Those who missed them will find parts 1 and 2 about this bombshell week in British politics of interest.

Wednesday’s news: Dorries delays resignation

Apparently, Nadine Dorries did not resign with immediate effect at all. More on that below.

The by-election in Boris’s former constituency

Although it seems an age already, it is too early for the candidates for the by-election in Boris’s constituency, Uxbridge and South Ruislip, to be formally announced.

Guido Fawkes thinks the Conservatives can win this west London area provided they stand up against Mayor Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ (Ultra-low Emission Zone) plan to extend it to more of outer London. However, I fail to see how this could win them the other seat, Nigel Adams’s, which is nowhere near the capital:

The smaller parties are readying themselves to hand Labour or the Lib Dems victory by chipping away at Conservative votes.

Reform is what used to be the Brexit Party, when it spun off from UKIP, which still exists. Richard Tice leads Reform, and Nigel Farage is its president.

Reclaim is a tiny party, led by actor and musician Laurence Fox.

Guido tells us that the two parties are working together:

To answer Guido’s question, small parties rarely merge. Each leader wants to be in control.

On Monday, Laurence Fox seemed to be planning to stand as the Reclaim candidate in Uxbridge and South Ruislip:

Guido had the story (red emphases his):

Reform UK’s leader Richard Tice has agreed his party will not stand their own candidate in a bid to maximise Fox’s chances. Chances which, it’s fair to say, are pretty slim…

I could not agree more. This will guarantee that Conservatives lose.

Guido continues:

In a statement today, Fox said:

The main political parties are not fit for purpose. We have uncontrolled immigration putting pressure on an already over stretched NHS, which is one of the poorest performing health services in the developed world. Labour and Conservative are offering the same policies and are largely indistinguishable … Britain deserves better. Reclaim seeks to represent the best interests of British people, Reclaim is motivated by common sense. Reclaim is interested in a prosperous future for our children.

If elected, Fox would become the second MP to sit for the Reclaim Party, after Andrew Bridgen’s defection last month. Although realistically all this will do is siphon protest votes off the Tory candidate. Labour must be happy…

Indeed they are.

TalkTV

As for TalkTV, which completely missed breaking the news that Boris had stood down on Friday evening, including Nadine Dorries’ show, Guido reminds us:

The channel finally caught up on Monday evening, after the world and his dog knew the story chapter and verse:

Rishi lashes out

On Monday, June 12, Rishi lashed out at Boris about his honours list:

He appeared at London Tech Week to talk about the list and HOLAC (House of Lords Appointments Committee). Purple emphases mine:

Boris Johnson asked me to do something that I wasn’t prepared to do, because I didn’t think it was right. That was either overrule the HOLAC committee, or make promises to people… now I wasn’t prepared to do that, as I said, I didn’t think it was right. And if people don’t like that, then tough…

Wednesday’s scoop: Bernard Jenkin, Boris accuser, broke rules

On the afternoon of Wednesday, June 14, Guido published an exclusive scoop.

He and his team tweeted:

Minutes later, the scoop followed. Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin, a member of the Privileges Committee that found Boris guilty of breaking lockdown rules with No. 10 get-togethers, had himself broken lockdown rules, albeit on the parliamentary estate. Next to Jenkin are his wife Anne, Baroness Jenkin (centre), and Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, Dame Eleanor Laing:

I was shocked to find that Dame Eleanor was involved, as she is one of my favourite MPs. I’ll have to give her a rethink:

Guido had received a tip-off about her gathering, so he phoned her and Jenkin.

He tells us:

Guido has just got off the phone with Bernard Jenkin. Our conversation was short. We got to the point of the call pretty quickly:

Guido: Cast your mind back to December 8^th, 2020 during lockdown, do you remember attending a drinks party in parliament held by Eleanor Laing?

Bernard: I did not attend any drinks parties during lockdown.

Guido: It was your wife’s birthday celebration, are you saying you did not have anything to drink?

Bernard: I don’t recall.

Our chat came to a curt end. Fortunately prior to speaking to Sir Bernard, Guido had a longer conversation with Dame Eleanor Laing, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. She conceded that she held a “business meeting” on that evening, where “I was so strict with my 2 metre ruler and told everyone we will adhere to those rules and be very careful” …

The Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons dictated the following statement to Guido:

At the beginning of the pandemic I took advice on how many could be present in a room, I had the room measured and I kept a 2 metre ruler so that I could always verify that nobody who was working here was put at risk.

Guido asked her again:

Guido: Were any drinks served?

Eleanor: I don’t know. I will have to check.

No need Eleanor, Guido has already checked. Eleanor hosted a drinks party to celebrate her friend Anne Jenkin’s 65^th birthday on that day. There was a cake for Baroness Jenkin and people were invited by WhatsApp for “drinks”. There was a spread of food, other MPs attended including some of the 2019 intake and others. It was not an impromptu affair – the nibbles had been bought in.

One source says that Dame Eleanor did mention the need for social distancing – to some amusement – windows and doors were open, although initial attempts to social distance “went out the window”. The crowd included those typically involved with Anne Jenkin and the Women2Win campaign, such as Maria Miller. A co-conspirator says there was “loads of drink” and that they specifically remember Bernard Jenkin with drink in hand at a jolly affair.

On that day December 8^th 2020, London was in Tier 2 lockdown. Gatherings of more than 6 indoors either in a public or private building were against the regulations. No Christmas exception applied and breaches of the regulations were offences which could be prosecuted or dealt with by fixed penalty notices with penalties ranging up to £10,000. The guidance was clear:

Although there are exemptions for work purposes, you must not have a work Christmas lunch or party, where that is a primarily social activity and is not otherwise permitted by the rules in your tier.

This was a birthday party, in breach of the legal regulations, and to top it off there was even birthday cake.

UPDATE: Boris Calls on Bernard Jenkin to Resign Over His Own Drinks Party

The reason Guido mentions cake is because that was the object of outrage at the socially-distanced get-together on Boris’s own birthday.

A furious Boris

Boris must have been furious at finding out about the sanctimonious Bernard Jenkin who lambasted the then-PM in the Commons over the Partygate affair. To listen to Jenkin, you would think he was pure as the driven snow.

Boris must read Guido …

… because he got on the case within 20 minutes of the breaking scoop:

Guido reported that Boris sent him the following statement, using similar language to that which Jenkin used against him:

If this is true it is outrageous and a total contempt of parliament.

Bernard Jenkin has just voted to expel me from parliament for allegedly trying to conceal from parliament my knowledge of illicit events.

In reality of course I did no such thing.

Now it turns out he may have for the whole time known that he himself attended an event – and concealed this from the privileges committee and the whole House for the last year.

To borrow the language of the committee, if this is the case, he “must have known” he was in breach of the rules

Why didn’t he say so?

He has no choice but to explain his actions to his own committee, for his colleagues to investigate and then to resign.

Dorries steps in

A short while later, Guido posted an item showing that Nadine Dorries, a loyal Boris supporter, wrote to the Clerk of the Privileges Committee, Dr Robin James, about Bernard Jenkin:

Afterwards, Guido posted a video of a supercilious Jenkin grilling Boris at the Privileges Committee hearing several weeks ago:

Yes, the Metropolitan Police have been notified:

Let us hope they are on the case.

Let us also remind ourselves of those in the public eye who have been fined thus far. Only Boris, his wife Carrie and Rishi. Note that Labour’s Keir Starmer and his other MPs got nothing for their curry and beer party in Durham in April 2021. Scotland did nothing about the hypocritical Nicola Sturgeon, then First Minister. Furthermore, Wales did nothing about Prif Weinidog (First Minister) Mark Drakeford. Nor did left-leaning Sky News presenters receive anything in London in December 2020. Only Conservatives get fined, it would seem:

Around 7:30 p.m., Guido had an update on Boris, who had just written to the chair of the Privileges Committee, Labour’s Harriet Harman:

Guido posted Boris’s letter to Harman in full:

Meanwhile, Guido — Paul Staines — was preparing to appear on GB News to discuss the developing story with Conservative MP Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg:

A short time later, Guido confirmed that Harriet Harman had received the news about Bernard Jenkin. One Twitter user rightly wondered if the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle (Labour), knew:

Meanwhile, Jenkin was allegedly prowling around a corridor on the parliamentary estate, looking ‘worried’:

While Jenkin stayed out of the reach of the media, Paul Staines — Guido — explained to Jacob Rees-Mogg how he came about the story:

TalkTV, GB News’s main competitor, also carried the story, saying that Jenkin was not responding to media requests for comment:

Jenkin was still silent on Thursday morning, June 15:

Privileges Committee report finally appears

Interestingly, on Thursday, after days of delays — e.g. couldn’t find a printing company (really?) — the Privileges Committee was finally ready to publish its damning report on Boris:

Guido reported:

Guido hears other MPs have since written to the Privileges Committee over Jenkin’s conduct following Nadine Dorries’ letter last night. At least one MP has also reportedly written to Parliamentary sleaze watchdog Daniel Greenberg, which could lead to an investigation if accepted. Boris himself has written directly to Kangaroo Court chair Harriet Harman, demanding to know if any other Committee inquisitors have broken the rules…

Speaking of the Kangaroo Court, its 33,000 word report is expected at around 9 a.m., with Boris’s response published soon after. The report, which is longer than Of Mice and Men, will find Boris committed “multiple” contempts of Parliament, and would have recommended a Commons suspension of longer than 10 days. Guido looks forward to reading Bernard’s analysis.

The report is expected to detail multiple instances of ‘contempt’ from Boris towards the House of Commons:

Poor man.

On Saturday, Boris allegedly fired a shot across Rishi’s bow re schooldays:

Rishi won this round though by finalising Boris’s resignation on Monday. He put him in the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, or the Chiltern Hundreds, an old constitutional mechanism by which a resigning MP gets a special designation. In Boris’s case, it is Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern:

As MPs are not technically allowed to resign, even though we use that word, they are given a temporary ‘office of profit under the Crown’, which requires MPs to vacate their seats. This constitutional device was first used in 1751. There are two applicable titles, that of the Chiltern Hundreds and the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.

On Monday, Nigel Adams was appointed Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.

Dorries still an MP

On Thursday, news emerged that Nadine Dorries was delaying her resignation in order to find out why she was omitted from Boris’s honours list:

She said, ‘This process is now sadly necessary’:

Personally, I do not think that seeking and fighting for a peerage is a good look. Few former MPs are elevated to the Lords.

She’s making far too much of this. Being an MP is supposed to be about service to others rather than serving one’s own interests.

On Tuesday, Dorries blamed Rishi and his close friend James Forsyth, ex-Spectator political editor and the Prime Minister’s best man, of suppressing her nomination to the Lords:

She even wrote a column in the Mail about how hard done by she was. The paper must have liked it, as they put a banner for it on their front page.

Guido wrote:

Speaking last night on Piers Morgan Unwatched Uncensored, alongside a column in the Mail, she accused “privileged posh boys” Rishi and James Forsyth, his political secretary, of “cruelly” denying her peerage. Nadine went further:

This story is about a girl from Breck Road in Liverpool, who worked everyday of her life since she was 14 years-old, had something offered to her that people from that background don’t get offered, removed by two privileged posh boys who went to Winchester and Oxford. Taken away duplicitously and cruelly because they have known for months that it wasn’t the case. And yet, they let me and they let Boris Johnson continue to believe that was the case.

Unsurprisingly, she pledged to “keep on fighting”…

My prediction is that the longer she stays in the Commons, the colder the shoulder she will get from her colleagues.

As I write at 11:09 a.m., Thangam Debbonaire, the Shadow Leader of the House, is voicing a similar sentiment in Business Questions about Dorries outstaying her welcome and asking if she is resigning or not.

Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the House, announced that there will be a motion asking the Commons to approve the Privileges Committee report on Monday afternoon, June 19, in the Commons. She acknowledged but did not reply to Thangam Debbonaire’s remarks about Dorries.

Thursday’s update

The Privileges Committee report appeared at 9 a.m.:

Boris responded immediately:

It is for the people of this country to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman.

Guido points out:

Among other things, the report recommends that Boris be denied a former Member’s pass, something that rarely occurs. It seems nasty, especially in light of allegations about Bernard Jenkin:

Not surprisingly, Boris is deeply unhappy with the report. Guido has his response in full:

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 December 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 December 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 December 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 Griffith 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 December 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.

One cannot say fairer than that.

It should be pointed out that Harriet Harman will not be standing again at the next general election. What an egregious legacy she has left Parliament and the British electorate. Then again, she’s a Labour MP. What more could one expect?

End of series