No. 218 - Outrage followed bye False Justification followed by U=Turn: A Typical Day in the Life pf Boris's Government

Dear James,

It was hard to believe. An amendment - supported by you in your new role as Junior Whip - to blow up the existing House of Commons Standards Committee (and conveniently suspending the 30 day suspension of Owen Paterson MP from the House) astounded the Commons and the nation beyond. The backlash has been immediate and, once again, your government is splattered in the mud of self-serving sleaze. Add to that today’s screeching U-Turn and what have we got? Another typical day in the life of government by Boris!

Owen Patterson was found guilty by the current Committee of Standards of accepting some £500,000 in fees for companies on behalf of whom he lobbied parliament on multiple occasions. Boris Johnson claimed the change was ‘a matter of natural justice’. I assume he meant natural justice for his MPs and a natural injustice for the rest of us? What a disgrace. But why were we not surprised?

The ‘S word’ is now deeply rooted inside your party James. Sleaze within has been endemic for decades. The list is endless but, for starters, anyone remember Neil Hamilton and the cash in brown envelopes scandal? More recently, do you recall David Cameron’s Greenshill debacle in which our ex-PM pushed Rishi Sunak to provide access to Covid Support funds to save Greenshill from bankruptcy? Then, of course, there was the small matter of Housing Minister Robert Jenrick’s deal with an East London property developer which delivered £12,000 to Tory Party funds in return for easing the developer’s way to avoiding new taxes on the development.

Sleaze and corruption are almost certain to come from a party with an 80+ majority and a leader like Boris Johnson. Boris’s career is replete with scandal and I’m not referring to his very own, private moral turpitude. When Mayor of London his girlfriend at the time, Jeniffer Arcusi received £126,000 of public money in the form of grants for her technology firm as well as being given access to three high-level foreign trade trips led by Johnson. Boris has no other principle than to ‘look after his own’. In 1990, he was secretly recorded agreeing to provide the address of the News of the World reporter, Stuart Collier, to his old school pal Darius Guppy, who wanted to arrange for the journalist to have his ribs broken as revenge for investigating his activities. Boris is genetically and temperamentally unfit hold any position of responsibility in our nation, let alone that of Prime Minister.

And yet compared with the ‘higher level’ dealings of your government, all this individual scandal pales into insignificance. The same recklessness and absence of integrity of Boris’s government have given cause for nations around the world to question our credibility and trustworthiness. The signing of the Northern Irish protocol with never any intention of respecting it is one such case. Picking a fight with French fishermen over fishing rights in British waters is another. And people remember the lies of the 2016 referendum and are already experiencing the results of that mass deception. 

Yesterday, amidst cries off ‘Shame!’, the opposition parties all agreed to boycott the new Standards Committee. On the radio this morning, Kwasi Kwarteng assured us in his Eton-honed, velvet toned, imperturbability, that your government is committed to ‘the highest level of integrity and probity’! What nerve, what chutzpah! Who is he trying to kid? It was like Al Capone announcing to the world that he was committed to the peaceful solution of the problems that resulted in the St Valentine’s Day Massacre.

And just now - surprise, surprise -  we had the inevitable U-turn. Leader of the House, Jacob Rees Mogg, has announced that the ‘changes’ to the amendment passed yesterday will not go ahead without cross-party support. Another screeching Handbrake Turn by a Prime Minister and his henchmen in an attempt to say it has all been a storm in a teacup.

Some storm! Some teacup! Boris has attempted once again to put his pals first. Your government James lacks leadership, lacks a moral compass, lacks consistency and lacks cohesion. It undermines standards in public life, vandalizes the concept of decency and trashes respect for the principles of the rule of law. Nationally and internationally our country is now mistrusted. Its ministers are seen as corrupt and self-serving. Its leadership is shambolic.

Surely our once proud nation needs better than this?

Kind regards,

BH – Your Concerned Constituent.