It won’t change anything, but expect Nadine Dorries to announce that ITV will soon be privatised…
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Your probably right but I suspect, hope rather, that there’s a pissed off civil servant that got fined twice or whatever and will do a bit of whistleblowing. If Boris has the police and Sue Gray in his pocket then let’s hope he gets caught from this direction.
What was the promised price Stephen?
I’m glad these photos were held back until after the Met Police concluded their dodgy investigation. Let’s see how they handle this…
They’ve already seen them.
Keir Starmer should have absolutely nothing to worry about then.
That depends, doesn’t it?
Does it? If the Met Police decided that a picture of Johnson drunkenly holding a drink aloft in a room full of people, with empty wine bottles and crisps all over the tables is a ‘work event’, then Starmer quietly drinking a bottle of lager with a takeaway shouldn’t be an issue.
Unless police forces are like referees, where you’ll get a red card off Mike Dean for something Moss will only give you a yellow for?
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FIFY for effect. 
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As I’ve said before, I don’t think either of these are big deals.
But Johnson lives there, was apparently only there for the toast, and wasn’t mixing with anyone he wouldn’t normally.
None of that is the case with Starmer.
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I’m so sick of this argument.
Boris Johnson does not ‘live there’. He lives in a flat in Downing Street, which is a sizeable complex containing lots of offices. This party wasn’t happening in his kitchen. He didn’t need to be there.
By the same logic if you live in a flat above a chip shop you live in a chip shop.
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…oh and I’m pretty sure this was irrelevant at the time.
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Nope
This is how he gets away with it. People, god knows why, are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, defend the indefensible, and turn a blind eye, when other politicians would not get anywhere near this leeway.
This photo was taken on 13th November, just eight days after Boris Johnson put Britain into a severe lockdown. As detailed here
Your defences of him…
It was at his home. No, it wasn’t. No more than suggesting when I was a student and lived in a flat above a pub, I lived in a pub. Under normal circumstances Johnson does not ‘work from home’. He works from the office complex in number ten. The offices and his flat are not the same thing.
He was only there for the toast. It doesn’t matter. There was no exemption for fleeting visits or short duration breaches. I’m sure people would have liked to have popped into their loved ones funeral ‘just for the toast’ but they weren’t allowed. Also, just aside, I don’t believe for a second he didn’t hang around. He is a lying bastard, with a recent track record for saying whatever he thinks he needs to say to get him off the hook.
He was only mixing with people he mixed with anyway. It doesn’t matter. There was no exemption saying you could socialise with people you worked with. If you couldn’t work from home, you were allowed to go to work but that was as far as it went.
The only possible defence available to Johnson is that this was a work event. And if the Met police are swallowing that - with photos showing empty bottles strewn around the office - they are more hopeless and/or bent than I’d previously believed.
The biggest question for me is why you, and loads of other people, seem so keen to undertake mental gymnastics like this, contorting your reason and common sense beyond breaking point, to excuse this sack of shit his short comings? Is the same reason why a procession of women seem happy to let the fat, sweaty cunt have a go on them? Does he have a kind of charisma that makes people blind to his failings?
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I didn’t think I needed to make the work point, that one was obvious. Essentially, I think only a minority care about these ones and those that do should care equally about Starmer’s beer and curry, otherwise they’re hypocrites.
I don’t think either are big deals in and of themselves. The bigger issues are about integrity and credibilty.
And utter lack thereof.
Correct
I think you are wrong about that. The reason why partygate has resonated with the public and may still yet topple Johnson, is because the British People don’t like being taken for fools. It’s been a rough few years, and people have sacrificed a lot. You said that it doesn’t really matter because he was only there for a couple of minutes. Imagine what people who’s loved ones died alone would have given for a couple of minutes.
It matters.
If the two are comparable, and they aren’t.
Starmer drinking a beer with a curry during an election ground campaign (permitted activity) is not anywhere near the what the photos from number ten show. Its already been investigated by the police, and there was no case to answer.
The only reason there is a second investigation into this, is because the Police have been strongarmed into it by the Daily Mail - who’s response to their poster boy being naughty, was a grand act of whataboutery.
I’d normally agree with you. They are always more important. But crucially ‘bigger issues’ don’t resonate with the public in the way that simple scenarios like this do. It’s understandable and brief. The Prime Minister put you in lockdown, and while you couldn’t see your loved ones he was on the piss at number ten. Simple.
People can attach themselves to this in a way that they can’t to the many other scandals that should have sunk him - like funnelling public money to a model he was nobbing and giving her influence and credibility in a role she had absolutely no qualifications to do.
I suppose what the Partygate scandal does and why it matters is that it opens the door on what kind of man Boris Johnson for all the people who would struggle to engage with the various financial and sexual scandals he has been involved with.
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What were you saying earlier about mental gymnastics?
That the idea that Starmer ordering in a takeaway to feed his staff at the end of a long day of campaigning is comparable to Boris Johnson sitting at the centre of, and willingly participating in, a culture of partying and rule breaking that culminated in sending staff with a suitcase to smuggle booze into number ten, is mental gymnastics.
That the idea that it doesn’t matter that Johnson was breaking the rules, because (insert excuses that were not actually legally defensible at the time) is mental gymnastics.
Happy to to clarify for you.
