Downing St Christmas Party - what's behind this?

[Leafyhouse]

Presumably someone knew about this for a year. And they've waited until just before Christmas to release it - and not all at once. They drip-fed allegations, waited for ministerial denials, then a few days later released damning video footage. I have 2 theories:

1. The media are looking for a scalp. Boris preferably, or perhaps Keir if he doesn't take the fight to the PM satisfactorily.

1. Rishi Sunak supporters. There's a perception that Boris needs to go, and the 1922 committee will show their hand soon.

1. Anti lockdown supporters. It looks like we may have to lockdown further before Christmas, and they're hell bent on undermining the PM's ability to do it.

What worries me is that no-one in the media is asking these questions. Which makes me think they're complicit.

AIBU to think we're being played like fools here?

My first thought also was, who took the video and has been waiting to drop a bombshell?

Puts me in mind of House of Cards - the original novel and series. But FU’s plotting and scheming was cleverer, diabolically so.
(I now want to read that book again….)

@HesterShaw1

Prime Minister Gove.

I can't express the amount of horror this thought causes.

Hunt slightly less so.

Gove - perish the thought! 😱

This government seem incapable of saying ‘ok, hands up, we fucked up’ with regards to anything. Late reaction to Covid, PMs taking bungs, parties…and so on.

They also seem incapable of having a moral compass or following ethical rules they expect mere mortals to. I always knew this embodied the Tory ethos, but to see it so brazen.

And meanwhile the working classes who they’re robbing are still tumbling their forelock and allowing them to piss on them, and thanking them for it.

I think Gove is too toxic.

The Government faction will be fronted by Truss.

I'd be questioning also what the media have reported that they might be trying to bury.

We all know that when a scandal or a law they are trying to sneak through comes up they try to bury it with other "more controversial" stories!

@DraigFach

I'm wondering what the government are trying to bury beneath the party story, the timing is just ridiculous...unless it is a Tory coup to try and oust Johnson in favour of the next puppet PM who may actually publicly behave themselves.

Ah you beat me to it

The party is almost the side show to the main event, namely Boris’ almost pathological inability to tell the truth.
^
This

Does anyone have a link to the video? I can't seem to find it.

@Skiptheheartsandflowers

He will stay on, its too close to a GE to swap out leaders and once this all dies down, he will reassert his authority.

Thatcher won her last election in June 1987 and was deposed as leader in November 1990, less than three years before the next election. We're currently three years and a few days away from the next election. It's not too close at all.

As spring GE's are the norm, we are probably 2.5 years away from the next GE, May 2024. Johnsons successor is 6 months away as a minimum, i think two years is not long enough, it was risky then , Major turned a 102 seat majority into just 21.

@Speakeasy22

Seriously I’m not a conspiracy theorist (don’t they all say that…) but I don’t think I’ve ever listened to or read such biased news coverage of a story. Either the press are colluding to get Johnson out, or it is just such a tasty story they are going mad for it. And being very lazy. Not much attempt for any objective journalism. Absolutely no attempt to actually establish any facts. At the moment surely there is no definitive knowledge of what happened, the scale of it and who knew what. And the press don’t seem to care. Endless interviews with the public with utterly loaded questions. Strikes me as quite unusual.

It's just tasty and controversial enough that it will have us talking about solely that and not about other, potentially more serious, scandals that are coming out.

They are trying to bury something else and we are all lapping it up by talking about this, and not the thing they are trying to bury.

It is quite tasty to be fair. It's got everything.

@MarshaBradyo

Oh just heard AS statement

She sounded so upset

I did feel for her. I know I probably shouldn’t but that trying not to cry got me

Crocodile tears. She's crying because she's been caught. If she actually cared she could have spoken up anytime during the last year, but didn't.

Yep.

It's not a distraction. It's a leak calibrated to damage Johnson.

It has everything - including the Queen sitting alone at the funeral of her consort; a stark contrast of attitudes about what it means to be a figurehead, a Leader of the U.K., and how seriously you take the duty and the privilege of a position of prominence.

This leak is mainly aimed at Johnson. But it's surrounded by roiling incompetence and cronyism: the absolute fuck up over Afghanistan, the shitshow that is the policing bill, the mess made of catch-up contracts in schools.

No. This isn't some kind of 'dead cat' to get us looking elsewhere. It's poisonous for Brand Johnson.

"We deserve better. And, believe me, there are many, many MPs who are better."

Agree with your post @thecatfromjapan

AS is a handy scapegoat. I want to know who organised the party.

If you think back to the day before there was a big sudden 'war on drugs'
That made me wonder about a Tory who might want to be PM but is rumoured to snort coke, who then might have taken revenge by leaking the video. (All pure speculation)

I have to say, the contrast with the Queen is pretty bloody stark.

It just brings home how much lower our expectations are of Johnson and his crew.

I mean, I suspect Teresa May would have assumed it was her duty to hold the line (following her own legislation) and to ensure her staff did, too.

We've come a long way, very fast, with Johnson.

Maybe I'm getting old and old-fashioned but I don't like it.

For anyone feeling sorry for AS search for the video of her interviewing a young women about housing benefit.

The leaked video shows her frame of mind at the time, cocky and thinking she's untouchable. Crocodile tears.

Thecatfromjapan I don't like it either. I don't want to lose respect for those who govern us. I remember when Johnson was hospitalised with covid and my DH and I being really shocked that our PM was so ill and could possibly die. It was a shocking and sobering moment. I've come from respecting the office (if not the man) to no respect at all in a very short time. And I don't like it.

Stratton only cried because she’d been caught out and/or was effectively made to resign. Tears for herself only.

Another one saying this has Dominic Cummings name on it.
He bore a grudge against Matt Hancock and he doesn’t like Carrie Johnson who he accused of calling the shots on some hiring and firing decisions in No10 (and possibly even had a hand in ousting him). Allegra is a friend of Carrie Johnson’s so I’m thinking it’s another ‘getting even’.

He wants to ultimately oust Boris so Gove can slide into place and he will have his job back at No.10.

Lots of openly hostile questions to Johnson about the non-party and about his leadership at this press conference. It's open season now.

They can't win another election after this, surely. People won't vote for this, will they?

I’m sat in the car waiting for DD to finish her activity so I have no idea what’s going on in the press conference but ‘open season’ doesn’t surprise me.

@thecatfromjapan

By the way, I know no-one has done it on this thread but ... can I just make a heart-felt plea against cynicism?

I hear so often, 'Oh, all MPs are the same. They're all sociopaths, liars, etc. ...' but, honestly, they're not.

They're (mostly) humans. And a whole load of them go into politics, quite genuinely, to make a difference to people's lives.

I disagree, politically, with a whole load of decisions some make but I think it is really important not to become overly cynical.

I do think Johnson is a scrote. I really do. But there is a world of difference between him and, say, Tobias Elwood. The latter, I think, is a good example of why letting your ability to judge and discriminate dissolve into an overwhelming cynicism is not healthy or helpful.

Tobias Elwood's politics are not mine and never will be.

But he's a good example of why we should never cease to judge Johnson for the moral failure he is on the grounds that there is nothing better and no point in demanding better.

We deserve better. And, believe me, there are many, many MPs who are better.

I agree with this, @thecatfromjapan

Yes, there are bad eggs, but the thing is, we see politicians held up to impossibly high standards by media types who have no intention whatsoever of being held up to these standards themselves. This creates an unnecessarily toxic impression of MP's that leads to people being stabbed.

I think the media should be held to account for their actions as well - but by who?

@Figgit

Stratton only cried because she’d been caught out and/or was effectively made to resign. Tears for herself only.

Just watching her snivelling her way through that statement