The Work Meeting at Cana

Michael Gove tells Andrew Neil that 'Christian forgiveness' is needed over partygate. I turn to my Bible to look for a relevant text.

Ask to see my ID card and I'll eat it: Boris Johnson 2004

There is more joy in Tory heaven over disenfranchising two million poor people than there is over prosecuting one vote fraudster.

And who wrote, in typically tired and emotional prose in 2004, that id cards were an abomination? Why, the MP for Henley, a certain Boris Johnson. Jolly amusing. Text below.

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You know what you need on these dark winter mornings, when you get into your freezing car, and you sit there in a state of shivering depression, because the windscreen has been frosted to damnation, and the wipers are too puny to make any difference?

I'll tell you what you need, my friend. You need an ID card! Just take one of the new £85 biometric Blunko-cards, and scrape-scrape, hey presto! Frost's all gone.

Or suppose you are mandated to take the kiddies for a bracing walk on the heath, and you've had the forethought to bring some cake, but you've forgotten the knife. Well, never mind: say goodbye to no-knife misery with the allpurpose Blunko-slicer.

Yes, folks, I bet we can all think of 101 uses for the forthcoming ID cards, not forgetting breaking and entering, or perhaps even using it as a kind of strigil, as they did back in ancient Athens, to scrape off the mixture of sweat and olive oil when you have been for an exhausting run.

I am sure that we will all find it a handy, if expensive, addition to our wallets and handbags. But I tell you this. If I am ever asked, on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and when I am simply ambling along and breathing God's fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.

If I am incapable of consuming it whole, I will masticate the card to the point of illegibility. And if that fails, or if my teeth break with the effort, I will take out my penknife and cut it up in front of the officer concerned.

I say all this in the knowledge that so many good, gentle, kindly readers will think I have taken leave of my senses, and to all of you I can only apologise and add, in the words of Barry Goldwater, that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice, and that I really don't know what I dislike most about these cards.

There is the cost: let us be in no doubt that, by 2012, when it is intended that the entire population should be compelled to carry one, the universal imposition of ID cards will amount to a kind of £85 Caesar Augustus-style tax.

There is the loss of liberty, and the creepy reality that the state will use these cards - doubtless with the best possible intentions - to store all manner of detail about us, our habits, what benefits we may claim, and so on.

Worse than the cost and the bother, however, there is the sheer dishonesty of the arguments in favour. If I understood Her Majesty correctly, her Government conceives of these cards as essential weapons in the "war" on terror.

But the maniacs who performed the 9/11 massacre would not have been prevented by ID cards: the problem was not their identities, but their intentions. And if a terrorist really needed a new ID card, it would probably not take long to procure a forgery, biometric or not.

All these points I have made these past few years, up and down the country, and the most frustrating thing is that these objections cut absolutely no ice (unlike, as I say, the cards themselves) with good, solid, kindly, gentle Conservative audiences.

It seems only the other day that I was in Wolverhampton, railing against the Labour Government for having produced the conditions that made ID cards necessary. "And I tell you this, ladies and gentlemen," I said, "if Labour had not made such a disastrous mess of our asylum policy, we would not now need these ID cards imposed on the entire population."

"So what!" the audience shouted back at me. "We want ID cards!" "Er, yes," I said, adding, "I tell you this, ladies and gentlemen, that if Labour had not so recklessly expanded means-tested benefits, so that more and more people have to undergo the humiliation of revealing every detail of their financial circumstances to the state, and so that we have more and more fraud, we would not need these ID cards!"

"So what!" yodelled my audience, "We want ID cards! We had them in the war! If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear!" And they started gurgling and drumming their feet like the impis of Chaka, and I hung my head and gave up.

There in a nutshell, I thought, you had the eternal tension at the heart of conservatism, between the desire for liberty and the desire for order, and, in the case of ID cards, the frail cockade of freedom has been emphatically crushed by the giant descending rump of matronly authority.

My audience were all gluttons for freedom, if by that you meant the freedom to hunt, or the freedom to eat roast beef without the fat trimmed off. But they were perfectly happy to see their own liberties curtailed, if that gave the authorities a chance to crack down on scroungers and bogus asylum-seekers.

And there, I fear, the debate has come to rest. To all those who yearn for ID cards, and who would extinguish the flame of liberty in the breath of public panic, I make this final appeal. Read this week's Spectator, with its terrifying account by a man arrested and jailed for having a penknife and an anti-burglar baton locked in the boot of his car, and then imagine what use the cops could make of the further powers they are acquiring to inspect and control.

We are told by Labour that we are at "war", and it always suits governments so to scarify the population. In reality, we have a terrorist threat not obviously more persistent than that posed by the IRA, and our liberties are being lost because of the intrusiveness and incompetence of the Government.

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Johnson v Cummings, seconds out, round two

The Times, the organ of Murdoch's Saruman and Gove's Wormtongue, attempts an even-handed view of the Johnson/Cummings battle. They don't quite succeed as they describe Boris Johnson's struggles - the man who would be king but is merely cut out to be a slightly posher Rod Liddle.

Times article follows: read on for a tale of spies and inaccurately-hurled mud pies.

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Guerrilla warfare: Johnson steels himself for final assault from Cummings

Even Boris Johnson's closest allies have compared the prime minister to one of Shakespeare's most tragic heroes: King Lear. After arguably one of his toughest weeks in Downing Street, Johnson suffered his greatest betrayal when his once loyal lieutenant, Dominic Cummings, eviscerated him in a 1,000-word blog post.

Those close to Johnson fear the treachery of his former chief adviser, accused of "systematic leaking", has pushed the prime minister over the edge. Just like Lear, the PM has been driven half mad.

In his post, Cummings denied Johnson's claims that he leaked details of the second lockdown and the prime minister's texts with the billionaire Brexiteer Sir James Dyson.

According to friends, Cummings had one aim in posting the missive: to pre-empt a stitch-up by the "establishment" that could land him in prison — an outcome he has privately feared since details emerged of irregular spending during the Brexit referendum.

However, its toxic effect has been to destabilise the prime minister and the government. Aides are only too conscious that Cummings has nothing to lose and believe he has enough "kompromat" to "destroy" Johnson when he gives evidence on Covid-19 to MPs on May 26.

They are especially concerned about emails in which the prime minister is allegedly dismissive about the potential death toll from Covid — or quoted as being so. Others believe Cummings has embarrassing details of his links to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, and Sheikh Mohammed, the ruler of Dubai.

In contrast, Johnson feels he has only one secret weapon: Cummings's failure to deny that he leaked his texts with bin Salman over the proposed takeover of Newcastle United football club, which never went ahead. "He was waving round that omission like it was the big reveal," said a source who spoke to him last week. "Otherwise, I think that's all he has."

For months, Johnson had been enjoying his most stable spell in government, thanks to the successful vaccine rollout. Now a combination of Cummings, leaks and sleaze allegations threaten to engulf him.

One Downing Street insider said: "After the departure of his closest aides last year, the prime minister has become increasingly isolated and paranoid. He has become known in some circles as the King Lear prime minister and we all know how that ended up."

Last week after days of leaks, including the publication of private text messages between the prime minister and Dyson more than a year ago, Johnson finally "snapped".

"It was like death by a thousand cuts," said one Downing Street aide. "But the Dyson leak was the last straw."

In particular, Johnson has been concerned by the disclosure of details about the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat amid claims it was circuitously funded by a Tory donor.

The Electoral Commission is investigating. By Friday, the Cabinet Office had confirmed in a statement to parliament that Johnson would foot a residual bill of £58,000 himself. He has already used up the improvements allowance of £30,000 to which all new prime ministers are entitled for "structural work". The parliamentary move and decision to pay was clearly designed to draw a line under the matter.

"When stories about the flat first started emerging Boris was really ranting and raving about," said one insider. "He was clearly very rattled by it." Another source added: "He would often have what I would describe as a Lear-ish moment and rampaging around Downing Street demanding to know who was briefing against him." Last month, after the latest story on the redecoration of No 10, Johnson explicitly forbade aides in his leadership team from even speaking to Cummings.

A person who spoke to Johnson last week said the prime minister was "convinced" that his former chief adviser had declared war on him from the moment he left Downing Street in November.

Carrie Symonds, the PM's fiancée, is understood to have played a pivotal role in the ousting of Cummings and had been encouraging Johnson to take action.

On Thursday, the PM decided to finger Cummings for the leaks. It is suggested he may have briefed newspaper editors himself. It was a co-ordinated hit with the story appearing in three newspapers. The Daily Mail, which has been the outlet for most of the leaks, was left out.

Few aides in No 10 now believe Johnson made the right decision in launching the attack on Cummings, prompting Friday's incendiary riposte. It is understood that he overruled advisers who warned him that the move was "suicidal".

Some blame the recent departure of so many once-trusted aides for the PM's "error in judgement". He is without many of the people who stood by him throughout his first year and a half in office. Cummings, once loyal, is gone. So too is Lee Cain, once described as Johnson's right-hand-man. The PM has told friends that Cain has repeatedly tried to contact him but that he has ignored his texts.

Allegra Stratton has been elbowed out as press secretary by male aides and is now spokeswoman for the Cop26 climate change conference. Her planned regular live TV briefings have been scrapped.

Lord Udny-Lister, who has advised Johnson since his days as London mayor from 2008 onwards, has quit amid the lobbying scandal and is expected to join the private sector.

It is believed Cummings has embarrassing details of Johnson's links to Mohammed bin Salman It is believed Cummings has embarrassing details of Johnson's links to Mohammed bin Salman REUTERS No 10 aides are keen to contain the row with just days to go until the local elections. A Conservative Party Central Office source said: "There has not been an impact on polling as of yet but you never know when the mood can change."

The churn at No 10 is said to have left Johnson "vulnerable" and at the mercy of two relatively inexperienced operators: Simon Case, the 42-year-old cabinet secretary, and Dan Rosenfield, 44, his chief of staff. Neither man is deemed to have much political nous or Cummings's "willingness to get down in the mud and fight".

For months, Rosenfield has helped stabilise the No 10 operation and inject an apolitical professionalism in the building. But he is also seen by some as naive.

For instance, he was accused of imperilling his own job and the government's credibility after welcoming Ed Woodward, the chief executive of Manchester United, to No 10 ten days ago and appearing to offer support for the controversial European Super League.

Sources claim Rosenfield's conversations with Woodward emboldened the English clubs to back the scheme, heralding the biggest crisis in the game for decades. No 10 insists, however, that the Super League proposals were not discussed at the meeting, which was convened to discuss the safe return of fans and Covid passports for games. Sources accept that Woodward may have briefly met Johnson and left with the wrong impression that he was in favour of the proposal. Indeed within hours of the Super League plan being revealed, Johnson publicly opposed it.

Case is the subject of anger after quickly announcing a review into officials moonlighting in private sector jobs. His approach is seen to have made Udny-Lister's job untenable, with Johnson's consigliere having stayed on the payroll of two property firms while at No 10.

Johnson knows that Case is in shark-infested waters. On Monday the cabinet secretary will give evidence to MPs where he will no doubt be questioned about Cummings. One incendiary claim is that, after learning that it could implicate Henry Newman, a friend of Symonds, Johnson sought to shut down a previous inquiry into who leaked details of Britain's second lockdown.

Allies of Newman furiously denied Cummings's suggestion that he was the "chatty rat". They added that the leak inquiry was still active and dismissed Cummings's claim that he and Cain had been exonerated.

Despite his public displays of bravado, Cummings has long been haunted by a fear that he could end up in prison: either over irregular spending during the Brexit referendum or his conduct in government. Allies believe this prompted his "nuclear" reaction — in effect, an attempt to get on the front foot and publicise evidence of his innocence. But opponents believe Cummings may be right to fear sanctions.

They claim that MI5 has concluded that one person sent a WhatsApp message from the cabinet room just before 6pm on the day after the meeting last autumn where the new curbs in England were discussed. Six people were present: Johnson, Cummings, Cain, another political aide and two senior officials.

According to this account, Cummings was aggravated by Johnson's indecision and felt he had not been firing on all cylinders since his illness. He therefore decided to leak the news to bounce Johnson into it. MI5, it is claimed, has established that one person in the room had two SIM cards linked to them. That person, sources insist, was Cummings.

Last night, a government official said: "The investigation is still live and it would be wrong to think we have landed on any one individual or, for that matter, completely exonerated anyone."

The question for Johnson is what the unpredictable Cummings will do next. "This falling out was never going to end well," conceded one source.

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Boris Johnson’s zing has well and truly zung: Matthew Parris

Like sheep without a shepherd, voters who trusted the PM have grown confused and resentful at his lack of leadership, says Matthew Parris.

This may be another shot in the early Murdoch campaign to replace Johnson with Oiky Gove but it's quite accurate in its criticisms.

Article text below:

Tories would be mad not to choose Boris for leader – no one else comes close

Unlike the Maybot, he can lift your heart: this was Boris, prime minister in waiting

The Daily Telegraph 13 Jun 2019 Allison Pearson

Not a parody, apparently.

Oh, thank God, the overwhelming sense of relief! After three years of being led (and misled) by a stooping, scuttling wraith of a Prime Minister, after the misery of constipation with no laxatives, after abject humiliation and Nervous Nellies and national shame and speak-your-weight sound bites and Project Fear and oh dear, oh dear, we have forgotten what optimism feels like, here comes Boris.

"Good morning, everybody!" he began his launch at Carlton Gardens… and people started smiling. Even the ones who hate his guts find their lips twitching at the corners. They can’t help it. When Boris Johnson enters a room, the molecules rearrange themselves to make room for the sheer force of personality. There is a palpable frisson of expectation. It’s hard to define chemistry, but, boy, do we know it when we see it.

The Boris of old might have tried to wing it. But this was Prime-ministerin-waiting Boris. His boring, jealous rivals snark that "serious times need serious leaders". Well, he’d give them serious. No more faux-hapless ruffling of that haystack mop which, like its owner, has been trimmed and tamed.

For the most part he stuck to his speech, and jolly good it was too, masterly at times. Fervent, yet artful, it promised to restore confidence in democracy by honouring the promise to leave the EU. Rallying cries for national unity were matched by metaphors that were clever yet easily understood by all. Our football clubs, he pointed out gleefully, had won two major European tournaments "by beating other English teams" (big laugh). Despite the Brexit "morass", the economy had grown "much faster than the rest of Europe". (Stick that up your Juncker, defeatist Remainers!) Again and again, Boris praised the British people. For their "resilience", their "dynamism". He called the countries in the Union "the Awesome Foursome". Lovely. Unlike the metallic Maybot, Boris can lift your heart.

The paralysis in our disillusioned country must urgently be lifted because "delay means defeat". (Boris beat that message out with karate chops to the lectern.) He didn’t want to leave with no deal, but we must prepare "vigorously and seriously" for that outcome.

If the Conservative government kicked the can again, he warned, it would be "kicking the bucket" – and that means Corbyn. Boris will never be Passion’s Slave – far too calculating for that – but there was real venom in his attack on a Labour leader who has "contempt" for normal people’s aspirations to do better for themselves. (We haven’t heard such an excoriation of socialism since Margaret Thatcher.) The people of Britain "deserve better from their leaders" who needed courage and clarity.

Funnily enough, Boris knew just the chap. He’d worked wonders as the Mayor of London and was now available to pull off the same trick for the entire nation.

Introducing Boris Johnson yesterday, Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, said that our next prime minister would need "certain indispensable requirements".

"These are extraordinary times and we need a personality big enough, strong enough and with the political imagination to rise to the historic challenges our country is now confronted with. A managerial and bureaucratic approach will not suffice." No, it really won’t. But, hang on a minute. What about the multiple charges against Boris – dreadful reputation, cavalier with detail – that were made during the questions at the end by Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’S political editor, speaking with clear distaste on behalf of the Chattering Classes? Just in time, the playful Boris millions know and love emerged from solemn statesman mode to gently rib the sanctimonious Ms Kuenssberg.

Out of "that great minestrone of observations", he told her helpfully, he had picked up "one crouton, that I have been inconsistent".

It was funny, yet at the same time it could not have been more serious. Boris was signalling that he won’t modify either his language, or his behaviour, to please a politically correct, censorious liberal minority.

He will express, in language most people understand, the ideas they hold dear. The metropolitan elite will damn him as a populist, which is another word for a persuader and a winner. We like winners.

"Hope is the thing with feathers," wrote the poet Emily Dickinson, capturing perfectly that fluttery, airborne sense you experience when you allow yourself to believe that things might come right again. People need optimism and, after three hopeless years, they are desperate to be led (even if that leader is flawed, they will follow him if he makes them believe they can do it). Boris Johnson gave us that feeling yesterday.

Evoking a powerful yet simple idea of one nation where a thriving free market enables "superb public services", where bankers support nurses and the South links hands with its friends in the North, his words took flight. Hope. Conservatives haven’t had hope for a very long time.

Honestly, they would be mad not to choose Boris. No one else comes close. Can he start tomorrow, please?