Actual snakes –  too beautiful to be inside No 10

 

There’s another addition to the menagerie in No 10: snakes. We’ll look briefly at this description by Mr Mercer who also used the label ‘cesspit’ in relation to No 10. These aren’t bitter words of a sacked minister, it’s an alarming description of how his sacking unfolded. For me it’s another window opening into No 10 and the way we’re ‘governed’. It throws yet another light on the Cummings affair, on the claim by various MPs, ministers and ‘sources’ that the investigation into the ’chatty rat’ leak wasn’t over – after six months!

Firstly, there was the ‘Carrie defence’ by ‘friends of Carrie’: any criticism of her upstairs is deeply sexist and should therefore be totally rejected. This defence is rolled out regularly when her upstairs is being criticised. One of her mighty friends rushing into the MSM to defend her was Lord Goldsmith, formerly MP for Richmond – a seat he lost in the 2019 GE. Why he’s not in the Green Party but a ‘Tory’: well, he’s no idiot and clearly calculated that he’d be more likely to get into the HoC as a Tory than as a Green candidate.

He and Carrie are birds of a feather when it comes to greenery and he’s said to be Carrie’s ‘very close friend’ indeed – ‘very close’ according to some scandalous rumour which I won’t repeat. Interestingly, Lord Goldsmith also defended Carrie against claims that she’d wanted to get rid of the Defra minister, George Eustice. Well, there’s funny: none of us had any idea that she was trying to do this – so why defend her on that point? See this:

“A government minister was on Sunday forced to deny that Carrie Symonds had pressured her fiance Boris Johnson to sack the Environment Secretary because she disagrees with his views. Lord Goldsmith, a close friend of Ms Symonds, said claims she tried to have George Eustice removed over his record on animal rights were “fabrications” borne of “1950s sexism”.” (paywalled link)

Why did Lord G. feel the need to do so? Because of a column in the Saturday DM by Dan Hodges. He starts his column by saying that he had to re-write it in view of the breaking Cummings statement, having planned to write about the attempt by Ms Symonds to oust George Eustice. Scrolling past the Cummings stuff, we read:

“Just before the Cummings statement dropped, I was halfway through writing a column about how Ms Symonds was pressing for the removal of Environment Secretary George Eustace – seen as being too close to the farmers and insufficiently robust on her cherished animal welfare issues. And how her closest friend – and recently appointed government adviser – Nimco Ali had launched an extraordinary public attack on Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab for refusing to hold a meeting with her.” (link)

That’s why Lord Goldsmith rushed to defend poor Carrie, his very good friend indeed, against the accusations regarding George Eustice. It’s indicative of the secretive machinations by her upstairs that this hadn’t reached the MSM. Hodges refers to the scandals involving the government:

“For the past few weeks the Government has been dogged by a series of supposed ‘lobbying scandals’. Cameron? Dyson? Amateurs. The real ‘lobbying’ scandal involves the influence the unelected, unaccountable – and according to her numerous allies, irreproachable – Ms Symonds has exerted over No 10 ever since the day she and Boris first walked into the building.” (link)

After listing those scandals, Hodges explains why we are being left in the dark:

“Ministers attempt to appease her and her whims, because they know it’s the only way to keep their careers on track. Journalists appease her for fear of being ostracised by the No 10 communications team she helped build. Or because they benefit personally from her briefings. Or because they fear the cabal of sycophants she surrounds herself with will turn on them, and issue one of their ritualistic denunciations of ‘sexism’.” (link)

This is the true scandal. This is why ‘our MSM’ have been falling over themselves to continue Carrie’s war against Cummings. This is why we cannot trust anything the MSM say because the various writers, like the ministers fearful for their job, prefer not to get into Carrie’s black book – their duty to inform us properly pales into insignificance compared to that truly dreadful fate of being ‘unfriended’ by Carrie.

This also puts the ‘latest’ into a new light – the ‘latest’ being that the ‘chatty rat’ inquiry is still ongoing and that Cummings is by no means exonerated. So said Ms Liz Truss on TV yesterday, and so say ‘Whitehall insiders’. It must be true because all those insiders know what Simon Case, the Cabinet secretary, will tell the HoC Select Committee later today:

“Dominic Cummings has not been cleared in the “chatty rat” leak inquiry, Britain’s top civil servant is expected to make clear on Monday as Number 10 fights back against his claims. […] Mr Case’s office argues that the inquiry into who leaked plans for a second national lockdown in October is ongoing and nobody has been exonerated.” (paywalled link)

This jaw-dropping claim, coming from ‘Whitehall sources’, opens yet another window into the cesspit at the heart of our government:

“Case is due to give evidence to MPs today. He will make clear that inquiries are continuing in the investigation prompted by the revelation in October that Johnson had decided to implement a second lockdown. A Whitehall source said that despite claims by Cummings last week that Case had cleared him of involvement in the leak, this was not the case. “That could well have been true some week in November last year,” the source said. “But things change. No one has been exonerated and the investigation is still active.”  (link, paywalled)

‘Things change’, do they? The small fact of that Cummings statement couldn’t have anything to do with these ‘changing things’, could it? Does or doesn’t MI5 have ‘evidence’? When did this ‘evidence’ emerge? After the publication of the Cummings blog? Or is this simply a smokescreen? And: ‘Case will make clear’ – oh, is he being told to do so, or are those ‘insiders’ trying to bounce him into doing so? Quite extraordinary! And what about the totally incredible claim that this ‘investigation’ is ‘ongoing’ – after six months? Really? Is this how we’re governed, by ’investigations’ being reopened according to the need of exonerating one of Carrie’s friends? 

I’ll only mention in passing the claim made by BJ’s ‘allies’ and ‘Cummings’ friends’ that he’ll point the finger at BJ about his Covid policies. That will only become relevant at the hearing on May 26th, by which time the smear campaign will have been in full flow for a month. In view of the scandalous way we’re governed, looking at the rights and wrongs (mostly wrongs) of this policy is for another day. I suggest that pointing the finger at Cummings for his involvement in these policies is a deflection – sorry, Toby Young, your article in LockdownSceptics (link) is excellent but at this moment ‘tis a deflection nevertheless. This is why:

“A source on the joint coronavirus inquiry by the Commons health and science committees, before which Cummings is due to appear, said that he could submit written evidence before the hearing and that the MPs would then decide whether to publish it. They added, however, that Cummings’s evidence would be restricted to lessons learnt from the coronavirus crisis and that he would not be allowed to make broader attacks on Johnson and the government.” (link, paywalled)

If the scrutineers in the HoC are already setting up this hearing in a way that criticism of BJ and the government will be disallowed, permitting ‘written evidence’ so that the ‘snakes in the cesspit’ of No 10 can collect material to smear and refute to their heart’s content  – what does this tell us about how we’re governed? Are even MPs, our elected representatives, going to be in the business of defending BJ because her upstairs might become unhappy rather than actually doing their job of scrutinising government policies?

Finally, here’s the other window into how we’re governed. The way his sacking unfolded is a horrifying example of the cesspit of Westminster. I don’t think Mr Mercer is the latest ‘best thing since sliced bread’, but his experience is astounding. You recall he was ‘sacked by tweet’ last week. He tells the DM how this happened – do read the whole thing (link). How this sacking was orchestrated is alarming  but the main point for me is that Mr Mercer, who was going to resign anyway, was denied his chance to speak to the HoC: 

“I actually didn’t want to go and kick the system. I wanted to explain myself at the despatch box before I went. But the system starts doing what the system does. I have to defend myself. That place is a cesspit. When I read an unnamed Government insider at No10 saying, “We’ve destroyed his little plan to flounce out in a blaze of glory” I realised they just didn’t get it. They cannot understand I would resign because I actually care about the veterans.’ (link)

‘They’, the lot running No 10, are clearly not interested in any policies at all, be it Mr Mercer’s brief regarding the veterans, be it lockdown policies, be it anything and anybody – unless they fit in with Carrie’s greenery or displease her friends. Mr Mercer’s statement that “the ‘cowards’ and ‘snakes’ that surround the Prime Minister at the heart of government had failed the men and women he vowed to support.” (link) serves to stand for all who come into Carrie’s crosshairs, like Mr Eustace or even Mr Raab.

These snakes and cowards have failed not just the veterans, they’ve failed all of us with their covid policies, they’re failing all of us us and will fail all of us spectacularly with their Carrie-Green policies. And all because BJ can’t keep his you-know-what inside his you-know-where.

 

KBO!

 

 

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