmes like this and backing the prime minister are basically associating the whole party with this law-breaking, this dishonesty,” Mr Davey told Sky News.

“They’re all now guilty,” he added. Both the prime minister and chancellor are refusing to quit over the Partygate scandal.

[dutchman]

‘It’s a joke’: Britons who received Covid fines react to Boris Johnson’s £50 penalty



In May 2020, David Wilson received a £1,000 fine after hosting an outdoor party he says followed coronavirus rules at his restaurant, Calypso, in Blackburn. He’s still fighting the fine in court, and is terrified that if his case fails and he’s asked to pay, he’ll be forced to close an 11-year-old family business that delivered food to vulnerable people during the pandemic.

This, he said, was the reality for “the small man”, contrasting his experience with that of the prime minister and his associates, who have been fined for attending parties at 10 Downing Street during lockdown.

“A £1,000 fine for us, £50 for them. It’s a joke. Where’s the justice? Apart from anger, I’m disappointed, because they’re playing it off thinking it’ll go away, it’s just a £50 fine. All the way through they’ve been having parties, when how many people were suffering who couldn’t see family or grandkids? I broke down crying seeing so much need from the people we were serving.”

His anger at the contrasting pandemic experiences was echoed by Callum Harrison, who received a fine for having two friends round to his eight-person houseshare in October 2020, when he was a student at Newcastle University.

He recalls very heavy-handed “authoritarian” policing, with undercover cars and intimidating patrols in areas where lots of students lived. “The police were very aggressive, very hostile to us, even though we tried to reason with them and said it’s our first time breaking the rules.”

Each person present received a £100 fine, which he said represented “a few weeks of food” to him. He feels that, in light of the government’s breaches, fines people paid should be donated to charity.

“It feels like one rule for us, one for them. They get away with murder constantly, the government should be ashamed of themselves. Looking back and the people who were supposed to be setting an example and who set the rules, they had numerous parties, it’s just not fair,” he said.

Kieron McArdle, who received a £100 fine during the first lockdown when three friends visited him in his garden in Warwickshire for his birthday after he had spent weeks alone, considers the lies the worst aspect of the Partygate scandal.

“It was the total disregard for other people and the lies that got me – there were no parties, there were no parties. The original line was that it was all work meetings. I could have said to the police the three guys here are my colleagues,” he said.

“For the prime minister to lie in parliament, he’s broken the ministerial code, he’s got to go. He must resign. He’s got no credibility, he’s become a laughing stock.”

Ali Lawrence, a musician from York who was fined £200 despite showing police print-outs of the coronavirus rules he believed showed he was in line with the law, worried about the precedent Johnson’s behaviour might set.

“The big excuse is that we can’t change our leader because of the war in Ukraine. But the way I see things is that, with all the atrocities in Ukraine committed by Putin, he’s obviously lying and everyone can see that. But how can the leader of our country call him out when he’s been proven to have done the same? It makes a mockery of it all. We need a leader who has to at least be seen to be honourable.”

[dutchman]

New partygate claims emerge as Labour say Boris Johnson has 'deliberately misled Britons at every turn'



New allegations have emerged regarding lockdown parties in Downing Street - with Labour claiming Boris Johnson has "deliberately misled the British people at every turn".

The prime minister has already been fined once for breaking COVID rules on his birthday in 2020, but that is said to be regarded as the least problematic of a series of incidents.

Mr Johnson is understood to have been present at six of at least 12 gatherings being investigated by the Metropolitan Police, including the "bring your own booze" one in the Downing Street garden on 20 May 2020.

The latest claims concern what happened on 13 November 2020, when leaving drinks for Number 10 director of communications Lee Cain were allegedly "instigated" by the prime minister.

A gathering in the Downing Street press office did not start as leaving drinks, a source told The Sunday Times.

Rather, it was the "usual Friday evening wash-up drinks", they added.

But Mr Johnson "came fumbling over, red box in tow", and "gathered the staff around the press office table, which did have bottles of alcohol on it", they continued.

"He said he wanted to say a few words for Lee and started pouring drinks for people and drinking himself. He toasted him."

A photographer is said to have been present throughout and is believed to have captured pictures of the prime minister, The Sunday Times said.

The newspaper added: "A Downing Street source did not dispute the description of the event but denied that Johnson had organised it."

Mr Johnson then apparently returned to his flat above 11 Downing Street, where a second gathering involving his wife and her friends - with Abba music blaring out - is claimed to have taken place that same evening.

Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner said that "if the latest reports are true", it means "not only did the prime minister attend parties, but he had a hand in instigating at least one of them".

Mr Johnson has previously said that "all guidance was followed", but Ms Rayner said he had "deliberately misled the British people at every turn".

She added: "While the British public was making huge sacrifices, Boris Johnson was breaking the law.

"The prime minister has demeaned his office. The British people deserve better. While Labour has a plan for tackling the cost-of-living crisis, Tory MPs are too busy defending the indefensible actions of Boris Johnson."

Downing Street declined to comment and has repeatedly said it will not be doing so until the police investigation has concluded.

[rebbonk]

Had Labour been a decent, organised, party in opposition, Bozo might not have even gotten his disastrous (and IMO illegal) rules and regulations through Parliament in the first place.

I also notice that it is the deputy leader of Labour on the attack and not Stammer [sic]. Stammer has underperformed at every turn over covid, he is a bl**dy disgrace. I believe that if Labour dumps Stammer for Rayner, they'll walk the next election.

[rebbonk]

UK's Johnson shredded ministerial code with lockdown breaches, constitutional expert says

LONDON, April 17 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson has thrust Britain into a constitutional crisis by breaking the law he set for pandemic restrictions, effectively "shredding the ministerial code", the country's leading constitutional expert said on Sunday.

Peter Hennessy, a historian and member of the upper house of parliament, said Johnson had become "the great debaser in modern times of decency in public and political life" after he was fined by police for attending a social gathering in Downing Street while lockdown restrictions were in place.

The ministerial code sets out the standards of conduct expected of ministers and how they discharge their duties, according to the government website.

Johnson has been accused of misleading parliament over the matter by opposition lawmakers after he told parliament last year that all rules were followed in Downing Street during the pandemic. He will appear in the House of Commons on Tuesday to explain why he was fined by police.

He has also apologised after he became the first British leader found to have broken the law while in office. Police are investigating further gatherings and he could receive further fines.

"I think we're in the most severe constitutional crisis involving a prime minister that I can remember," Hennessy told BBC Radio, asking why anyone in public life would adhere to the rules when the prime minister did not.

"The prime minister sealed his place in British history as the first lawbreaker to have occupied the premiership," he said, adding that he was no longer worthy of serving the queen or her country.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a minister in Johnson's cabinet, said he respected Hennessy but did not think the constitutional expert had fully understood the constitutional significance of the ministerial code.

Johnson, he said, had told parliament in good faith that he had not broken any rules, because he did not believe he had.

"It is very hard to see that he could meet the high bar of deliberately misleading parliament," Rees-Mogg told the BBC. "So I think Lord Hennessy, who is one of the most distinguished living constitutionalists, is on this occasion wrong."

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-johnson-shredded-ministerial-code-with-lockdown-breaches-constitutional-2022-04-17/

This seems to be getting worse for our lying, twisting, cheating, deceiving, excremental, PM. The silly thing is that the useless tub of lard has brought it all on himself.

I also think that the Mogster is wrong on this occasion.

[rebbonk]

The people want rid of Bozo...

Four pollsters all show majority want Boris Johnson to resign
April 17, 2022 - 7:42 pm

Having reported some of the initial polls following the news of fines for Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak over breaking lockdown rules, let’s follow my own usual advice to others and round up all the polls on the topic.

Four pollsters have so far all asked about whether the PM should resign, using significantly different question wording but – on this occasion – getting a similar set of answers regardless of the wording.

Here’s are those answers:

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson: It has been reported this afternoon (12 April) that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have been issued with Fixed Penalty Notices by the Metropolitan Police for attending parties in Whitehall and Downing Street during lockdown. Do you think each of the following should, or should not, resign? Boris Johnson (Savanta ComRes)

Should resign – 61%
Should not resign – 31%


It has been reported that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have received fines for breaching lockdown restrictions. Do you think Boris Johnson should resign from his role as Prime Minister, or should he remain in his role? (YouGov)

Should resign – 57%
Should remain in his role – 30%


Should Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak resign as Prime Minister and Chancellor respectively over receiving fixed penalty notice fines for breaking lockdown rules? (Techne)

Yes – 55%
No – 34%


To what extent, if at all, would you support or oppose: Boris Johnson resigning as Prime Minister? (Ipsos MORI)

Strongly support – 35%
Tend to support – 19%
(Total support – 54%)
Tend to oppose – 13%
Strongly oppose – 14%
(Total oppose – 27%)

The similarity of the answers despite the wide variations in wording illustrate how question wording matters less the simpler and higher profile an issue is. It’s when there are very different ways of describing an action, and complicated consequences, that question wording can have the biggest impact.

Source: https://www.markpack.org.uk/169170/four-pollsters-all-show-majority-want-boris-johnson-to-resign/