Johnson fakes activity to evade moral condemnation

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is attempting to fill the void created between last week’s string of revelations about parties in Downing Street and the publication of the results of the inquiry with announcements of popular measures among the right-wing faction of his party. The opposition wants to keep the conservative leader’s discredit alive in the headlines.

The license of 190 euros that finances the BBC and that all households in which there is a device to watch television will be frozen for two years. In 2027, a new financing system for the public radio and television entity will be created. It will be designed by Minister Nadine Dorris. Very supportive of ‘Brexit’, she complained in 2018 that the government’s negotiation with the European Union left the United Kingdom without European deputies or without the right to have a seat in the European Commission.

The second measure published in the media is the use of the military to prevent refugee boats from the French coast from reaching the English coast. It is added that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Liz Truss, would be negotiating with Rwanda and Ghana to receive asylum seekers for “processing”. It is a measure that the Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel, has already promoted in the past.

There is no certainty about the date on which the official Sue Gray will present her report on the different social gatherings and parties aired in recent weeks. According to various media, she would have already questioned Johnson about his knowledge or participation in the incidents, but it is not up to her to decide whether the prime minister has broken the ministerial code of conduct.

Covid improvement

Nor can it identify officials who deserve disciplinary sanctions, because they are issues that are resolved with criteria of confidentiality within the framework of labor relations. Opposition leader Keir Starmer, a lawyer by profession, has already warned that Gray’s report will simply recount the facts under investigation. That is why he insists in recent days that the public has already judged Johnson and that he must resign.

Starmer is being called on by the Conservative press to apologize in turn, after a photo emerged of him drinking a beer at a meeting of Labor Party members. But work meetings were allowed and no rule forbids drinking in an office. Like the discovery of the custom of drinking wine in the last hours of the day on Friday, in Downing Street, these are legal acts.

In the absence of new revelations, the social gathering with drinks in the garden, convened on May 20, 2020 by Johnson’s private secretary, using the plural, we, in the invitation, is the most sensitive for the prime minister. They invited a hundred employees and about 40 attended. A former employee would have told ‘The Times’ columnist, Dominic Lawson, that two people told Johnson to cancel the call.

The Downing Street press office has strongly denied that Johnson received any such warning. The leader alleges that he went thinking it was a work meeting. Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former senior adviser, aired the May 20 meeting on his blog ten days ago, and is now laughing at the new “lies” from Downing Street. But in favor of the prime minister, the positive evolution of the covid figures must be counted, which will allow new relaxations.