Was claimed
Boris Johnson asked me to intervene in honours list, says Rishi Sunak
- Thread starter SirGalahad
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Was claimed
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Blinkered rubbish
Dear Harriet,
You will no doubt have seen the reports in today’s media concerning Sir Bernard Jenkin. It has been reported that he attended a rule-breaking birthday party event when London was in Tier 2 restrictions. The reports suggest alcohol was served at the event and that it broke the rules on numbers. To my knowledge, as of this point, he has made no attempt to deny the allegations.
And yet at no time has he seen fit to tell you, or the House of Commons about this alleged gathering. He has repeatedly insisted that any such breaches are a matter of the utmost gravity for any public servant.
If indeed it is the case that he broke the rules himself – and knowingly broke them – Sir Bernard is guilty of flagrant and monstrous hypocrisy.
But I am afraid it is far worse than that.
He has just voted to expel me from the House of Commons because he says – falsely – that I concealed from the House my knowledge of illicit events.
If indeed he did attend a blatantly rule breaking event he would be guilty of doing exactly what he claims that I did. Although this report is not yet confirmed by an investigation, I believe he should have informed the Committee of his conflict and he should have informed the House.
He should have recused himself.
I really find it incredible – and nauseating – that this matter is emerging at this stage of your process.
Are you please able to confirm that you have asked every member of the committee whether they attended any such events, and that these checks were made before your inquiry began?
I would be grateful for your urgent response and to know how the committee intends to proceed, since it seems to me that Sir Bernard can no longer be held to have been a valid judge or investigator in these proceedings.
Yours
Boris Johnson
You will no doubt have seen the reports in today’s media concerning Sir Bernard Jenkin. It has been reported that he attended a rule-breaking birthday party event when London was in Tier 2 restrictions. The reports suggest alcohol was served at the event and that it broke the rules on numbers. To my knowledge, as of this point, he has made no attempt to deny the allegations.
And yet at no time has he seen fit to tell you, or the House of Commons about this alleged gathering. He has repeatedly insisted that any such breaches are a matter of the utmost gravity for any public servant.
If indeed it is the case that he broke the rules himself – and knowingly broke them – Sir Bernard is guilty of flagrant and monstrous hypocrisy.
But I am afraid it is far worse than that.
He has just voted to expel me from the House of Commons because he says – falsely – that I concealed from the House my knowledge of illicit events.
If indeed he did attend a blatantly rule breaking event he would be guilty of doing exactly what he claims that I did. Although this report is not yet confirmed by an investigation, I believe he should have informed the Committee of his conflict and he should have informed the House.
He should have recused himself.
I really find it incredible – and nauseating – that this matter is emerging at this stage of your process.
Are you please able to confirm that you have asked every member of the committee whether they attended any such events, and that these checks were made before your inquiry began?
I would be grateful for your urgent response and to know how the committee intends to proceed, since it seems to me that Sir Bernard can no longer be held to have been a valid judge or investigator in these proceedings.
Yours
Boris Johnson
After two hours, we have no comment from Bernard Jenkin. So far as Guido knows he is not taking calls from the press. So here’s a reminder of some of his most hypocritical statements at the Privileges Committee:
- “The rules were clear, they were there for everyone, and no one is above the law…”
- “The lockdown was a time of sacrifice and hardship for many.‘it’s only right that those in power should lead by example”
- “The public trust in our institution is paramount. Any breach, however minor, is a serious matter”
- “We must hold ourselves to the highest standards. If we do not, how can we expect the public to do so?”
- “It is not just about following the letter of the law, but also the spirit of the law. We, as public servants, should be the first to adhere to this”
- “We cannot expect the public to follow rules that we ourselves do not follow. It is a matter of integrity and honesty”
- “Transparency is key in these matters. Any attempt to hide or downplay breaches only serves to undermine public trust”
- “We must remember that our actions have consequences. Breaching lockdown rules can lead to serious health risks for others”
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Charles Moore in The Telegraph on the breaking of Boris…
“Mr Johnson’s complaint also deserves sympathy. The process by which he was ejected from office and is being pursued afterwards is not fair. It constantly uses process – police, official inquiries, now the House of Commons Privileges Committee – but its motive is political (though not always party political: Boris-haters are more powerful in the Tory party than in Labour). It is not a means of justice but of revenge, chiefly for Brexit.
There are widespread complaints that the Boris saga degrades public life. This is true. But the blame, in the media, tends to be laid on Mr Johnson alone. The sadder truth is that it should be shared by both sides. If Boris is unruly and selfish, his enemies are devious and hypocritical. He is out, having been legitimately – though not necessarily wisely – ejected by his parliamentary colleagues. It would have been much better to leave it at that, rather than seeking to break him.”
“Mr Johnson’s complaint also deserves sympathy. The process by which he was ejected from office and is being pursued afterwards is not fair. It constantly uses process – police, official inquiries, now the House of Commons Privileges Committee – but its motive is political (though not always party political: Boris-haters are more powerful in the Tory party than in Labour). It is not a means of justice but of revenge, chiefly for Brexit.
There are widespread complaints that the Boris saga degrades public life. This is true. But the blame, in the media, tends to be laid on Mr Johnson alone. The sadder truth is that it should be shared by both sides. If Boris is unruly and selfish, his enemies are devious and hypocritical. He is out, having been legitimately – though not necessarily wisely – ejected by his parliamentary colleagues. It would have been much better to leave it at that, rather than seeking to break him.”
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Poor Boris. He hasn't brought anything on himself has he. It's just, all the others
Oh come on, it's great fun, as it always is with Boris, bit sticky for the privileges committee though?
The other side are saying that it was a properly distanced work meeting, for some sort of women's parliamentary group, and that Jenkin arrived at the end to collect his wife. If so, then it's probably just Johnson up to his usual muck-throwing games. Apparently, he has something of a reputation for conflating and exaggerating 
It was fun while it lasted.
It was fun while it lasted.
If it is true Bernard Jenkins attended a lockdown party, can it be asssumed this was already well known in Downing St. circles and was only revealed after the inquiry announced its decision on the terms of suspension for B. de Piffle?
In that case, either his team were planning to use this knowledge to twist a favourable verdict for their 'Big Dog' or tattled after the fact when it became clear he wasn't going to be affable on their behalf.
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What political party is Jenkins from ?
If he is guilty, was he too above the law? Is it a political power thing ?
If he is guilty, was he too above the law? Is it a political power thing ?
Bozo was heave -hoed for lying to Parliament.
The parties were the trigger, but not the reason.
The parties were the trigger, but not the reason.
It is now many months since people started to warn me about the intentions of the Privileges Committee. They told me that it was a kangaroo court. They told me that it was being driven relentlessly by the political agenda of Harriet Harman, and supplied with skewed legal advice – with the sole political objective of finding me guilty and expelling me from parliament.
They also warned me that most members had already expressed prejudicial views – especially Harriet Harman – in a way that would not be tolerated in a normal legal process. Some alarmists even pointed out that the majority of the Committee voted remain and they stressed that Bernard Jenkin’s personal antipathy to me was historic and well-known.
To be frank, when I first heard these warnings, I was incredulous. When it was first proposed that there should be such an inquiry by this committee, I thought it was just some time-wasting procedural stunt by the Labour party.
I didn’t think for one minute that a committee of MPs could find against me on the facts, and I didn’t see how any reasonable person could fail to understand what had happened.
I knew exactly what events I had attended in Number 10. I knew what I had seen, with my own eyes, and like the current PM, I believed that these events were lawful. I believed that my participation was lawful, and required by my job; and that is indeed the implication of the exhaustive police inquiry.
The only exception is the June 19 2020 event, the so-called birthday party, when I and the then Chancellor Rishi Sunak were fined in circumstances that I still find puzzling (I had lunch at my desk with people I worked with every day).
So when on Dec 1 2021 I told the House of Commons that “the guidance was followed completely” (in Number Ten) I meant it. It wasn’t just what I thought: it’s what we all thought – that we were following the rules and following the guidance completely – notwithstanding the difficulties of maintaining social distancing at all times.
The committee now says that I deliberately misled the House, and at the moment I spoke I was consciously concealing from the House my knowledge of illicit events.
This is rubbish. It is a lie. In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the Committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts.
First, they say that I must have known that the farewell events I attended were not authorised workplace events because – wait for it – NO SUCH EVENT could lawfully have taken place, anywhere in this country, under the Committee’s interpretation of covid rules. This is transparently wrong. I believed, correctly, that these events were reasonably necessary for work purposes. We were managing a pandemic. We had hundreds of staff engaged in what was sometimes a round-the-clock struggle against covid. Their morale mattered for that fight. It was important for me to thank them.
But don’t just listen to me. Take it from the Metropolitan Police. The police investigated my role at all of those events. In no case did they find that what I had done was unlawful. Above all it did not cross my mind – as I spoke in the House of Commons – that the events were unlawful.
I believed that we were working, and we were: talking for the main about nothing except work, mainly covid. Why would I have set out, in the Chamber, to conceal my knowledge of something illicit, if that account could be so readily contradicted by others? Why would we have had an official photographer if we believed we were breaking the law?
We didn’t believe that what we were doing was wrong, and after a year of work the Privileges Committee has found not a shred of evidence that we did.
Their argument can be boiled down to: ‘Look at this picture – that’s Boris Johnson with a glass in his hand. He must have known that the event was illegal. Therefore he lied.”
That is a load of complete tripe. That picture was me, in my place of work, trying to encourage and thank my officials in a way that I believed was crucial for the government and for the country as a whole, and in a way which I believed to be wholly within the rules.
For the Committee now to say that all such events – “thank-yous” and birthdays – were intrinsically illegal is ludicrous, contrary to the intentions of those who made the rules (including me), and contrary to the findings of the Met; and above all I did not for one moment think they were illicit – at the time or when I spoke in the Commons.
The Committee cannot possibly believe the conclusions of their own report – because it has now emerged that Sir Bernard Jenkin attended at least one “birthday event”, on Dec 8 2020 – the birthday of his wife Anne – when it is alleged that alcohol and food were served and the numbers exceeded six indoors.
Why was it illegal for me to thank staff and legal for Sir Bernard to attend his wife’s birthday party?
The hypocrisy is rank. Like Harriet Harman, he should have recused himself from the inquiry, since he is plainly conflicted.
The rest of the Committee’s report is mainly a rehash of their previous non-points. They have nothing new of substance to say. They concede that they have found no evidence that I was warned, before or after an event, that it was illegal. That is surely very telling. If we had genuinely believed these events to be unauthorised – with all the political sensitivities entailed – then there would be some trace in all the thousands of messages sent to me, and to which the committee has had access.
It is preposterous to say, as the Committee does, that people were just too scared to mention concerns to their superiors. Really? Was Simon Case too scared to draw his concerns to my attention? Was Sue Gray or Rishi Sunak?
The Committee concedes that the guidance permitted social distancing of less than 1 m where there was no alternative – though they refuse to take account of all the other mitigations – including regular testing – that we put in place.
They keep wilfully missing the point. The question is not whether perfect social distancing was maintained at all times in Number ten – clearly that wasn’t possible, as I have said very often. The question is whether I believed, given the limitations of the building, we were doing enough, with mitigations, to follow the guidance – and I did, and so did everyone else.
They grudgingly accept that I was right to tell the Commons that I was repeatedly assured that the rules were followed in respect of the Dec 18 event in the media room, but they try, absurdly and incoherently, to say that the assurances of Jack Doyle and James Slack were not enough to constitute “repeated” assurances – completely and deliberately ignoring the sworn testimony of two MPs, Andrew Griffiths and Sarah Dines, who have also said that they heard me being given such assurances.
Perhaps the craziest assertion of all is the Committee’s Mystic Meg claim that I saw the Dec 18 event with my own eyes. They say, without any evidence whatever, that at 21.58pm, on that date, my eyes for one crucial second glanced over to the media room as I went up to the flat – and that I saw what I recognised as an unauthorised event in progress.
First, the Committee has totally ignored the general testimony about that evening, which is that people were working throughout, even if some had been drinking at their desks. How on earth do these clairvoyants know exactly what was going on at 21.58?
How do they know what I saw? What retinal impressions have they somehow discovered, that are completely unavailable to me? I saw no goings on at all in the press room, or none that I can remember, certainly nothing illegal.
As the Committee has heard, officials were heavily engaged in preparing difficult messaging about the prospect of a No-deal Brexit and a Christmas lockdown.
It is a measure of the Committee’s desperation that they are trying incompetently and absurdly to tie me to an illicit event – with an argument so threadbare that it belongs in one of Bernard Jenkin’s nudist colonies.
Their argument is that I saw this event, believed it to be illegal, and had it in my head when I spoke to the House. On all three counts they are talking out of the backs of their necks. If I did see an illegal event, and register it as illegal, then why was I on my own in this? Why not the Cabinet Secretary, or Sue Gray, or the then Chancellor, who was patrolling the same corridors at the time?
The committee is imputing to me and me alone a secret knowledge of illegal events that was somehow not shared by any other official or minister in Number Ten. That is utterly incredible. That is the artifice.
This report is a charade. I was wrong to believe in the Committee or its good faith. The terrible truth is that it is not I who has twisted the truth to suit my purposes. It is Harriet Harman and her Committee.
This is a dreadful day for MPs and for democracy. This decision means that no MP is free from vendetta, or expulsion on trumped up charges by a tiny minority who want to see him or her gone from the Commons.
I do not have the slightest contempt for parliament, or for the important work that should be done by the Privileges Committee.
But for the Privileges Committee to use its prerogatives in this anti-democratic way, to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination – that is beneath contempt.
It is for the people of this country to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman.
They also warned me that most members had already expressed prejudicial views – especially Harriet Harman – in a way that would not be tolerated in a normal legal process. Some alarmists even pointed out that the majority of the Committee voted remain and they stressed that Bernard Jenkin’s personal antipathy to me was historic and well-known.
To be frank, when I first heard these warnings, I was incredulous. When it was first proposed that there should be such an inquiry by this committee, I thought it was just some time-wasting procedural stunt by the Labour party.
I didn’t think for one minute that a committee of MPs could find against me on the facts, and I didn’t see how any reasonable person could fail to understand what had happened.
I knew exactly what events I had attended in Number 10. I knew what I had seen, with my own eyes, and like the current PM, I believed that these events were lawful. I believed that my participation was lawful, and required by my job; and that is indeed the implication of the exhaustive police inquiry.
The only exception is the June 19 2020 event, the so-called birthday party, when I and the then Chancellor Rishi Sunak were fined in circumstances that I still find puzzling (I had lunch at my desk with people I worked with every day).
So when on Dec 1 2021 I told the House of Commons that “the guidance was followed completely” (in Number Ten) I meant it. It wasn’t just what I thought: it’s what we all thought – that we were following the rules and following the guidance completely – notwithstanding the difficulties of maintaining social distancing at all times.
The committee now says that I deliberately misled the House, and at the moment I spoke I was consciously concealing from the House my knowledge of illicit events.
This is rubbish. It is a lie. In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the Committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts.
First, they say that I must have known that the farewell events I attended were not authorised workplace events because – wait for it – NO SUCH EVENT could lawfully have taken place, anywhere in this country, under the Committee’s interpretation of covid rules. This is transparently wrong. I believed, correctly, that these events were reasonably necessary for work purposes. We were managing a pandemic. We had hundreds of staff engaged in what was sometimes a round-the-clock struggle against covid. Their morale mattered for that fight. It was important for me to thank them.
But don’t just listen to me. Take it from the Metropolitan Police. The police investigated my role at all of those events. In no case did they find that what I had done was unlawful. Above all it did not cross my mind – as I spoke in the House of Commons – that the events were unlawful.
I believed that we were working, and we were: talking for the main about nothing except work, mainly covid. Why would I have set out, in the Chamber, to conceal my knowledge of something illicit, if that account could be so readily contradicted by others? Why would we have had an official photographer if we believed we were breaking the law?
We didn’t believe that what we were doing was wrong, and after a year of work the Privileges Committee has found not a shred of evidence that we did.
Their argument can be boiled down to: ‘Look at this picture – that’s Boris Johnson with a glass in his hand. He must have known that the event was illegal. Therefore he lied.”
That is a load of complete tripe. That picture was me, in my place of work, trying to encourage and thank my officials in a way that I believed was crucial for the government and for the country as a whole, and in a way which I believed to be wholly within the rules.
For the Committee now to say that all such events – “thank-yous” and birthdays – were intrinsically illegal is ludicrous, contrary to the intentions of those who made the rules (including me), and contrary to the findings of the Met; and above all I did not for one moment think they were illicit – at the time or when I spoke in the Commons.
The Committee cannot possibly believe the conclusions of their own report – because it has now emerged that Sir Bernard Jenkin attended at least one “birthday event”, on Dec 8 2020 – the birthday of his wife Anne – when it is alleged that alcohol and food were served and the numbers exceeded six indoors.
Why was it illegal for me to thank staff and legal for Sir Bernard to attend his wife’s birthday party?
The hypocrisy is rank. Like Harriet Harman, he should have recused himself from the inquiry, since he is plainly conflicted.
The rest of the Committee’s report is mainly a rehash of their previous non-points. They have nothing new of substance to say. They concede that they have found no evidence that I was warned, before or after an event, that it was illegal. That is surely very telling. If we had genuinely believed these events to be unauthorised – with all the political sensitivities entailed – then there would be some trace in all the thousands of messages sent to me, and to which the committee has had access.
It is preposterous to say, as the Committee does, that people were just too scared to mention concerns to their superiors. Really? Was Simon Case too scared to draw his concerns to my attention? Was Sue Gray or Rishi Sunak?
The Committee concedes that the guidance permitted social distancing of less than 1 m where there was no alternative – though they refuse to take account of all the other mitigations – including regular testing – that we put in place.
They keep wilfully missing the point. The question is not whether perfect social distancing was maintained at all times in Number ten – clearly that wasn’t possible, as I have said very often. The question is whether I believed, given the limitations of the building, we were doing enough, with mitigations, to follow the guidance – and I did, and so did everyone else.
They grudgingly accept that I was right to tell the Commons that I was repeatedly assured that the rules were followed in respect of the Dec 18 event in the media room, but they try, absurdly and incoherently, to say that the assurances of Jack Doyle and James Slack were not enough to constitute “repeated” assurances – completely and deliberately ignoring the sworn testimony of two MPs, Andrew Griffiths and Sarah Dines, who have also said that they heard me being given such assurances.
Perhaps the craziest assertion of all is the Committee’s Mystic Meg claim that I saw the Dec 18 event with my own eyes. They say, without any evidence whatever, that at 21.58pm, on that date, my eyes for one crucial second glanced over to the media room as I went up to the flat – and that I saw what I recognised as an unauthorised event in progress.
First, the Committee has totally ignored the general testimony about that evening, which is that people were working throughout, even if some had been drinking at their desks. How on earth do these clairvoyants know exactly what was going on at 21.58?
How do they know what I saw? What retinal impressions have they somehow discovered, that are completely unavailable to me? I saw no goings on at all in the press room, or none that I can remember, certainly nothing illegal.
As the Committee has heard, officials were heavily engaged in preparing difficult messaging about the prospect of a No-deal Brexit and a Christmas lockdown.
It is a measure of the Committee’s desperation that they are trying incompetently and absurdly to tie me to an illicit event – with an argument so threadbare that it belongs in one of Bernard Jenkin’s nudist colonies.
Their argument is that I saw this event, believed it to be illegal, and had it in my head when I spoke to the House. On all three counts they are talking out of the backs of their necks. If I did see an illegal event, and register it as illegal, then why was I on my own in this? Why not the Cabinet Secretary, or Sue Gray, or the then Chancellor, who was patrolling the same corridors at the time?
The committee is imputing to me and me alone a secret knowledge of illegal events that was somehow not shared by any other official or minister in Number Ten. That is utterly incredible. That is the artifice.
This report is a charade. I was wrong to believe in the Committee or its good faith. The terrible truth is that it is not I who has twisted the truth to suit my purposes. It is Harriet Harman and her Committee.
This is a dreadful day for MPs and for democracy. This decision means that no MP is free from vendetta, or expulsion on trumped up charges by a tiny minority who want to see him or her gone from the Commons.
I do not have the slightest contempt for parliament, or for the important work that should be done by the Privileges Committee.
But for the Privileges Committee to use its prerogatives in this anti-democratic way, to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination – that is beneath contempt.
It is for the people of this country to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman.
To appropriate the words of John Sweeney ,
Boris Johnson; do f##k off.
Boris Johnson; do f##k off.
1. Reported your first line, hopefully the mods will delete it as they did your previous insult.
2. Do I think he's truthful?, I think Rishi is toast and the kangaroo court led by Commissar Harman is coming in for some serious scrutiny, beyond that who knows, we live in interesting times.
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