I am confident that the judgement I have reached will please neither Boris’s supporters nor his detractors

That shameful behaviour took place in Downing Street during lockdown, is not in doubt. Boris has acknowledged this and apologised for it. Many believe that those at the helm of such a dysfunctional ship should have taken responsibility and resigned. I have some sympathy with that view. Nevertheless, this was not the issue that was before the Committee of Privilege and the Commons.

I do not impugn the integrity of the Committee, though I believe it was unwise to have allowed itself to be chaired by someone who had been so critical of Boris. Nevertheless, I do not question her integrity.
The procedure adopted by the committee and the Commons was the right one: only elected members of Parliament should determine whether another elected member be suspended or expelled.
I simply disagree with the Committee’s conclusions, as I am entitled to do.

Parliament is the highest court in the land and when it exercises its judicial functions this should be reflected in its proceedings. Unlike the measured and forensic method of the Committee, the debate in the Commons was highly charged and deeply political.

I have not served on a Jury but I have been a member of the board on half a dozen courts marshall where the procedure is, in essence, the same.
I was among sternest critics of the Government during the period in question when Boris was Prime Minister.
Had Boris come before my court I might have found him guilty of a number of offences had he been charged with them. Nevertheless, on the basis of the evidence for the crime with which he was charged, I would have had no alternative but to acquit.

I believe that, notwithstanding the weight of evidence cited by the Committee, it failed to identify and sustain the mens rea – the guilty intent.
The essence of the case was that the rules required that workplace gatherings, to be lawful, had to be essential. The PM authorised such gatherings for the purpose of thanking staff for their contribution and to sustain their morale. These purposes were not essential, and therefore the gatherings were unlawful. So, by repeatedly stating that rules were not broken Boris was Lying.

I disagree. However flawed the PM’s judgement may have been in reaching his decision about the essential nature of gatherings, it was his decision to make. Having made that judgement, he was entitled to believe that they fell within the rules. He may have wrong in his judgement but that is no basis on which to assert that he was lying.

In addition to the binary choice, guilty or not guilty, there is an additional verdict that is available to courts in Scotland which might have been appropriate in this case: ‘not proven’.

 

I had a rather impertinent email last Sunday evening reacting to the blog that I had only just posted.
My correspondent demanded to know why I had avoided the main event, namely the continuing Boris psychodrama.
 Well, hold on a minute. The wretched Privilege Committee report wasn’t published until yesterday (Thursday) and the debate on its contents isn’t until Monday…Talk about jumping the gun.

Anyway, this column cannot always lead on the top items on the political agenda because its primary purpose is to provide an article for publication in the Forest Journal. They require the copy on a Monday morning, for publication the following Thursday. Were I always to lead on the headline news events, whatever I wrote would, more often than not, be overtaken as the story moved on.

In any event, a few moments use of the search facility on this website will reveal any number of previous posts setting out my views on ‘partygate’.

I remember well the moment that Boris first told the Commons that there were no parties and that rules were not broken. That instant a shudder went down my spine because of the seriousness with which misleading the Commons is treated. Not that I believed that he was lying. Rather, I had no doubt that what he considered a ‘party’ would differ from most people’s definition, and that he would have a more flexible approach what constitutes obedience to rules.

I was prepared to vote against the formation of the Privileges Committee Inquiry. I believed that Sue Gray’s report was sufficient and that it largely exonerated the PM (as I said in this column at the time). Indeed, I was required by a three-line whip to vote against the Committee’s formation. Then, halfway through the afternoon we were stood down. I went to the Whips Office to remonstrate with the Deputy Chief Whip, Chris Pincher (remember him?). I asked how he now planned to vote. He said he would either abstain or vote for the Committee. So, I left in disgust. In the event, the motion was unopposed.

Subsequently, when Boris resigned as PM, I thought the Committee should discontinue its work. I took the view that being slung out of Downing Street was punishment enough.
Now the Committee has produced its full forensic analysis, I will take the trouble to read it in full and to listen to Monday’s debate before finally deciding.
Nevertheless, I do have concerns about the fairness of the Committees proceedings. And my prejudice is that the whole process is redundant, having already achieved its end, namely the removal of Boris from Parliament.  Boris, having been shown the tenor of the report, resigned: he has already gone. So, why take a vote on suspending him for a mere 90 days?
The only residual sanction is to deny him a former member’s pass, which seems to me rather ‘petty’.

A number of constituents have emailed to denounce the ‘Blob’, the ‘Remainers’, ‘the Deep State’ and any number of other suspects for their conspiracy to destroy our unblemished hero, Boris.
I have no doubt that there are many who are rubbing their hands with glee as they enjoy Boris’s fate.
But I am also confident that even if there was a conspiracy, which I very much doubt, it achieved nothing: Boris’s downfall was entirely of his own making.
Given his achievements of breaking the deadlock over Brexit, seeing off the pandemic, and marshalling the response to the invasion of Ukraine, it is a great shame but he has only himself to blame

 

A triumph of Government policy driven through since 2010, championed by Michael Gove and the school’s minister, Nicholas Gibb (and in the teeth of opposition from education unions) was the widespread reintroduction of ‘phonics’ as the method for teaching Children to read.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating: our children have graduated from being amongst the worst readers in the western world to the very best.
I remember my frustration when my children came home with little cards with words them that they had to memorise, instead of learning the phonic code that would enable them to spell out any word.
I had to teach them myself. Now this simple method is back in the classroom, and it works.
“Simples!”

A very worrying legacy of closing schools during pandemic lockdowns has been a shortening of the attention span of pupils, with consequent deterioration in behaviour. This makes huge difficulties for our overstretched teachers. This is a time when schools will have to make herculean efforts rebuild the habits of consideration for others, good behaviour and discipline.
Strangely, the headmaster of the Harris Westminster Sixth Form in London has chosen this moment to order pupils to desist from addressing beaks as ‘sir’.  Instead, they must preface any remarks with the teacher’s title and name, excusing themselves first if they are not sure of the name.
The reason given for this imposition is because ‘Sir’ evokes respect and compares unfavourably with the female staff alternative of mere ‘Miss’.
Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to be called ‘Miss’ but in the Army we called female officers ‘Mam’ which just as respectful as ‘Sir’. Perhaps this woeful headmaster might have thought a bit more carefully and come up with this military solution instead of guff about a “better and more equal world”.
I suppose it could have been worse. I’m told there are schools where they embrace familiarity and the beaks are referred to as Pat, Bill, Chis and even Nicky. We all know what that breeds.

The energy policy announced by Sir Kier Starmer defies belief, it is just bonkers: He has announced a ban on further exploration and extraction licences in the North Sea.
To be clear, this is not a ban on new oil and gas sources, it is just a ban on any new British oil and gas sources.
Surely sensible eco-warriors realise that we will be dependent on hydrocarbons for the next 30 years or so, even as we approach our target of  ‘net zero’ carbon dioxide emissions. So, as we will have to use oil and gas anyway, it much better that we use our own than have to import from sources that generate significantly higher emissions and come with all the supply hazards that have driven energy prices through the roof. The policy gift-wrapped for Putin.
Its implementation would swiftly lead to the decline of inward investment and skilled jobs. For the first time I find myself on the side of the unions.
“simples!” as the meerkat would say.

 

Out of the blue, four constituents emailed me to ask for a meeting with me at Westminster because they were attending a rally, in favour of electoral reform: they wanted an electoral system which awarded seats in proportion to the votes cast for each political party, typically known as ‘proportional representation’ (PR).
I agreed to meet all four of them in Parliament at the same time. We had a perfectly civil conversation but, alas, no meeting of minds. We were proof however, that you can agree to disagree about important matters without any unpleasantness whatsoever.

Typically, I get half a dozen letters or so, each year on this subject. We did, readers may recall, have a referendum on the question back in 2011 (it was the price demanded by the Liberal democrats for entering a Coalition government with the Conservatives). We voted by 70% to 30% to keep our existing electoral system. I remain of the view that it settled the matter for a generation. I am not inclined to reopen the question in what is a crowded political agenda.

There is no perfect voting system. Each methodology has advantages and disadvantages. The principal weakness of our current system is that it often disproportionately rewards the winner, granting them a numerical majority in Parliament despite only getting more votes than other parties, but not a majority of all the votes cast. Equally, I would argue that this is its principal strength: It ensures that, more often than not, the party that got more votes than any other, forms the Government.
The difficulty with more proportional systems is that they tend to lead to permanent coalitions which hand disproportionate power to small parties that supply the governing party with a majority. Israel would be a good example: there the largest party invariably needs to gain the support of minority religious parties to cobble together a coalition. This has led to a whole raft of religious legislation, including sabbath day observance, of which a majority of Israeli citizens disapprove and for which only a small minority vote.

The discipline imposed by our own system is that a party needs a very broad base of support to secure any parliamentary representation whatsoever: they have to be ‘broad churches’ that form a coalition before any election. Continental PR systems however, which strictly reward parties according to the total of votes cast for them, give them the freedom to be more ideologically focussed and exclusive. The focus of coalition building then takes place after an election where parties come together to thrash out an agenda for government that was never put to the voters at all.

With the plethora of complex voting systems where some votes are counted multiple times, formulae are applied, and out comes a result from the ‘sausage machine’ that is difficult to understand, we have, on the contrary, a refreshing simplicity: the candidate with the most votes wins.

Several  constituents have emailed me to ask if I would set out in this column my views in The Online Safety Bill.
The Bill Has completed its passage through the Commons and is now going through its detailed committee stage in the Lords, where debate rages over the extent to which the details of mandatory age verification should be set out on the face of the Bill or in subsequent regulations.

The Government has added offences the Bill which include revenge porn; hate crime; fraud; and threats and incitement to violence. Also, the promotion or facilitation of suicide and people smuggling. Further amendments will include controlling or coercive behaviour, in recognition of the specific challenges women and girls face when going online.

Ofcom, the UK’s independent communications regulator, will oversee the regulatory regime, backed up by mandatory reporting requirements and strong enforcement powers, including blocking access to non-compliant sites from within UK, and eye-watering fines of up to ten per cent of annual worldwide turnover.

That said, when the Bill was first published my principal worry was that, in its laudable intent to protect children, it nevertheless came at the expense of free speech.
At the heart of the problem was the creation a new category of ‘legal but harmful’ content, empowering lawful content to be removed when considered ‘harmful’. In effect, this subcontracted power of censorship to service providers and raised all sorts of questions about what constitutes a ‘harmful opinion’. It would also have introduced a ridiculous situation where censorship online could exclude opinion that would remain perfectly legal if said or published in print.
Mercifully the ‘legal but harmful’ provisions from the Bill has been struck out.

Instead, content that is illegal will be required to be removed along with any legal content that a platform provider prohibits under its own terms of service. Adults can choose whether to engage with legal forms of abuse and comment that fall short of being unlawful, so long as the platform they are using allows such content. It is a free market.

Arguably, the changes to the Bill have ensured that it substantially protects free speech while holding social media companies to account for their promises to users, guaranteeing that users will be able to make informed choices about the services they use and the interactions they have on those sites.
No solution is ever perfect. The provider retains the ability to silence lawful content which breaches its own rules. In effect it can exclude arguments of which it disapproves. I do not see a way around this. After all, it is the provider’s own platform and they can make their rules in the same way that publishers impose their own standards. Indeed, nobody has an absolute right to see their opinions printed in any particular newspaper or print publication.
In mitigation we will have to rely on the powers of the regulator to see that providers apply their rules properly and fairly.  In addition, there will be reputational damage to providers who capriciously censor content when other publications draw attention to it.

A concern that I have which does not fall within the scope of the bill which may have a chilling effect on lawful expression, is a ruling by the Commons that social media content generated by Members of Parliament shall be subject to the scrutiny and ruling of the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life. How long will it be before this official tells MPs what they can and cannot say on social media?

 

What could possibly be Keir Starmer’s motive for considering an extension of the general election (and referendum) franchise to EU citizens settled in the UK?

Whilst, we are generous with our local government franchise, allowing settled EU nationals to vote for local councillors, nevertheless, there are few, if any, jurisdictions that extend national voting rights to the citizens of other countries. I certainly don’t know of any, beyond our own historic rights for the Ireland and some to Commonwealth countries

General Elections and referendums can change the whole course of our country’s progress and history in a way that local council elections can never do.  Accordingly, the right to participate in national elections should be reserved for our own nationals.

It isn’t even as If they’ve asked: The move appears to an unsolicited offer, or to be strictly correct, potential offer by the Leader of the Labour Party.

If EU nationals settled in the UK really want to vote on our national issues then they can apply to become one of our nationals. The process is straightforward, and you only have to have lived in the UK for 5 years in order to apply.

There are almost three and a half million EU nationals settled in the UK. Were they to be automatically granted the right to vote in our general elections and referendums then, as a group of voters, they would amount to more than all the voters in Wales. They would potentially have more influence on the outcome of any poll than one of the constituent nations of our United Kingdom.

So, what could be the motive for this sudden and unsought generosity to participate in determining the national affairs of the UK?
Forgive me, but I’m a politician, and I simply can’t help it: My suspicious mind immediately leaps to the conclusion that Sir Kier has spotted some electoral advantage for the Labour Party by expanding the franchise in this way. To be blunt, I suggest that he expects the bulk of this new cohort of voters to vote Labour. Perhaps he even dreams of harnessing their support to reverse our referendum decision in 2016 to leave the EU. After all, he tried to do so several times during the 2016 to 2019 Parliament.

My advice to any voter is to be very careful if considering voting for a party that contemplates being so careless with the right to vote. We could very well find that we’d lost sovereignty over our affairs once again.

Rarely do local elections have much to do with local politics. However hard local politicians struggle to keep a local focus, the political parties centrally fight them as proxies for future general elections. Last week was no different.
Of all the voters that I spoke to in the New Forest, they were focussed on the national picture and saw their vote as a comment on the Government’s performance rather than that of New Forest District Council which, almost without exception, they considered to be well run.
Of the two local issues that were raised with me, the biggest was potholes, which is a County Council responsibility rather than a matter for the District Council. The other was confined to specific locations where controversial housing developments had been approved. On this last question, my postbag divides between those who recognise that one of the major problems that we face in the New Forest is a desperate shortage of housing; and those who insist that the proposed developments are in the wrong place.

In any event, having had local elections based on a national rather than local focus, it is extremely difficult to make sense of the results. The psephologists have an algorithm for scaling up last week’s results where elections were held, to attribute similar results to where they weren’t held at all. And, so proceeding, to forecast what the result of a General Election would have been. I am very sceptical of the value of this exercise. First, even where national performance is at the forefront of their minds, nevertheless, people vote quite differently at local elections than they do at general elections.

Second, it is difficult enough to interpret the outcome on a party-political basis even within a relatively small geographical area. Take, for example, the New Forest West parliamentary division which comprises 12 of the New Forest District wards contested last week. Of those wards, in one each voter had three votes, in nine each voter had two votes, and in only two they had one vote as in a general election. To make interpretation even more complicated, it is clear from looking at the difference in votes cast for candidates of the same party within a single ward, that hundreds of voters used their multiple votes to vote for candidates of different parties.
Even more difficult, not every one of the main parties fielded a candidate in each ward. All this before we take into account the average turnout of only 33% against a general election where you would expect nearer 80%.

So, for what it is worth, taking the votes for the leading candidate of each party in each ward in New Forest West, I estimate that of the 25,542 votes cast , the vote shares attributable to each party are: Conservative 37%; LibDem 23%  ; Labour 15%; Green  13% ; Independent 12%. As for what any of this bodes for the general election -which might not even be until Jan 2025, I suggest it is far too soon to tell.

At the mystical heart of the Coronation is the intimate moment when the king is anointed with Holy oil, sourced from the Mount of Olives, before being prepared and blessed by the Orthodox Patriarch in Jerusalem.
In fact the ritual predates the crowning of King Solomon, to which it is often attributed. It was carried out two reigns previously, over 3000 years ago, when the Prophet Samuel anointed Saul as Israel’s first King, then subsequently, when Saul proved something of a dud, Samuel sought out the youngest son of Jesse, and anointed David, as King instead.

Though instrumental, Samuel was a somewhat reluctant participant. He didn’t rate the prospects of monarchy and he warned the people of Israel that, by demanding a King like other nations, they were making a rod for their own back, with taxes and other oppressive impositions. His greatest fear was that kings would wander from proper devotion to the one true God.  His fears were not misplaced. To put it mildly Israel’s experience of monarchy might be, at best, described as ‘mixed’.

A fellow from the Plymouth Brethren used to come campaigning with me at elections. He was happy to deliver leaflets and canvass voters, but he wouldn’t vote himself. When I challenged him about this, he told me it was because he believed in the principle of Biblical Monarchy.
Well, good luck with that! As we went through the reigns described in the Bible there was perhaps only one paragon, Josiah 640 -609 BC (to whom our own Edward VI was compared by contemporaries as ‘the new Josiah’ in 1547). Many of the others were pretty dreadful.

Of course, our own experience of monarchy has also been mixed. We’ve had both saints and monsters. Nevertheless, we had a very unsuccessful, and not to be repeated experiment of doing without a monarch from 1649 to 1660.
Undoubtedly, what has saved our monarchy was the wisdom of separating the institution from political power so that it could become what it is to-day: the focus of unity, majesty and awe.
The thought of replacing our Head of State with an elected politician is just grotesque. Think about it! Which one of us would you vote to have instead?