Some choices made by politicians do not end well for them. And some of those choices that do not end well are known to be highly likely not to end well before they are made. One move that never concludes to the advantage of politicians is threatening or attempting to diminish the work of Police, the security forces, and intelligence agencies, as Combover Crybaby Donald Trump is now discovering to his evident alarm.
The Donald is not alone among right-leaning politicians: the Tories are now embarking on a similar, and similarly disastrous course, in the wake of today’s revelations suggesting that Damian Green, deputy Prime Minister, may have spent some of his time when ensconced in his then Portcullis House office browsing porn sites - and more than likely twanging the wire as a result of his observations.
So The Blue Team has clearly decided that the best method of defence is attack, and have gone after the Metropolitan Police, perhaps believing that Commissioner Cressida Dick could be vulnerable, while forgetting that she managed to oversee the premeditated murder of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes by armed Police at Stockwell Tube station - and still managed to get herself promoted.
To that end, a “friend of David Davis”, who has been trying to inject some backbone into the Tories on this issue, has told “It's right that allegations of misconduct towards individuals are properly investigated … But police officers have a duty of confidentiality which should be upheld”. We should instead wait for the inquiry report on the matter, which “could be placed on the prime minister's desk early next week”.
And as the BBC has reported, “Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell defended Mr Green on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, saying: ‘It is the misuse of entirely legal information to blacken the name of a serving cabinet minister’”. Jacob Rees Mogg, representing the constituency of the 19th Century, told the Beeb’s Amol Rajan that “police ‘behaved disgracefully’ by raiding Damian Green's office in 2008”.
Cressida Dick
Then the Rt Hon Gideon George Oliver Osborne, heir to the seventeenth Baronet, pitched in, using his position as editor of the Evening Standard to tell “what is without doubt is that police officers should not pursue personal vendettas through innuendo and leaks. Yet, that is what appears to be happening in the case of Mr Green”. And there was more.
“Many of those officers [who raided Green’s office in 2008] are now retired, but they have not forgotten the events of nine years ago - and they are clearly exploiting the legitimate investigation into Mr Green’s behaviour to try to extract their revenge … This is completely unacceptable behaviour by retired police officers … The current Met Commissioner Cressida Dick has established herself as a person of good sense and integrity … She should protect the reputation of today’s police by publicly distancing the force from the activities of these former officers - because, frankly, the whole thing stinks”.
The Tories are also likely to be sore that Ms Dick suggested their cuts were detrimental to policing in the capital - during this year’s General Election campaign. But in a scrap between politicians and the Police, there will always only be one winner. And it won’t be the politicians. The Tories are asking for trouble. They might just end up getting it.
Oh come on despite the Standard taking the Tory line it asks legitimate questions such as why has a retired police office retained his police notebook which is evidence. Evidence often used in court cases to convict. He has removed police evidence and why?
ReplyDeleteWhy is Zelo somehow promoting the notion that The Met and all British coppers are somehow holier than thou? Have they forgotten Hillsborough already?
This doesn't mean these cops are not telling the truth but it doesn't prove they are being truthful. The fact is we'll basically never know as their is NO evidence, just claims and people are jumping to conclusions such as a man watched porn during work hours when even if true, they couldn't even know if that is factual. Maybe he stayed behind in his office after work/
And why now bring this up? Do we examine the backgrounds of all politicians to see what they allegedly did 10 years ago?
We don't need to get in the gutter with the Tory media and use every bit of alleged scuttlebutt to boot the Tories. Zelo was wrong about Corbyn when it was plainly clear to 100.000s of Labour supporters he was on the right path. And the Corbyn lunacy was driven by the media yet so many didn't seem to read how the media was losing it's power rapidly.
This matter can easily backfire badly on all involved and perhaps that's why Labour is remaining silent on it.
It hurts to say this, but I agree with the Tories here. When I retired from the Civil Service, I would never had dreamed of taking official documents with me. Even without the routine reminder that I would still be subject to the Official Secrets Act.
ReplyDeleteWhatever the truth of it - and at this stage nobody can be certain - I must say I enjoy the irony of the rozzers presumably turning on the tories.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, said rozzers have for years quite willingly done tory dirty work for them. Only to find themselves, as was inevitable in such dirty thieving company, overworked, underpaid, betrayed and made redundant in numbers. Sort of what was and is done to the great majority of working class citizens outside the M25 ghetto, even to the deliberate destruction of communities.
So two things here:
(a) If said rozzers HAVE turned unjustifiably or illegally on said tories (an action that should be cheered to the rafters) where was this collective decision made and who led it?
and
(b) Having presumably learned their lesson, will said rozzers now come clean about their corruption before, during and after Hillsborough, the Miners Strike and persecution of those who opposed far right toryism from the 1980s onwards?
Really I couldn't give a shit about Green. Given his political actions the meff has it coming and I hope it sends him back to retire to whatever unearned capitalist featherbed he has. Nor do I have any sympathy for any policeman who might be caught in illegal vindictive activities. They deserve each other and what's coming (if anything other than a minor furor).
What matters is an establishment of true justice available to all. The kind of freedom long curtailed by neofascist tories and their allies - people like Green - who have done so much to turn this country into a pale imitation of far right Yank crackpottery. A nation of paranoid spivs.
I'll enjoy the spectacle of Green's come uppance in the full knowledge that mainstream media will ensure it won't last long. After all, they too have much to lose.
Green stinks the gaff out. But we allowed people like him to build the gaff in the first place, all of it under the protection of the very uniforms that now want him gone.
None of it is worth more than a horse laugh.