As Theresa May's former Communications Director Robbie Gibb is re-appointed to the BBC board, the new retail edition of Byline Times’ reveals the inside story of how the corporation was cowed by the Conservative party machine
Dominic Cummings
David Oliver gives a physician's view of the Covid-19 Inquiry evidence and what it reveals about the Conservative Government
The disgraced former Prime Minister's long career at the top of British politics should be a matter of national shame
Despite years of asking for the former special advisor’s WhatsApp messages under Freedom of Information laws, the Cabinet Office may never have asked Dominic Cummings for them. Why? Iain Overton reports
Kate Denkinson looks at the background to Isabel Oakeshott’s Lockdown Files and the newspaper which Boris Johnson once claimed was his ‘real boss’
The Catholic church in Ireland lost power by flouting the morals it prescribed. The Tory government risks a similar fate
It is not news that Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings treat rules with contempt. But there is one rule even they might be expected to obey, because it is crucial to the maintenance of power. Never, ever, make the people who place their faith in you feel like fools.
Or, to put it another way, never let the people who think they are making a sacrifice realise that in fact they are the sacrifice. Before breaking this rule so flagrantly, Johnson and his consigliere would have done well to consider the fate of what used to be one of the most powerful institutions on these islands: the Irish Catholic church.
Continue reading...Suggesting Britain could sign the withdrawal agreement with its fingers crossed makes perfect sense for a government of liars
Everybody knows Boris Johnson can lie for England. To his supporters, it was one of his best assets. They believed he could bamboozle the European Union into giving him the only Brexit deal that is really acceptable – one that gives Britain all the advantages of being in the EU without any of the botheration of being a member. The problem is that congenital mendacity isn’t just for foreigners. If you lie for England, you will also lie to England.
This week, these two streams of fabrication finally became one. In openly admitting that it signed the withdrawal agreement with the EU in bad faith, Johnson’s Vote Leave government also implicitly confessed that it lied wholesale to the electorate in December’s general election. The cross-contamination of domestic politics by the deceit that is Brexit’s DNA is now complete.