The High Court ruling that a procurement contract was unlawfully awarded to a firm with apparent links to Dominic Cummings has this morning been overturned by the Court of Appeal. This latest defeat for Jolyon once again reiterates the pointlessness of the taxpayer cash-wasting vanity project. Will this latest ruling get the usual wall-to-wall BBC coverage awarded to Jolyon’s rare supposed victories?
The case relates to a contract awarded to Public First at the start of the pandemic. Responding to the announcement Cummings tweets:
“Lord Chief Justice crushes Kimono-fox-killer: total vindication for my decisions on moving super speedy on procurement to save lives (remember all the ignorant nonsense from pundits/minor social scientists/Remainiacs?)”
Here’s what Cummings had to say on the initial judgement back in July:
“Like the OWID decision, another decision I made at the height of the crisis last year was recently the subject of legal action. The High Court found that my decision to hire a company to provide insight into public understanding of covid was ‘unlawful’ because of ‘apparent bias’. Not actual bias, which the court agreed there was no evidence of, but ‘apparent bias’. This ‘apparent bias’ existed, the court said, because there was not a paper trail showing my thought process and the extent to which I considered hiring someone else. The judge inferred that I had not considered others therefore this could look like apparent bias — if the entire paper trail was made public in a JR into bias, which is obviously very circular reasoning!
In fact I did consider hiring others, I considered it extremely quickly and made a decision — one of dozens that day, and not the most important. I did not go through a formal process, I did not write down a list of criteria and pretend to ‘rank’ different companies. We had not time, we had a disease doubling every 2-3 days. I thought very quickly, made a decision, then moved on to another similar decision, then another. That was my job. My decision was expert, as the judge accepted. (Our data was appalling, PHE’s communication plans were no good, we urgently needed to figure out how to communicate better to lower the probability of killing people by mistake, so I hired a company I knew would do an excellent job and they did.)”
For some people the bureaucratic procedure is more important than the outcome. They are not the kind of people you want in control during an emergency…
Nice arrangement, though Guido can’t imagine he’ll be setting his alarm that early for it again…
In the wake of last night’s accusation from Dominic Cummings – that Boris gave the go-ahead for the 20th May drinks party – Raab had the task of defending No.10 today in the aftermath. Just when Tory MPs were beginning to hope the weekend had marked a turning point on this…
After himself accidentally referring to the 20th May gathering as a “party” on Sky News, Raab then appeared on Today to explain whether the PM would have to resign if it was clear he’d misled the House:
“it would normally, if it’s not corrected…if it’s lying and deliberate in the way that you describe […] it would normally under the Ministerial Code and the governance around Parliament be a resigning matter. That is the principle…”
Pressed on why he used the word “normally“, Raab added:
“Because I don’t have the rules in front of me to quote you verbatim. And forgive me as a lawyer, but I like to be accurate about this […] people in public office are meant to hold the highest standards, and I think it’s absolutely right.”
For now, it’s Cummings’s word against Boris’s. Sue Gray, over to you…
Sonia Khan, who worked in No. 10 and the Treasury during the premierships of David Cameron and Theresa May, says daytime drinking has long been normalised in Downing Street. She told BBC Radio 4’s World at One that historic use was “totally different” to the allegations of partying while the public was ordered to abide by restrictions to tackle coronavirus.
The former SpAd, who was sacked by Dominic Cummings, explained
“Usually these drinking sessions are sandwiched between pieces of work, so it feels like a very, very routine thing… Drinks could start at lunch time, they could start a little bit later in the day – different teams do things very differently – but the idea of mini fridges or having drinks underneath your table wasn’t uncommon.”
Downing Street denizens are kicking back at the idea that they are running the country constantly half-cut. Guido would only point out that Winston Churchill was half-cut when prosecuting the war and that the Royal Navy conquered half the world with drunken sailors. It is a well established scientific fact that wine aids creativity… and we sorely need some inspired creativity to get the country going at full throttle again.
UPDATE: Yvette Cooper got all outraged at the drinking tales and said it wasn’t like that before 2010. Tony Blair’s daily intake, according to his memoir, A Journey, was a “stiff whisky or G and T before dinner, couple of glasses of wine or even half a bottle with it…”. As he describes it “not excessively excessive”. Something for Boris to consider, Harold Wilson used to drink before PMQs!
GB News has announced it will play God Save the Queen every morning across both TV and radio from tomorrow at 5.59am. The move, announced this afternoon by the channel’s Editorial Director Michael Booker, follows Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell’s campaign to get the BBC to play the happy and glorious tune at the end of every day. Looks like GB News beat them to it.
Speaking today, Booker said:
“We always promised we would celebrate what’s good about our country when we can, and the Queen’s 70-year reign is definitely worth celebrating. We’ve chosen an uplifting instrumental version which, for our television viewers, will feature stunning scenes from across the UK. We think it’s a lovely way to start the day.”
Giving us cause to sing with heart and voice…
Nadine argues it will help with the cost of living squeeze. Guido suspects many Tory MPs will have other motives…
