Thread 24, Sunak and the local elections aftermath

[DuncinToffee]

Previous thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4793978-thread-23-sunak-unicorn-kingdom?page=1

The phone is probably at the bottom of the Thames!

Has anyone asked Rebecca Vardy’s agent if she’s seen the phone?

FFS. How the hell can it be lost and there be no consequences for that? And someone in the cabinet office must have seen it to decide that all the stuff that wasn’t related to the inquiry wasn’t related to the inquiry.

Also, if we can lock up people we think might be going to commit a crime, surely we can just lock up some people we are fairly certain have committed a crime and are lying about it. Even if we can’t prove it yet.

Oooohhhhhh

I'd never thought of that!!!! Excellent line of questioning!!!!

Of course all the excuses as well as planning parties will be on there.

If I think of my own WhatsApp, there's basically a complete record of my life on there and I'm sure Johnson's is pretty similar. I bet there's absolutely loads of incriminating/careless stuff on there. No wonder the phone has gone missing. But where is it, and who 'lost' it...

This could be a good one!

FFS. How the hell can it be lost and there be no consequences for that? And someone in the cabinet office must have seen it to decide that all the stuff that wasn’t related to the inquiry wasn’t related to the inquiry.

Yes, that's a good point.

Unless the phone has gone missing within the last couple of days, it can't be true that it's lost with no way of getting copies of the messages and that the Cabinet Office have checked whether the messages are relevant. It's one or the other. Not both.

I've been watching too much true crime drama, but I thought messages could still be recovered or maybe, since WA put out that encryption message, they can't.

Wish they could

Well exactly. If somebody has seen the messages and decided they're irrelevant, it means that the phone has been in the Cabinet Office's possession fairly recently. It's difficult to explain how somebody at the Cabinet Office has seen the messages but never had the phone.

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

Surely wa have a record of these on a server somewhere? Can't they just get the records straight from them?

I suppose the other people in the conversations will also have been able to see them without having to have physical possession of Johnson's phone. If it was a group chat between eg Johnson, Sunak and random cabinet office person, random cabinet office person would have just the same record as the other two.

But in that case, they should also be able to supply it to the enquiry.

Yes I thought maybe they're talking about the 'other side' of the messages. I'm sure we'll see soon enough.

Didn't Johnson misplace his phone with the whatsapp exchange with Brownlow during wallpapergate?

He got a new phone.

Yes.

Good memory. There's been so many scandals, cover ups that I cant marshal them all in my head

Be interesting to see if there end up being court orders to this effect.

They do save some messages but it would be interesting to discover how much they have access to and whether security protocols are followed (I bet they aren't) -

Earlier this year, a witness statement was given to the High Court by Sarah Harrison, the chief operating officer for the Cabinet Office, in relation to a court case brought by public interest group The Citizens – challenging the Government on its saving of WhatsApp messages. In it, Harrison claimed that “various WhatsApp groups had been set up [by those in Downing Street]. These were largely used for general discussion or informal conversation”.
“Anything relevant to public record would be saved either through the Prime Minister’s Private Office support team (who provide 24 hour administrative assistance),” said Harrison, or “by actions being formally commissioned by officials through Government channels and/or the box process, in accordance with the Number 10 WhatsApp policy.”

https://bylinetimes.com/2022/04/27/government-stalling-on-releasing-boris-johnson-whatsapp-messages/

I thought after one of the scandals and something to do with WA, whatsapp was banned or something?

As said... there's been so much of this sort of thing, it all muddles up

https://twitter.com/implausibleblog/status/1663529423839141891?t=GTs-sVtrNN9tpM4LLo1VqQ&s=19

This really does sum it up for me. I don't think the government have got a leg to stand on

Good point.

It is an utter bafflement to me that government seems to be run by a serious of whatsapp messages on peoples private phones. I work for a business where if I am working then it must be done on the work device using work email or TEAMS, so that there is a record. I wonder what the reason is that so much seems to be done on personal devices on whatsapp?

Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.

The cabinet office have spoken.

We don’t have the messages and the messages are irrelevant seems like difficult arguments to make simultaneously.

Do they have them or not?

Feels like this is going to be an important lesson for government employees in keeping work and social separate.

You’d think the Cabinet Office would understand the correct use of the apostrophe, wouldn’t you? And why do these WA messages relate to employees’ private lives? I thought the Inquiry was into ministers’ behaviour.

That’s quite an apostrophe error. Employee’s would be more typical I’d have thought.

What did they expect when they use personal phones for government business