[IMG: Boris Johnson must go.] Ed Davey says:"Against the backdrop of the pandemic, when the Government was asking citizens to accept far-reaching restrictions on their lives, some of the behaviour surrounding these gatherings [in Downing Street] is difficult to justify."That's the first finding of the update on Sue Gray's report, published this afternoon. But thanks to a last minute intervention from the Metropolitan Police, swathes of information have been withheld.Even this heavily redacted update doesn't hide the simple truth.Boris Johnson's authority is in tatters. It's time for him to go. Sign the petition ➜ "[The gatherings] represent a serious failure ...
It makes a colossal amount of noise and vibrates like a warthog on a very fast pogo stick. Continue reading →
It's been quite the afternoon in the Commons. Boris Johnson faced sustained criticism over the findings of the Sue Gray report. The most effective were the contributions that fought his fire and bluster with ice rather than more fire. That's why Theresa May's takedown of her successor was so effective. I will never forgive her for what she did at the Home Office, nor in her pursuit of a hard Brexit, but her contribution today was brilliant, asking him if he had read the rules, ignored them or didn't think they applied to him. Ian Blackford just had to make ...
Rees Mogg's remarks have been read as an attempt to stop Tory MPs in former "red wall" seats siding against Boris Johnson, but aren't these the Tory MPs with the strongest incentive to ensure that their party has a leader who people support? What he's reported to have said on Newsnight is: "It is my view that we've moved, for better or worse, to an essentially presidential system and therefore the mandate is personal rather than entirely party [based] and any PM would be very well advised to seek a fresh mandate." The Tories won in 2019 on a promise ...
28 - good start to the year. Non-fiction 11 A Radical Romance, by Alison Light Where Was the Room Where It Happened?: The Unofficial Hamilton - An American Musical Location Guide by BdotBarr [Bryan Barreras] Calvin, by F. Bruce Gordon Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey, by Bruce Clark The Wandering Scholars, by Helen Waddell The Doctor - his Life and Times, by James Goss and Steve Tribe Neither Unionist nor Nationalist: The 10th (Irish) Division in the Great War by Stephen Sandford The God Complex, by Paul Driscoll Why I Write, by George Orwell ...
Responding to the release of the Sue Gray update, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey said: This watered down update is utterly pointless. Everyone knows Boris Johnson broke the rules and lied to the country. It's time Conservative MPs did their patriotic duty, listened to their constituents and stood up for decency by sacking Boris Johnson. He must go before he does our country any more harm." For months ministers hid behind Sue Gray, now they're hiding behind Cressida Dick. Yet Boris Johnson is still refusing to give an honest answer to a simple question. The public suffered while ...
Mon 31st
14:46
Ed Davey on Sue Gray Report: Conservative MPs must do their patriotic duty and sack Boris Johnson
So the Sue Gray Report has finally been released and its findings, even in the "lite" version, are not pretty: Against the backdrop of the pandemic, when the Government was asking citizens to accept far-reaching restrictions on their lives, some of the behaviour surrounding these gatherings is difficult to justify. ii. At least some of the gatherings in question represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of Government but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time. iii. At times it seems there was ...
So it looks like Sue Gray's report will not be as illuminating as it could be. And No 10 has apparently said it won't publish the whole thing once the Met Police Enquiry is complete. Ed Davey said
Our party is proudly committed to the replacement of archaic First Past The Post with Single Transferable Voting, an electoral system which satisfactorily balances proportionality, local representation and voter choice. However, a major roadblock to the introduction of STV for Westminster and English local elections would be quizzical or apprehensive attitudes amongst a sizable section of the British electorate over its precise technical details, which our party currently fails to address. As a party, we should develop our position on electoral reform by adopting more specific policies regarding technical details for STV. Firstly, we Liberal Democrats should consider adopting as ...
Sun, 15:06: The stucco ceilings of Jan-Christian Hansche, part 6: the Charles Borromeo sacristy in Antwerp https://t.co/dKcDmyZL1n Sun, 17:09: The Bloody Sunday report: https://t.co/RrrSQ2o6Fz https://t.co/0osV90odAs https://t.co/Mix3tw1FVS https://t.co/FhVJeQOK6u https://t.co/XoCj0nxb77 https://t.co/lfCZXp63CF https://t.co/1vklrqaVmg https://t.co/rdJzAIk52z https://t.co/9H8wjTg0MV https://t.co/SF0BLrMrb7 https://t.co/DrpJG11HpC Sun, 18:27: Embers, by S�ndor M�rai https://t.co/m4mJ2WW6j1
A protest was held this Saturday in front of the Senedd steps in Cardiff Bay to demand action by the Welsh Government on the cladding scandal. The meeting was organised by the Welsh Liberal Democrats and is the first hosted by a political party in Wales. Groups attending included: the Welsh Cladiators, Ripped Off by Redrow and Cymru Cladding Crisis. Victims of Cardiff's cladding scandal, unveiled during the wake of the Grenfell disaster are facing bills up to £60,000 each for safety work to fix their unsellable, fire defective homes. Although the Welsh Government have agreed to fund the recladding ...
When we debate party policy, strategy or election tactics, questions about what might attract or put off voters often – and rightly – come up. But there's one sure-fire, 100% guaranteed, rock-solid way of repelling voters from us, and it's one we use far too often. It's not having a Liberal Democrat on the ballot paper. Zero votes for the party guaranteed. Both Labour and the Conservatives, for example, get very close now to having a full slate of candidates in local elections. Despite improvements in recent years, we are still lagging a long way behind, and not yet back ...
The Government has been accused of "extreme negligence" after it has emerged that almost one in five items in its stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) are not usable, with billions of pounds having gone down the drain. A written parliamentary question tabled by Liberal Democrat Chief Whip, Wendy Chamberlain, has revealed that the Department for Health and Social Care has identified 3.4 billion units of PPE as "potential excess stock". This would represent £2.2 billion of expenditure on items without demand. Of 6.96 billion items of PPE that are not currently provided to frontline services, 1.2 billion of these ...
