You would have thought that ministers would now have learned not to open their mouths to the media without the presence of their lawyers. Come to think of it, they may also want to have their lawyers around when the prime minister informs them of what they are expected to say. After all, lying is second nature to Boris Johnson: don’t think about misinforming friends, family, and colleagues, as well as the rest of us. All he asks of his cabinet to all the untalented is total naivete and willingness to be humiliated over and over again.
Sunday had been Therese Coffey’s turn. It had crashed and burned as it tried to remember what it was supposed to have forgotten about the latest version of issue 10 of what The Convict had known about Chris Pincher’s previous one. On Monday, it had been Children’s Minister Will Quince who was trying to forget what nonsense he was supposed to remember. He seemed so traumatized by the experience that he asked to be admitted to a psychiatric ward.
Arriving on Tuesday, it was Dominic Raab’s turn to be the fall boy. If you find the secretary of justice for the next few days, it would be good to give him a broad view. At the end of his last interview, his anger management problems were out of control. The corpse count could increase in double figures. Not only did he make him look stupid, in general, Dom can be trusted to do it all on his own, but he was totally gutted. Any fleeting relationship to the truth in what he was saying was totally accidental.
In just one hour, Raab had had to go from an aggressive denial of any crime by Johnson – “he had known nothing and no one to say otherwise was a liar” – to the sullen admission that he knew nothing. . i don’t know at all what was going on. But he was still sure that Pincher was basically a nice guy and couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
After a metaphysical controversy with ITV’s Susanna Reid about the meaning of guilt (Dom was adamant that just because you were convicted of doing something wrong didn’t make you guilty; you were just a little naughty or unlucky) Raab came to his nadir with the Today program. Here, he tried to claim that Lord McDonald had in fact been wrong in his letter, published minutes earlier, which made it clear that The Rwanda Panda had been informed in person about the allegations, which had been confirmed, against Pincher in 2019 while he was a junior minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Where by the way, Dom, as then Secretary of Foreign Affairs, had been his boss.
By then, realizing that no one believed a word he had said, Raab had just murmured for the rest of the interview, doing his best not to incriminate himself any more. Too little and too late. His credibility was totally skyrocketed. He had no answer as to why he had not made an effort to ask the prime minister for assurances about what he had known or not. Despite supposedly talking to him. It wasn’t the time to point out that no one could trust Johnson to tell the truth, so why bother?
Nor could Dom offer any other clever sign of life. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t force his synapses to connect. He didn’t know what he himself didn’t know. And he had no explanation for why he had ever considered questioning Pincher’s appointment as deputy tap manager, even though he had surely known the proven allegations against him. He just hadn’t felt so great, he seemed to hint. Also, every groper deserved a seventh chance.
In any case, if it was okay for The Convict to know nothing, it should still be better for him to know less. And there were so many different incidents that Pincher had been involved in that it was asking too much for one person to track them all down. Um … that would work, he wondered? I wouldn’t. Having a secretary of justice who you can’t trust to find out the truth is pretty much the look of the UK.
This was only the beginning of the shame and existential despair of the Conservatives. Later that morning, Labor’s Angela Rayner received another urgent question about the standards of public life. It is becoming a habit. They seem to come every week or so. It has also become a ritual that the government’s fourth-rate lawyer, Mike Ellis, is sent to answer on behalf of The Convict. Shameless Mikey usually takes it for granted, but he also seems to have had enough. Surprisingly, it turns out that even he has a ridiculous threshold.
There was widespread laughter from all opposition benches, as Ellis gave the most idiotic explanation to date of Johnson’s appointment procedure. It was like that. Johnson had been aware of some allegations against Pincher in 2019, he refused to mention the ones Johnson herself might have raised Carrie “With friends like these, etc.” but unfortunately she had forgotten about everything. It was like a Little Britain thing. A sudden outbreak of unlikely amnesia. For something of little importance.
Ellis had started the session all alone in the front seat. By then a handful of government whips had taken pity on him and came to keep him company. They looked grumpy, impassive and insensitive. One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes, four. It turned out to be an exhausting hour. It was not just Labor and the SNP who pulled out the knives. The Tories did the same. Even the usually hyperloyal Caroline Johnson. You have the feeling that most Conservative MPs have decided that is enough. I just needed a cabinet minister with a spark of imagination to start the stampede towards the exits.
Only the always half-ingenious Peter Bone offered any support to the government. Surely leaving the EU meant that we were no longer bound by the awakening agenda. The way to avoid the recession was to keep groping. Say it Brexit opportunities. Even Ellis raised an eyebrow at it. He just kept talking about natural justice. As if Pincher had somehow been denied a fair hearing. The oily Ellis escaped, knowing he would be back soon.
Or maybe not. Although The Convict made the obligatory phone call to President Zelenskiy, along with some parliamentary excitement in the tea rooms and a weak no apology on television, the shit hit the fan shortly after 6 p.m. late when Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak resigned. rapid succession.
Eventually, two cabinet members had decided they had a reputation worth saving. He remembered that they had some integrity. Unlike the others, they were not prepared to sit submissively and be caught lower and lower by Johnson. They would surely be followed by other minor ministers in the coming days. Maybe that’s not the end yet. But it was certainly approaching.