Partygate's Fresh Scandal
The Partygate scandal has got to be one of the most enduring debacles in the history of British politics. This week I expected the whole thing to come to an end following the complete publication of the Sue Gray Report in the coming days.
The report would emerge, there would be a modicum of fresh outrage and then politics would return to business as usual, perhaps rearing its head again around the time of the next general election. If Boris Johnson was going to resign over partygate then he already would have done so.
Now, just when we thought we were out, we are being pulled back in by an ITV exclusive scoop.
The latest pictures show Boris Johnson at a leaving event for his special advisor Lee Cain who left Downing Street in November 2020, right in the heart of the second lockdown in the UK. The prime minister is photographed without a mask, surrounded by various bottles of alcohol and other partygoers, and drinking a glass of fizz himself. Meanwhile his official red box sits discarded next to him. It beggars belief that evidence of such a stark breach of the rules at the top level of government exists.
Rest-assured this will cause the scandal to continue on for a number of weeks and by this point Conservative MPs must be getting pretty sick of defending their party leader (excuse the pun). However, while this places Johnson in quite the predicament, he is not the only one that might be feeling the heat this evening.
There are already questions being asked about the quality of the investigation by the Metropolitan Police since it was concluded but those polite, questioning remarks will now surely turn into fully-voiced criticism given the context of the newly-revealed photos.
Sue Gray had the photos (or photos that were very similar) from the leaving do and we know that she passed all of her evidence on to the police. So the understanding is that the police had these photos and yet concluded that the prime minister should not be fined in respect of this event.
There is already a massive lack of faith in the Met by the general population and accusations of bias and corruption will only flow more freely as these new photos gain publicity and more details emerge.
In the podcast this week we look at a criminal sentencing case from Northern Ireland where we examine the circumstances in which a defendant should be given a discount on their sentence for pleading guilty.
Episode link: http://uklawweekly.com/2022-uksc-13/
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