At DPMQs LibDem Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper asked Lammy:
“Will the DPM join us in urging the Chancellor to delay the honorable member for Clacton’s resignation until the investigation is complete? So the good people of Clacton have all the facts before they cast their votes. And failing that, will he support our Clacton clause so that even once the honourable member ceases to be an MP, the investigations can continue?”
Lammy did not say a by-election would be delayed:
“He’s got serious questions to answer and he can’t run away from them. Labour isn’t going to be part of this circus. I hear it’s the people versus the establishment. The city trader Putin-admiring professional politician whose pals with crypto billionaires versus Count Binface. There have been there have been unqualified joke candidates in the past. Let’s see what the people of Clacton decide.”
The parliamentary commissioner for standards may not come back for over a year. Another LibDem fail on the way…
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”