With a second Metropolitan Police officer now accused of rape following the Wayne Couzens case, Boris spoke in a pooled clip this morning to insist the public should continue to trust the police – though admitted a cultural change is necessary:
“What we can certainly conclude from the Wayne Couzens case […] is that there is a massive job of work to do to give women the confidence that they need. And I want to be clear: I believe that people should be confident in the police […] it is vital that the public trust the police. But what we need to do is do some things to make the streets safer, and we’re investing massively in CCTV and street lighting and those sorts of things. But also make sure that we change the culture of policing […] I want to see a much shorter time between a reporting of a crime, an arrest, between an arrest and prosecution, between prosecution and a conviction…we’ve also got to recruit many more female police officers. It’s happening in the Met […] it should happen around the country.”
Asked why the Policing Bill going through the Lords isn’t explicit in defining sexual or domestic violence as “serious”, Boris simply said “it’s an ongoing case […] I can’t comment on the detail of that”…
Join Guido Fawkes, the Adam Smith Institute, Index on Censorship, Open Rights Group, the Legal To Say. Legal To Type campaign and leading Conservatives for a free speech speakeasy – with lots of free, legal but harmful booze. The Online Safety Bill will censor free speech which is legal but deemed harmful by state quangos. This poses a huge threat to what you can read and write online.
Kielys Irish Bar, 1 Watson St, Manchester, M3 4EE, Monday 4th October @ 7pm.
If you can come to the free speech speakeasy or not the Government’s new Online Safety Bill will ban many of the perfectly legal things you say online while making it even harder to bring online abusers who break the law to justice. Tell your MP to amend this dangerous law now by clicking here.
Liz Truss cements her position as the darling of the Tory rank and file according to the reliable ConservativeHome readers’ poll. Elevated to the Foreign Office and now sporting a power-bob hair do, described by sketch writer Quentin Letts as Hilary Clinton meets Michael Fabricant, she has a sky high 82.8 positive approval rating. The turn round in her fortunes from last year when she was being tipped to be sacked from the Cabinet is quite something. Liz is one of the increasingly rare consistently free market voices around the Cabinet table…
The table is calculated on the basis of the net approval ratings of the ConservativeHome readership, it is a good guide to who is on the up and who is sliding down the greasy pole. Some 15 points behind Liz, Ben Wallace is up marginally, jostling with David Frost and Jacob Rees Mogg in fourth place in the mid-sixties. Rishi Sunak is down by some 10 points and moves from second to fifth place. Rishi’s tax hikes have clearly taken the gloss off him with the true blue believers.
Grant Shapps and Priti Patel are bumping along the bottom in barely positive approval territory. Shapps has been doing fairly well with the incredibly difficult transport brief. Patel is suffering because she has failed to do the seemingly impossible – stop the cross channel migrants. Tory activists are unforgiving, they don’t want excuses, they want results.
The first night of conference saw a stellar line-up of top cabinet talent parading from drinks reception to drinks reception, some entertaining members, others boring them. Guido was on hand to get a handful of the top lines on camera…
Liz Truss kicked the night off in the TPA/IEA ThinkTent, though due to the recent national insurance rise could hardly boast about her own libertarian credentials without breaking cabinet responsibility. She relied on talking about the culture wars and freedom of speech instead. Her speech kicked off with some Covid humour:
Next up Boris made four separate appearances, one of which at the Scottish Tories fringe Guido was on hand to listen in on. The PM warned of a “crackpot coalition” between the SNP and Labour – “the only way they could” kick the Tories out.
He described the Labour conference as “a total rabble”, saying it had the air to him of “a seriously rattled bus conductor” facing an “insurrection on the top deck of the bus”, or the “captain of a Mediterranean cruise ship facing insurrection by a bunch of Somali pirates”
Finally, Rishi took the usual speaking spot of the PM at the 1922/Conservative Home reception for Tory MPs and – inexplicably – Barry Gardiner. He was seen reminiscing with 1922 Chairman Graham Brady about the 2015 Manchester conference, which saw delegates under siege from lefty protestors armed with eggs. He also warned MPs to do their job and stick to the agreed lines:
His biggest laugh came after proclaiming he’s still a low-tax conservative…
The blanket injunction against Insulate Britain is still proving ineffective, with motorway-blocking eco-radicals returning to the roads once again this morning – this time on the road at Wandsworth Bridge – to irritate commuters and grind traffic to a halt. With the defanged police force failing to stop them, commuters and paramedics took matters into their own hands. Guido would like to extend his sincerest gratitude to these commuters…
