Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[HVC]

It's just stupid then.

Yes

[Valmy]

It's just stupid then.

It is an architectural decoration. A nod to British heritage and all that.

[Jacob]

Nothing wrong with decorative imo, though it'll always be a matter of taste.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - to each their own.

Although I'm slightly wondering if in my house hunt I made the wrong decision in basically ignoring decorating decisions on the basis that I'd make my own wild and catastrophic choices at some point

[Sheilbh]

Johnson's legal team making submissions ahead of him giving evidence on partygate on Wednesday. This may surprise you but he's going about it in the most brazen and undignified way possible. Based on the analysis bit at the bottom of The Times piece it also sounds like a fairly optimistic submission from his lawyers:

Boris Johnson: lockdown parties inquiry is 'unlawful and biased'
Steven Swinford, Political Editor | Matt Dathan
Monday March 20 2023, 12.01am, The Times

Boris Johnson leaving home on Friday after being reselected as the Conservative candidate in Uxbridge & South Ruislip
JEREMY SELWYN/SELWYNPICS

Boris Johnson will argue today that an inquiry into claims he misled parliament about Downing Street lockdown parties is unlawful and biased.

The former prime minister has submitted a legal dossier to the privileges committee, which is due to be published this afternoon. Johnson will appear before MPs for a four-hour evidence session on Wednesday.

His dossier includes a WhatsApp message from his director of communications at the time that he says substantiates his claim in the Commons that he had been assured no rules or guidance had been broken. It will criticise Harriet Harman, the committee chairwoman, for a series of tweets last year in which she suggested Johnson had misled the Commons and "knowingly lied". The submission will suggest that these are evidence of political bias and effectively prejudge the inquiry.

Johnson will also argue that the inquiry should adopt a higher burden of proof and be required to establish that there is a "high degree of probability" that he misled the Commons.

His legal team, led by Lord Pannick KC, argues that if the inquiry's findings were subjected to a judicial review they would be found to be "unlawful". The committee is protected by parliamentary privilege so cannot be subjected to such a review.

The inquiry threatens to split the Conservative Party — Rishi Sunak is prepared to give his party's MPs a free vote if the committee decides to sanction Johnson.

If the committee finds against Johnson, he could be suspended from the Commons. A suspension of at least ten days would automatically trigger a recall petition, enabling Johnson's constituents to force a by-election. Yesterday Suella Braverman, the home secretary, became the first minister to indicate that she would oppose sanctions against Johnson but said she would reserve judgment until the committee had published its findings.

Asked whether she agreed with allies of the former prime minister that the inquiry was a "witch-hunt", she said: "Boris Johnson was a really important leader. He got Brexit done, he delivered the Covid vaccine and he led the UK's support for Ukraine and for all of those things I'll be an admirer of his."

A spokesman for the privileges committee said: "The House of Commons as a whole approved a motion to appoint Harriet Harman to the committee. The other six members, which has a government party majority, then elected her as chair unanimously."

Johnson's dossier will refer to a message from Jack Doyle, who was his director of communications, giving him a "line to take" before he told the Commons that no guidance or rules had been broken. The former prime minister will also say that he asked for further reassurances from aides.

The committee has published photographs of Johnson attending events with no social distancing in 2020 and 2021. The committee said that it should have been "obvious" to Johnson that Covid-19 rules were being breached.

Johnson's lawyers will claim that he attended several leaving drinks as part of his working day, in line with rules at the time. They say that on each occasion he was unaware that rules were being breached. Johnson will also argue that he acted in "good faith" by correcting the record once fines had been issued.

Johnson has also publicly criticised Sue Gray, the author of the report on the parties scandal, who quit the civil service to become the chief of staff for Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader.

Lord Greenhalgh, an ally of Johnson who worked with him at City Hall when he was mayor of London, told Times Radio yesterday that the former prime minister could face a "witch-hunt".

Boris Johnson's case for his defence — and our analysis

The inquiry is unlawful

The privileges committee states that it has only to establish on the "balance of probabilities" that Johnson misled the Commons by stating repeatedly that no Covid rules were broken in Downing Street during successive lockdowns.

The balance of probabilities, which is used in civil cases, means that the court has to establish that something "is more likely than not" to have occurred.

Johnson argues that this is unfair and is pushing for a higher burden of proof. Pannick has argued — unsuccessfully — that the threshold should be that Johnson is "significantly more likely than not" to have misled the Commons. He says that a judicial review would find the proceedings to be unlawful.

Analysis: The committee is not subject to judicial review. Members have been advised by Sir Ernest Ryder, a retired Court of Appeal judge, that an assessment based on the balance of probabilities is appropriate.
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The committee is 'politically biased'

The legal submission is expected to highlight previous criticism of Johnson by Harriet Harman, the Labour MP who chairs the privileges committee.

As the parties scandal broke last year she posted a series of messages on Twitter, including one saying that if Johnson and Sunak were fined for breaching Covid regulations they were "admitting that they misled the House of Commons".

She also said people in No 10 broke laws that were there to save lives and questioned the results of a survey in which some said the prime minister "knowingly lied" but did not think that he should quit. She posted: "What's with those who say PM 'knowingly lied' but don't think he should quit? Are our standards so low?" Allies of Johnson have highlighted that the four Conservatives on the committee have publicly criticised Johnson for his conduct.

Pannick has previously said in legal correspondence: "The committee is composed of MPs some of whom are political opponents of Mr Johnson, and many of whom have made personal criticisms of his conduct."

Analysis: Harman has been repeatedly criticised by Johnson allies for her tweets but has refused to stand down or even respond. Criticism of Johnson from Tory MPs was also widespread throughout the scandal. Those on the committee are renowned among their colleagues for being independently minded.

New WhatsApp messages

The heart of Johnson's case will be a previously unpublished WhatsApp message from Jack Doyle, who was his director of communications. The message, a "line to take", formed the basis of the former prime minister's statement in the Commons when he told MPs that he had been "repeatedly assured" that no rules had been broken.

Analysis: The committee has already questioned the value of Doyle's message, given that he was a "special adviser appointed by Johnson" and that he was responding to media inquiries about specific gatherings rather than giving a "general assurance" that no guidance or rules had been broken. The reference to guidance — rather than the law — is particularly significant, given that photographs show Johnson at events where no social distancing was taking place.

The 'general assumption' that events were compliant

Johnson argues that he attended no event for more than 25 minutes and that in each case he was unaware it was in breach of the rules. He claims that this view is reflected by those who were also present, including some of those photographed with him.

Evidence submitted to the inquiry shows some of those present did not believe that the events were in breach of the rules. Johnson will argue that leaving drinks he attended were a "necessary" part of the working day and insist that the presence of his official photographer highlights that assumption.

Analysis: The committee appears to have taken a dim view of this claim. It said in a recent report that it should have been "obvious" that the events he attended, where there was no social distancing, were in breach of the rules. It also has evidence showing that Johnson's advisers were "struggling to contend that some gatherings were within the rules". Doyle said in January last year: "I'm struggling to come up with a way this one is in the rules in my head."

Johnson 'acted in good faith'

The former prime minister argues that the fact he ordered an investigation by Sue Gray and subsequently corrected the record in the Commons shows that he acted in "good faith". Correcting the record is seen by Johnson allies as particularly significant because it could affect the length of sanctions imposed by the committee.

Analysis: Johnson ordered the Gray investigation only after intense political pressure. He has since questioned the impartiality of Gray after she left the civil service to become Sir Keir Starmer's chief of staff. When Johnson corrected the record he said he had denied that rules were broken because "it was what I believed to be true".

And a reminder from YouGov today that despite all of this the public have very much made up their mind on this:


Incidentally included the picture of him leaving the re-selection meeting because that's an interesting decision. On current polling he will lose that seat and there'd been lots of rumours that he was looking for a safer seat somewhere else. Either way it seems like he's screwed: if the election follows current polling he loses his seat; if the Tories do well enough for him to keep his seat then Rishi Sunak's had a very, very good result. Not sure I can see the upside foor him.

Edit: Also on the lawfulness point - I'm not an expert and I'm not a litigator - but balance of probabilities is the standard proof for a civil trial. Criminal trials with criminal sanctions are obviously beyond reasonable doubt. Maybe there are some areas of law with Johnson's proposed "significantly more likely than not" but I'm not sure I've ever heard of that before so I feel like they're trying to invent an entirely new standard of proof just for him - which figures, I suppose

[Syt]

[Valmy]

Why Rwanda though? At least we have our internment camps in our own territory.

[Admiral Yi]

Why Rwanda though? At least we have our internment camps in our own territory.

And Mexico I believe.

I suppose they had a hard time finding a country willing to host one.

[Tamas]

Plus I guess it had to sound scary enough. The sell is that this will discourage people from trying.

[HVC]

Heard of, but never watched, the movie Hotel Rwanda and liked the name?

[Josquius]

The stupidest thing about the Rwanda policy is they still force people to come to the UK first to be sent there.
It could actually be a good policy if they let people show up at Rwanda as the first port of call.

[Sheilbh]

Plus I guess it had to sound scary enough. The sell is that this will discourage people from trying.

This is exactly the tension Hugo Rifkind wrote about in his column and keeps happening. They can't make it sound to scary without pissing off the Rwandans understandably. They took a bunch of client journalists and visited a development of affordable eco-homes for low income Rwandans that has never been mentioned in connection with the UK deal:

Rwanda can't be dream and deterrent all at once
In Kigali, Suella Braverman was all smiles about a scheme she says will scare off boat migrants. How does that work then?
Hugo Rifkind
Monday March 20 2023, 9.00pm, The Times

Whenever I'm reminded of Suella Braverman gushing "That's my dream!" about front pages showing planes taking off to Rwanda, I find myself thinking of the way Queen Elizabeth I in Blackadder said "I dreamt once that I was a sausage roll". Hey, each to their own.

Something, though, does seem to be making our home secretary feel pretty dreamy. The Home Office complained this weekend about a cropped photo that showed her roaring with mirth at a Kigali construction site, without showing that the people she was with were roaring too. I'm not clear why they bothered, because every other photo of Braverman in Rwanda also seems to show her beaming, as do all the videos. On my own delightful wedding day, I reckon I was about a quarter as happy. My dog isn't even this happy when I give him a bit of cheese.

What is she so happy about? At the weekend, her cabinet colleague Oliver Dowden gave a much more downbeat view, telling Sky News: "I don't relish any of this and I really wish we didn't have to do it." No such hand-wringing angst for Suella: she's jubilation all the way. Even allowing for the most benign and pro-Suella spin imaginable, though, what is the source of her glee? Does she think she's helping people? Is she picturing future joyful failed asylum seekers, leaping merrily in the African sunshine? Or what?

Much has been said already about whether the government's Rwanda plan is immoral. The King, Gary Lineker and the Archbishop of Canterbury think it is; others think otherwise. If you wish to make your own assumption about which side I'd be on, oh well. For the purposes of this column, though, I'm more interested in what the government thinks success looks like. Because the only success I can envisage, even from their perspective, doesn't have much to do with Rwanda at all.

Rwanda is supposed to be a deterrent. Take it from Braverman. Last week, before she left, she said the policy "will act as a powerful deterrent against dangerous and illegal journeys such as small boat crossings". For this to work, though, people on boats will obviously have to believe there is a strong chance Rwanda is where they will end up. Exactly how strong I couldn't say, but bear in mind they already face a non-negligible risk of actually dying. So far, indeed, this has been more likely to happen (about 40 people since 2021) than being successfully sent Rwanda-wards on a plane (no people).

The plan, says Braverman, is for Rwanda eventually to take "many thousands". The difficulty she has, though, is that she can't simultaneously threaten migrants with how awful Rwanda is while also going there and smiling so much. Or indeed, without giving the government of President Paul Kagame the hump. So, mere days after talking about deterrence, she's now calling resettlement "a blessing" for lucky, lucky migrants and attacking her critics for the "gross prejudice and snobbery" of saying pretty much what she herself had just said.

I feel faintly mad even pointing this out, but if the numbers we send are not huge (and they won't be) and the deterrent effect thus small (which it will be) then our situation will not be much improved. Indeed, along with spending millions to house asylum seekers in hotels, we'll now spend millions on sending a small handful to Rwanda too. Well done, team.

Yet for a true deterrent, if that's what we want, there are only two real options. One would be to heavily regulate our economy, growth be damned. The other would be to jail these poor people here instead. Sweep them up off the beach, bung them in detention, make it awful, keep them there for ages.

The problem with that isn't just that Charles, Gary and Justin might kick off. We also couldn't afford it. The entire British prison population is fewer than 90,000 people, so God alone knows where we'd keep tens of thousands more every year, let alone the backlog of 166,000 asylum cases we already have. This is also why ministers occasionally float the domestic fantasies of disused cruise ships or old holiday parks. None of it ever happens. None of it ever will.

The Rwanda scheme pretends to be a way of offshoring the problem. Really, it's a way of offshoring the fantasies. In Kigali, one of the places Braverman went to do her weird smiling was the Bwiza Riverside Estate, portrayed as a place being built to house people who come off planes from here. In fact, the Rwandan government announced the very same estate last year as affordable housing for locals, and with no mention of our boat people at all. Who knows how many will actually end up there. A handful? None at all?

I understand why this has turned into a binary political thing, because what doesn't? On the left, social media memesters now routinely call Braverman a Nazi, which anyone with even the smallest knowledge of actual Nazis should find preposterous. For her supporters, meanwhile, this is all now about a fight with lefty lawyers, European judges, the bleeding-heart woke blob and so on. You can even feel "Rwanda" turning into a totem, like "Brexit" before it, as a test of purity and patriotism to be deployed come the next election.

The cynic in me wonders if this is what she's really smiling about. Every brick laid on Rwandan soil helps build that political citadel, as does every shriek from the left.

Or perhaps that's me being overgenerous. Surely, though, there are enough grown-ups left in her party to recognise absolute nonsense when they see it. Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt, people with brains: don't they squirm in mortification whenever it hits the news? They must know this mad, divisive, white elephant of a policy isn't the answer. How long are they going to pretend?

It is also important that the proposal isn't that Rwanda's an off-shore processing of asylum applications. It is that if you arrive in an "unlawful" or irregular way you will be sent to Rwanda. From there you can either return to the country of origin or apply for asylum in Rwanda.

I suppose they had a hard time finding a country willing to host one.

Yeah. They tried Albania, Cyprus, various UK overseas territories and no-one wanted to do it. Rwanda were willing to sign the deal and take the £150 million for doing nothing.

The New European is edited by Alastair Campbell. I like him in many ways. But it does grate whenever he talks about asylum (or truth and standards in public life), like on The Rest is Politics, given the record of his time in Downing Street. Especially because on migration the government reminds me a lot of New Labour - fairly relaxed and open for economic migration and monstrous to asylum seekers.

[HVC]

Is the dog and cheese thing a sly way to call suella a bitch? I chose to believe it is

Also, she should go with her given name, makes the situation more surreal.

[Sheilbh]

Separately Casey Report. Enraging and not at all surprising:

Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic
Author of landmark report says Met can 'no longer presume that it has the permission of the people of London to police them'
Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent
Tue 21 Mar 2023 00.01 GMT
Last modified on Tue 21 Mar 2023 09.11 GMT

The Metropolitan police is broken and rotten, suffering collapsing public trust and is guilty of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia, an official report has said.

The report by Louise Casey, commissioned by the Met after one of its officers abducted Sarah Everard, taking her from from a London street in March 2021, before raping and murdering her, is one of the most damning of a major British institution .

The 363-page report details disturbing stories of sexual assaults, usually covered up or downplayed, with 12% of women in the Met saying they had been harassed or attacked at work, and one-third experiencing sexism.

Lady Casey said that the lifeblood of British policing was haemorrhaging and her report warned that "public consent is broken" with just 50% of the public expressing confidence, even before revelations about the force's worst recent scandals.

She pinned the primary blame on its past leadership and said: "Public respect has fallen to a low point. Londoners who do not have confidence in the Met outnumber those who do, and these measures have been lower amongst black Londoners for years.

"The Met has yet to free itself of institutional racism. Public consent is broken. The Met has become unanchored from the Peelian principle of policing by consent set out when it was established."

The report found a bullying culture, frontline officers demoralised and feeling let down by their leaders, and discrimination "baked into the system".

Casey revealed that one Muslim officer had bacon stuffed in his boots, a Sikh officer had his beard cut, minority ethnic officers were much more likely to be disciplined or leave, and Britain's biggest force remains disproportionately white, in a capital that is increasingly diverse.

Stop and search and use of force on powers against black people was excessive, found the report for the Met – which stops more people per head of population than any other force.

A catalogue of suffering by women included frequent abuses by senior officers, including one subjecting a female junior to repeated harassment and an indecent act. She complained and told the inquiry: "It would have probably been better to suffer in silence, but I couldn't do that. He got away with everything, I was made to look like the liar."

Casey said the Met was failing on so many levels the crisis is existential, and if not fixed could end in its dismemberment: "If sufficient progress is not being made at the points of further review, more radical, structural options, such as dividing up the Met into national, specialist and London responsibilities, should be considered to ensure the service to Londoners is prioritised."

Casey said austerity had deprived the Met of £700m but the cuts made by the force left its protection of children and women as inadequate.

Already crushingly low convictions of rapists were made worse by fridges that housed rape kits being broken, or being so full that evidence was lost, and cases dropped with rapists going free because of police bungles. Casey claimed in one instance someone ruined a fridge full of evidence by leaving their lunchbox in it.

Casey said the Met had blown repeated chances to reform by official inquiries over the decades and warned the force must not cherrypick the reforms it likes. It should implement her recommendations as a whole, she said.

But a gap and potential high level clash was emerging after Casey's report was published, with those who oversee and run the Met having had the report for days.

Sir Mark Rowley, the force's commissioner since September, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic that Casey insisted Britain's biggest force deserved.

But one of the two people who hired him – and thus can fire him – made clear he agreed with Casey's damning verdicts.

Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, has not previously used the term "institutional" about prejudice in the force he oversees since coming to office. He will be chairing a new oversight board for the Met, in effect placing it in a form of special measures for the foreseeable future.

Khan said: "The evidence is damning. Baroness Casey has found institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia, which I accept.

"I'll be unflinching in my resolve to support and hold the new commissioner to account as he works to overhaul the force."

Rowley said he wanted more time to study Casey's recommendations, but said he accepts the findings. He said he accepted Casey's factual findings about racism, misogyny and homophobia in his organisation and they were systemic, but neither he nor the Met would accept they were "institutional", claiming it was a political term.

Rowley, battling to avoid being the last commissioner of the Met in its current shape and form, said: "I have to use practical, unambiguous, apolitical language ... I don't think it fits those criteria.

"It's simply a term I'm not going to use myself."

Asked if he was not accepting the finding, Rowley said: "I'm accepting we have racists, misogynists. I'm accepting, we've got systemic failings, management failings, cultural failings.

"This is about an organisation that needs to become determinedly anti-racist, anti-misogynist, anti-homophobic.

"I'm not going to use a label myself that is both ambiguous and politicised."

The current Home Office is opposed to the idea of institutional racism.

Until now, Rowley has generated a small degree of hope with his vows to reform, but Andy George, the chair of the National Black Police Association, said: "The commissioner is wrong to once again fail to accept the Met is institutionally racist. We risk repeating history and cannot let this moment pass as another missed opportunity."

Both Rowley and his deputy, Dame Lynne Owens, had served previously as assistant commissioners in the Met and both said they would reflect on why they had missed the disastrous state the force was falling into.

Rowley repeated an apology to the people of London and vowed he would deliver sweeping reform.

Casey's 363-page report details how both Wayne Couzens, who murdered Everard, and the serial rapist David Carrick were spawned by Met errors and toxic cultures in the force.

Despite clues to their danger both were given a gun, passed vetting and served in the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command, which Casey said should be "effectively disbanded".

She found officers making offensive remarks about rape and racially abusing a black colleague using the term "gate monkey".

Some firearms officers, the report said, defrauded the taxpayer, buying iPads with public money, night vision googles they could not use for work, and hotel stays for fun.

Meanwhile, the Met was so elitist and hierarchical that frontline officers – most likely to be the point of contact for the public – were run ragged and neighbourhood policing had been decimated.

Casey also said the Met should accept it is institutionally corrupt, as branded in 2021 by the official inquiry into the murder of the private eye Daniel Morgan, which the Met rejected.

The report said cultures of "blindness, arrogance and prejudice" are prevalent, and Casey added: "The Met can now no longer presume that it has the permission of the people of London to police them. The loss of this crucial principle of policing by consent would be catastrophic. We must make sure it is not irreversible."

She added: "It is rot when you treat Londoners in a racist and unacceptable fashion. That is rotten."

Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour party, said: "The racist, sexist and homophobic abuses of power that have run rife in the Metropolitan police have shattered the trust that Britain's policing relies on and let victims down.

"For 13 years there has been a void of leadership from the Home Office, which has seen Britain's policing fall far below the standards the public have the right to expect."

Home Office officials insist they have put police reform measures in place. Suella Braverman, the home secretary – who with Khan appointed the commissioner, backed Rowley: "It is clear that there have been serious failures of culture and leadership in the Metropolitan police.

"I will continue to hold the commissioner to account to deliver a wholesale change in the force's culture."

Harriet Wistrich, of the Centre for Women's Justice, said Casey's findings were "without precedent in its unswerving criticism of a corrupt, institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic police force".

She said the two government inquiries after the Couzens scandal should be given greater powers and placed on statutory footing.

Feels like Rowley already isn't the person to lead reform. For example, while it's explicitly not a definition for all institutional racism or all circumstances - but there is a fairly clear definition in the context of policing from the Macpherson Report in 1998:

The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.

If you are leading an organisation or institution and you accept that you have "racists, misogynists [...] systemic failings, management failings, cultural failings" - I'm not really sure how that doesn't amount to institutional failings and, in particular, institutional racism and misogyny (and homophobia - though less on that in this story).

I think hiving off the national and specialist units would make a lot of sense. It would also allow the accountability to be cleared up so the Met would be responsible for policing London and so should be accountable to the Mayor of London rather than jointly accountable to the Mayor and the Home Secretary because they also have national responsibility for things like counter-terrorism etc.

[Sheilbh]

Press still working through it some of the examples (via Politico):

A female officer who reported being raped by a colleague was then forced to work alongside him; junior staff were urinated on in showers; a gay officer crossed the street to avoid colleagues; a Muslim officer had bacon pushed into his boots; a Sikh member of staff whose superior thought it would be amusing to cut off his beard; female officers were treated like "cattle" and judged on their perceived attractiveness; broken fridges used to store rape kits; police advised to delete compromising WhatsApp messages.

We should probably skip the failed reform process and just get to the point where we have to basically re-found the institution. Report here:
https://www.crestadvisory.com/baroness-casey-review-final-report

Summary and conclusions are worth a read.