Tory MP’s Lawbreaking Hypocrisy

Many of this morning’s front pages feature, to a greater or lesser degree, the story concerning SNP MP Margaret Ferrier and her train journey from London to Glasgow after she had received a positive Covid-19 test result. The i Paper points out “MP with Covid-19 broke rules five times”, while the Daily Mail has been particularly righteous.

Lucy Allan MP

They have gone full Dacre, thundering “ONE RULE FOR THEM! With quarter of UK plunged into local lockdown, MP ignores test and brings Covid to Commons - after Corbyn breaks ‘rule of six’”. As ever, the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker are always up for a kick at Jezza. But it is Ms Ferrier who has generated the most outrage.

She has since put out a statement, telling “I apologise unreservedly for breaching Covid-19 restrictions by travelling this week when I shouldn’t have. There is no excuse for my actions … I have used Test and Protect and I have notified the House of Commons authorities who have spoken with Public Health England. I have also notified the Police of my actions”. BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg added “Oops”.

This gesture did not impress Tory MP Lucy Allan, especially as it is now de rigueur for her and her pals on the Government benches to lay into the Corporation at every opportunity. And to show she really wasn’t happy, she responded “It’s not ‘oops’ - it’s reckless lawbreaking”. As Jon Stewart might have said, two things here.

One, as Peter Rudd put it, “It certainly is, but your response appears different dependent on the politics of the person breaking the law. Just in pursuit of balance, did you just vote to break the international law that your leader negotiated, you stood on at the last election & parliament voted for, please?” We most likely won’t be getting an answer from Ms Allan on that one for some time, if at all. Then came Two, the inevitable Covid-19 comparison.

Liz Gerard saw the exchange featuring Rudd and Ms Allan and decided to raise her: “and did you support Dominic Cummings's ‘reasonable’ trip to Durham and his eye-testing outing to Barnard Castle? And how do you feel about the maskless Stanley Johnson, who ‘didn't know’ about the laws his own son had made?” We won’t get an answer on that one, either. And Johnson père’s no-mask shopping indiscretion was only the other day.

Where was Lucy Allan’s protest when chief Downing Street polecat Dominic Cummings was caught bang to rights lockdown-busting? How loudly did she complain that a mere SpAd was allowed not only to get away with breaking lockdown, but was given his own Downing Street press call to excuse his actions? We blinked and missed it.

Of course, Lucy Allan is not alone: many more of the Tories’ Commons cannon fodder have been sounding off about Margaret Ferrier, while turning a blind eye to The Flight Of The Polecat, and having supported the Polecat Enabling Act, sometimes called the Internal Market Bill, which would breach international law just by being passed.

No-one should take lessons from the Tories on breaking the law. That is all.

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