Have we just witnessed one of the most undemocratic and illegitimate political stitch-ups of all time?
Here’s a bit of context for you: The privileges committee wanted to suspend Boris Johnson for 90 days. The only person suspended for longer is disgraced former Labour MP Keith Vaz, after he was caught in a sting operation expressing willingness to buy cocaine for male prostitutes.
Let that sink in. There is a massive discrepancy there isn’t there?
They found him guilty of deliberately misleading the House and deliberately misleading the Committee.
Boris Johnson said the investigation against him was 'cynical stitch up' PATalking of actual guilt, it is also worth noting that the only time Boris was fined by the Met police was alongside the current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, when he says he ate some birthday cake at his work desk.
Talking of misleading the committee, there were some rather shocking allegations levelled against Sir Bernard Jenkin earlier this week, a member of said committee, that suggest he attended a lockdown breaking booze and cake fuelled birthday bash for his wife.
My points here are thus: If the Met Police were satisfied that Boris didn’t break the rules for the most part, and perhaps members of the committee judging Boris did break the rules, then isn’t the whole thing cast into serious doubt?
Boris alludes to the committee taking a Mystic Meg approach to their conclusions. He says he didn’t see any rule-breaking from the media room one evening as he made his way up the stairs to bed whilst people in that media room were preparing the communications, late at night, over a potential No Deal Brexit and a Christmas lockdown.
Now, either they genuinely didn’t believe him, or they had already decided Boris was a liar.
Enter Harriet Harman, who had reposted a blog by former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell that said Boris and then Chancellor Rishi Sunak "broke their own emergency laws. They lied. Repeatedly. They trashed the ministerial code". Right. So maybe, just maybe, the committee’s Chairman had already made her mind up.
But then there’s the more sinister elements to the committee’s findings: They’ve done him for questioning the validity of the Committee.
Sorry, this isn’t North Korea and, considering what I’ve just said about some of the people on the committee, I don’t think there’s much wrong about raising serious questions.
Then they say Boris was complicit in a campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the Committee. Excuse me? Boris Johnson has suffered more abuse than any of them - he’s been hounded non-stop and completely trashed. He’s even had to face claims that he wasn’t really in intensive care with Covid, just horrific, nasty stuff. A bit like Dominic Raab, who was ousted after a campaign of untrue media leaks by anonymous civil servants.
These ridiculous pearl-clutchers - "oh you dared to question our motives and then you made us feel all horrible inside" - Jog on.
Look, every single person involved in this process is a loser. Boris, the committee, the public, the taxpayer.
But you know what I really hope comes out of this, one little victory for us all - it’s that the next time there is a question mark about completely restricting the public’s civil liberties, making it illegal to behave like normal human beings, those people in positions of power won’t do it because they’ll take one look at what’s happened to Boris and what may happen to Bernard Jenkin and they’ll think: I don’t want any part of this. It will come back to bite me.
