https://twitter.com/MrMichaelSpicer/sta ... 1738137600 Very funny hope the link works

https://twitter.com/MrMichaelSpicer/sta ... 1738137600 Very funny hope the link works

She's nearly as stupid as Diane Abbott, nearly, but not quite

Saw the original interview earlier. It was so stupid even the Daily Mail reported it for a laugh. Although there were plenty of apologists for her in the comments section. Morons.

Makes you feel reassured that the Home Secretary has such a grip on things. How many counter-terrorism briefings has she been in? Yet, she still does not have a grasp of what they’ve been talking about! No wonder they cut budgets if they think counter-terrorism is terrorism. Why are all our politicians so inept?

Think it might have been John Crace in the Graun who suggested it but story goes that Boris only has her in a Cabinet post because she makes him look competent by comparison!

First rate people hire first rate people. Second rate people hire third rate people.

Yay, another hate filled thread of envy, The Sin Bin really has become pathetic.

It is gaining momentum.

What is there to be envious of? Do tell...

I don't think i need to explain, I hope your distaste for success keeps you warm at night, loneliness can be cruel.

So you think Patel is doing a good job then, so far ?

You mean you can't explain.

When you say 'success', are you talking about the same Priti Patel who I'm thinking of? The one who was forced to resign (she would have been sacked anyway) over unofficial meetings with Israelis, and now finds herself in the cabinet purely to make Johnson appear mildly useful? Like I said, second rate people hire third rate people. No competiton to them, see.

Meanwhile in Cronus and Ir 80 world well known communist/ remoaner/ guardian reader/ snowflake Senior civil servant a the home office for 33 years under about 20 Home Secretaries resigns and plans to sue .the government. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51687287

Meanwhile in Cronus and Ir 80 world well known communist/ remoaner/ guardian reader/ snowflake Senior civil servant a the home office for 33 years under about 20 Home Secretaries resigns and plans to sue .the government. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51687287

You can't help but feel that there's probably a reason why many in and around Whitehall believe her middle name is Useless.

Got to love some of the reactions to this news in the right wing rags. Those people who were shouting "democracy must be upheld" are the same people cheerleading the dismantling of it from within.

That’s two now suing the government, one from the treasury and now the home office. You got to worry what Cummings plans to include in the new agreement with regards worker’s rights.

The civil servant (salary north of £180 grand) Who resigned has my deepest sympathy. It must have been traumatic being shouted at by someone who didn’t go to oxbridge. Plus a woman and an Asian one at that.

I think you will find he was more concerned about Patel and her cronies shouting and bullying much more junior people and when he defended them they started briefing against him.

His actions were to defend others who were being bullied.

Don’t try to play the race card she is what she is not because she is an Asian but because she is just evil and so desperate to please the leader Cummings.

He caused Rudd to lose her job - a well known blame deflector - a man not without performance issues. She might not be the brightest out there but she is the boss and as such decides. The civil service showed its preference during Brexit where it did what it could to undermine the government - things are now coming home to roost. Change is difficult to take especially when you consider yourselves to be superior beings - about time.

I'm always interested to know how far Tory apologists will defend the government? At what point would you say "mmm, this is going a bit too far"?

to
When the democratic will of the people is applied - we voted for Brexit, how long did it take to make any progress and why? The civil service is supposed to support the government of the day not work against it. This is not an isolated incident - it happened under Labour - the difference is this has come to light in the past senior civil servants have either been retired or moved. I think you know this type of thing happens in every organisation of size - its not a huge deal.

This isn't an isolated incident though and on the back of Javid's resignation (where he was also scathing about how the Tory machine was trying to seize additional powers), there does appear to be a fair amount of smoke with this particular fire.
Is it just me or, does it appear that Johnson his running his office in much the same way as Trump is running the States.

What is without doubt is that Patel is severely ruffling feathers and I think we should ask why her man has sacrificed a huge payout, potentially jeopardised his pension and felt the need to go very public over this.

To suggest that "you know this type of thing happens in every organisation of size" is like blind acceptance that there is nothing extraordinary going on.
I would ask you, when was the last time you saw this happen to the "backroom" staff at no 10 ?

https://www.facebook.com/BestForBritain ... tn__=EHH-R I think this tells you everything you need to know about Boris, Cummings and the government advisers. So Sal how many lives are worth the economy not suffering too much . 50k. 100k. 1million. Don’t worry everyone who needs grandparents let them die for the sake of saving the rich extra money. Plus you get their inheritance, free up the housing market, solve the social care crisis and save money on pensions. Someone in your family with diabetes, a weak immune system , cancer breathing difficulties . Don’t worry a few thousand of them dying for the sake of the economy is fine. Children got asthma don’t worry you can get rid of the little buggers just think how much better you will be after Brexit when the economy is growing again .

https://www.facebook.com/BestForBritain ... tn__=EHH-R I think this tells you everything you need to know about Boris, Cummings and the government advisers. So Sal how many lives are worth the economy not suffering too much . 50k. 100k. 1million. Don’t worry everyone who needs grandparents let them die for the sake of saving the rich extra money. Plus you get their inheritance, free up the housing market, solve the social care crisis and save money on pensions. Someone in your family with diabetes, a weak immune system , cancer breathing difficulties . Don’t worry a few thousand of them dying for the sake of the economy is fine. Children got asthma don’t worry you can get rid of the little buggers just think how much better you will be after Brexit when the economy is growing again .

The difference with the Boris government, and any other, including Theresa May's government, is that clashes are coming over the government's desire to do things that are outside the law.

The civil service is obliged to ensure that the government's actions are within the law - it is literally in the civil service code and the duty of senior civil servants to uphold. When I was in government I remember the amount of time I'd be in lengthy meetings with lawyers about whether we had the [ivires[/i to do the kind of legislation we were proposing. Often this would be in the context of primary and secondary legislation. The primary legislation - in a Bill the government had previously passed, would say something like the Government will solve X problem by introducing a legal body with enforcement powers. The secondary legislation that would come later would involve writing what that legal body could do and what were its enforcement powers. Now often - in all good faith and innocence - officials would sit down with a Minister who would be keen to sort out problem X, and would say lets really nail this now and send a strong message, so you'd make this legal body strong with strong enforcement powers. Then the lawyers would get involved and start pointing out that those enforcement powers you were introducing might be overreach on behalf of the government, in terms of the boundaries of what was supposed to be allowed by the primary legislation. If we pushed ahead anyway with something dicey, it would inevitably be in the House of Lords, where there are a lot of long standing experienced politicians with strong legal backgrounds, who would pick up the problems and on a subsequent reading we would have iterated the legislation to a point where it would be robust to any legal challenge (ie judicial review).

The reason you have this is to uphold a very strong principle in the British system of government. The law protects the citizens from the overreach of the powers of the state. For centuries it has been the Conservatives who were the strongest guardians of this, as they feared that it would be a left wing government who would be more likely to use the overreach of government power in to individuals' private lives.

The big difference with the Johnson/Cummings government, is that their approach is that the civil service and the courts are some kind of traitorous enemy trying to stand in the way of what they want to do (using government's powers) and so they want to cut out civil servants who are doing their jobs by telling them they need to act within the constraints of the law, and they want to attack the judiciary and limit the ability of citizens to use the law to constrain the government from overreaching their powers.

As well as the bullying issue with Priti Patel one of the charges against her coming from the civil service is that she has been angry because she's been trying to act outside the law. It is literally their duty to tell her she can't do that. She obviously has this wild west approach to government because that is what got her sacked by Theresa May in DfID when she went off meeting the Israelis to negotiate using aid money to fund the Israeli Defence Force for its 'humanitarian' (surely a euphemism) work in Gaza, which was not official government business but her own private sideline work.

Now at the moment, riding a wave of populism, this Tory government may get its way and start a new precedent in government where instead of having these long standing Oxford educated white male Sir Humphries, the government of the day gets to appoint whoever it wants in that role and gets to constrain the powers of the courts.

But they are also laying the ground for future Labour governments, because the political cycle always turns at some point. If the offspring of the Corbyn cult take power in a decade or so, a lot of conservatives would react with concern that the constraints of the Sir Humphries and the courts are no longer there. What if a Corbynista Labour PM imposes henchmen union thugs as Permanent Secretaries to ensure that the civil service is bullied in to carrying out their agenda whatever the law says (Labour bullying like Patel? surely not). Then they might want to overreach governments' powers in areas like compulsory purchase in order to nationalise things, and businesses/individuals would rightly want to exercise their right to use judicial review and the law to prevent government from overreaching in their lives. But what if those powers have been weakened by this Tory government, so Labour is able to force those things through.

That's when some people who are crowing in support of Boris and Cummings now will look back and say, you know what maybe unwinding centuries of tradition about the constraints of the power of government over the citizens wasn't such a smart move was it.