Bozo Legal “Bombshell” WORTHLESS

The Committee on Standards and Privileges is undertaking an inquiry into whether soon to be former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson had committed contempt of parliament over statements to the House of Commons. Its chair, Chris Bryant, has recused himself, given his past criticisms of Bozo, and has been replaced by Harriet Harman.

Nothing to do with me getting a f***ing peerage, c***

But the idea of one of their own being hauled up before his peers for effectively lying to Parliament has horrified some in and around our free and fearless press, to whom Bozo may be an SOB, but he’s their SOB, a fellow journalist (for some value of journalism) who therefore exists in that parallel universe where such mere bagatelles don’t matter. Plus he’s a Tory.

To this end, the Daily Mail, under the less than benign oversight of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, has campaigned to bend public opinion, if not the behaviour of the Committee itself, to its will, culminating yesterday with the thundering headline “TOP LAWYER ‘SET TO DEAL DEVASTATING BLOW’ TO PM PARTY PROBE". Quote marks working overtime.

There was more. “A LEADING QC will today deliver a devastating blow to the Partygate probe into Boris Johnson, insiders claimed last night … Lord Pannick will say the way MPs are conducting the inquiry risks endangering democracy, according to a senior source”. Like someone close to Bozo.

The Daily Brexit, still called the Express, concurred, but not because it was cheaper for them to run the same story as the Mail, you understand. But the Mail was right in one respect: Lord Pannick had been asked for an opinion; as a QC, he had given one. And so it came to pass that this morning’s headline declared victory, albeit a highly premature one.

“As top QC delivers devastating verdict on ‘fundamentally flawed’ Boris inquiry, MPs and peers rally round to demand … NOW END THE PARTY PROBE WITCH-HUNT” was the headline, followed by “MPs faced mounting pressure last night to halt the Partygate probe into Boris Johnson after a top QC called it ‘unfair’ and ‘fundamentally flawed’”. More quote mark overtime.

But here a problem entered: we are not told the basis on which Pannick gave his opinion. Worse, Parliament decides what contempt of Parliament looks like, not a QC, not Bozo, and definitely not the Daily Mail, where the position on lawyers is infinitely flexible: not so long ago they were all “lefty lawyers”, and not long before that they included “Enemies of the People”.

Then it got worse: after Jessica Simor pointed out “You need to insist on the ‘Instructions to Counsel’ being released. It is impossible to read this 'Opinion' without seeing what they were instructed to advise on. It would also be good to know whether we the taxpayer paid for it and how much it cost”, Aubrey Allegretti told that “Taxpayers are footing the bill for Pannick’s legal advice disparaging the Partygate probe by privileges committee … £129,700 contract for ‘legal advice’ awarded last month and published today”.

We’re paying - for Bozo and his media pals to intimidate the Privileges Committee. Moreover, as Chris Bryant has pointed out, the opinion is effectively worthless: “Pannick’s ‘opinion’ is decidedly weird. There is no judicial review of a committee inquiry because it’s a proceeding in parliament, protected by the Bill of Rights. Parliament decides what contempt means. A deliberate lie is a gross contempt but so is an untruth left uncorrected”.

Pannick had dwelt on whether Bozo “intended” to mislead Parliament. If the misleading was inadvertent, he could have come to the Commons and corrected the record. On which subject, Peter Oborne has reminded us “Here is a list of more than 70 occasions when Boris Johnson misled Parliament, and has failed to correct the Hansard record. The list is not complete”.

LBC host James O’Brien mused “Two important things to note about Lord Pannick’s lucrative (for him) intervention: it’s not a ‘legal opinion’ in any meaningful sense & it would not have been commissioned at all if Johnson wasn’t certain he could rely on the Daily Mail to embellish, inflate & misrepresent it”. And his conclusion was especially severe.

“A corrupt Prime Minister, in cahoots with a vile propagandist, has spent huge amounts of public cash on a glorified press release designed to help him evade parliamentary scrutiny. Client journalists & morally bankrupt politicians plan to nod it through. They must be called out”. It would be yet more useful if the BBC were to do just that, rather than legitimising the whole charade.

Parliament decides on contempt of Parliament. Not the Daily Mail. That is all.

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