Using the EU for electoral skulduggery …
It’s the last week before France goes to the polls and what do we get? A pile of dirt thrown at Madame Le Pen. More on that below. Here in Blighty the local elections come ever closer, and lo and behold: it looks as if some Tory rats are eager to get off the sinking Johnson ship, trying to get their retaliation in first. The rest of our papers this morning are reporting that the Archbish of Canterbury called Ms P’s ‘Rwanda Plan’ ungodly (link). His outburst made for nice headlines.
Firstly – those Tory rats. Allegedly the PM is facing yet another fine for partying during covid, this time of £10,000. Also, that fabulous Gray Report won’t be published, the Met says, before all fines have been paid:
“Tensions between Sue Gray and the Metropolitan Police have been reignited after detectives told her she could not publish her report into Downing Street parties until all fines had been paid, it has been claimed. There are fears that Gray’s report, said to be highly critical and damaging for the government, could be delayed until after the May local elections. Some Conservative MPs are waiting for the results of the elections before deciding whether to move against Boris Johnson, who has already received one fine.” (link, paywalled)
Now isn’t that a lovely little example for the way the Westminster swamp dwellers are manipulating ‘news’ en coulisse, depending on the political usefulness of said news. While some Tories still seem to believe that all must be forgiven the PM because ‘he is a vote winner’, others – a new bunch of ‘Tory Rebels’ – are trying to cut their losses before the local election tsunami. Firstly, see the bland, one-sentence summary in the DT:
“Boris Johnson has been accused of having “instigated” a Downing Street party, as Tory rebels claimed he could face a fresh coup attempt after the May elections.” (paywalled link)
Note that the threat of ‘a fresh coup’ isn’t going to be just about yet another PartyGate incident, it’ll also be about the result of the local elections. One might have thought that Tory MPs in the relevant constituencies would have worked their socks off in the preceding months, to try and mitigate the effects of those scandals. It seems it’s easier to do nothing except prepare for another ‘coup’, as if they couldn’t have done that months ago:
“Senior Conservative MPs said that if the party performed poorly in next month’s local elections, this could provide a fresh pretext for attempts to move against the Prime Minister.” (paywalled link)
Note that these ‘senior Tory MPs’ warn that losing the local elections could be ‘a pretext’, not the PartyGate scandal. Tory policies, local as well as national, which have affected our lives already, are of course petitesses which we peasants cannot hope to understand. As for PartyGate … well, the PM is expected to defend himself in the HoC in the coming days and will allegedly ‘apologise’. That’ll be ok then, correct? However, this little observation made my blood boil:
“He will also urge MPs to retain perspective amid the Ukraine crisis.” (paywalled link)
In other words, he must be forgiven his past peccadilloes because now ‘there’s a war on’. “We” must keep him in office despite his and his Foreign and Defence Secretaries’ blatant meddling in the Ukrainian War, despite his and their gleeful support for sanctions and their splashing out billions of quid on weapons, never mind covertly allowing some of our military to be involved ‘on the ground’. Never mind the cost we all have to bear! He performed so well on the ‘international stage’ – that’s what counts, right?
Yes, that will certainly play well in the local constituencies where sums of £10,000 – the fine he’s expected to have to pay – are not negligible. This will play well outside Westminster where Sunak’s NI contribution has just hit people, as have food price rises and fuel prices. sure it will!
Perhaps some cynical observers like myself might ask if the PM has been so gung-ho supporting ‘that war’ and all it entails because he assumed that this will get him out of the PartyGate hole. I wouldn’t put such political calculations past him.
And so to Madame Le Pen. EU ‘investigators’ have accused her and her father of having “embezzled some €620,000 (£513,000) on behalf of their party, the far-Right National Rally.” (link). Btw – why ‘far right’ is still despised in the EU when they support the neonates of the Ukraine – that’s another puzzle.
This piece of news came out yesterday, one week before the vital French GE next Sunday. It’s not only Madame Le Pen and her party followers who believe this is a stitch-up. Remember that the wannabe Napoleon is currently the head of the EU.
Next, let’s look at some bland facts. The accusation of embezzlement goes back to her time as MEP, from 2004 to 2017. Here’s ‘evidence’ demonstrating that this latest accusation is driven by French politics:
“Mediapart, the French news outlet, revealed at the weekend that a report by Olaf, the European anti-fraud office, accused Ms Le Pen and three other former MEPs – including her father Jean-Marie – of misusing European Parliament funds. […] On Sunday, French prosecutors confirmed that they were examining the allegations.” (paywalled link)
What exquisite timing! For more details of how this French/EU skulduggery was set up, we have to turn to the report in TASS where we find some rather intriguing dates:
“The OLAF investigation was open in 2016; Marine Le Pen was questioned over the case in March 2021.” (link)
What urgency! This investigation was unsurprisingly timed for the 2017 French elections which saw M Macron win, beating Madame Le Pen. Since then, the EU institution OLAF has apparently sat on their hands, going through the motions. The previous accusation stuck, M Macron won, so why wouldn’t he and the EU establishment not go for a repeat, having kept this file very much on the backburner!
We know Brussels can move fast enough when it’s about playing international politics, even unto supporting that war in the Ukraine. Of course Brussels now needs those € 600,000+! After all, that war needs financing, especially since there were reports over the weekend that the Ukraine is demanding $50bn to ‘cover their budget deficit’. That’s in addition to the billions worth of armaments the NATO countries are already sending them (link). It’s purely coincidental that they now sadly had to accuse Madame Le Pen – of course it is!
The week ahead is going to be quite interesting. There’s the PM having to defend himself and there are the French elections going into the last, mud-slinging round. What will our esteemed MSM do? Report on those ‘home news’ or sweep them under the carpet? Will they go on about the war, bad Putin and Russia?
So far, our MSM have omitted to report about ‘heroic’ Mr ‘e forbidding the remaining troops in the Azovstal complex in Mariupol to surrender, forbidding them to accept Russia’s offer, telling them to fight to the last else they’d be shot. Perhaps such reports might not be helpful for Johnson in his fight against all those Tory Rebels … and it’s the duty of our MSM to support the PM ‘in times of war’, isn’t it!
Time will tell …
I wouldn’t trust Boris Johnson if he told us there is a Tuesday in every week!!! The man lies through his teeth without compunction. He thinks his boyish smile is enough to get him through every crisis! If the Tories think he’s still a ‘vote winner” I suggest they need a sanity check!
Boris Johnson is a liability – not only to his party but also to the Country! The prospect of us being drawn into a full scale war against Putin just to keep the Ukrainian (American Democrat backed) pipsqueak in place should be enough to finally cook his goose!!! To keep him on just because “better the devil you know” is lunacy! But as there is little or no integrity in any politician’s psyche these days I shudder to think what is going to happen next!
As for France! If they are daft enough to keep Macron and stupid enough not to see the dirty tricks shenanigans being pulled off once again against Marine Le Pen…..well they deserve everything they get in my opinion! Whatever Le Pen is or isnt…..she is a definite step up from the pseudo Napoleon in my view!
When I think of the dreadful injuries meted out to Yellow Vests in 2019 , people getting eyes and hands knocked out by police bullets, I can’t imagine in my wildest dreams how any French voter could support Macron. A monster in my opinion; and the arrogance is breathtaking.
Yes, there’s a war on, but we are not at war. A subtle difference, which even a clown of Johnson’s magnitude should understand. It matters not whether there is a war on or not, it is clear that Johnson broke the laws that he set and it is likely that he will face other fixed penalty notice fines in the forthcoming weeks. It all depends on which news rag one reads, but is it a case he knew what he was doing at these parties and broke the law regardless because he thought the rules applied to everybody outside Number 10 and not him or his entourage, or he didn’t know he was breaking any law, or he has reliably informed that he did not break the laws that he had set. If it was the last two option why did he go on television and state that we the public were right to expect much better of him in the circumstances and that he had paid the fines levied against him and his wife, which is a sort of admission of guilt, at least where I am standing. If on the other hand he 100% believed that he had not committed any breach of rules that he rammed through parliament without so much as a debate, why did Johnson not request a trial at the Magistrates Court as was his right. Obviously he did not want the full facts to be established in public with cctv evidence etc. He cannot have his cake and eat it, and has to be one thing or the other. These £50.00 fixed penalty notice fines are an utter farce in my opinion, and the penalty should have been very much higher. In fact, whoever organised the many parties and illegal gatherings that have supposedly taken place at Downing Street in breach of the Covid regulations, should be fined £10,000.00, the very sum that members of the public caught being in breach were fined. However the damage has been done now, and the Conservatives will be on the receiving end of a catastrophic defeat in the local elections in May 2022, which will surely prompt the end of Johnson’s miserable reign. He promised so much, but delivered so little will be his legacy.
There can be no doubt, Colin, about who attended those “parties” as they would have had to pass major security before even arriving at number 10. as has been said many times before, it’s not about the cake. They have no shame.
When Pfiffer calls on his motley crew “to retain perspective amid the Ukraine crisis” I wonder if he will first invite them to read and review the embedded vids in Max Blumenthal & Esha Krishnaswamy’s article yesterday in the Grey Zone?
If you have the stomach you can find it here https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/17/traitor-zelensky-assassination-kidnapping-arrest-political-opposition/
Macron’s lead over Le Pen appears to be widening though one can hope that is like 1992 in the UK when polls were significantly wrong; it was not fashionable to admit an intention to vote Tory and respondents to pollsters basically lied. The French estabishment, with help from its allies in the EU, are going into overdrive to re-toxify Le Pen having misjudged her own rehabilitation with the electorate. Much depends on how Mélenchon’s supporters vote (or not) in round 2. Polls suggest they are broadly evenly split between Macron, Le Pen, and not voting at all (because, they say, it is a choice between ‘the plague and cholera’ – like here then!). I suspect many Mélnchon supporters are so disaffected they say they will vote Le Pen as a provocation but will not do so come the day.
Le Pen could still turn it round on Wednesday, the day of the debate between her and Macron even though she is the opponent Macron wanted. No longer arrogantly complacent about Le Pen we can expect him to be ready. While she will be better prepared this time with more opportunity – there are so many points of attack that were not available in 2017 – but her style may let her down. Wooing voters is not about intellectual content. For example, in 2015 Farage tried to make a point about health service tourism but instead of focusing on the detriment to UK patients of the resources they consume he chose to focus on the number of overseas HIV sufferers specifically. This made him seem hard-hearted, a turn off for voters, instead of hard-headed which voters do accept when presented as in their longer term interests. It was not the content of the issue that did for him so much as the style and manner of presenting it. (See for example Kennedy and Nixon in 1960 or Reagan and Carter in 1980).
It is hard to sustain acting out of character and Wednesday’s debate is two hours. Le Pen may start off with her new persona but wily Macron will be looking to provoke her and I fear that under pressure she will be her 2017 self again. It is not policies that need to appear credible so much as the potential leader. Will Mélenchon’s voters see her as a credible Président as a person? For that she needs a composure she didn’t have in 2017.
We are seeing a different Le Pen this time round, but I’m not sure it will hold up in the debate. Eschewing large rallies she has been effective in towns and villages but that intimate style may not translate to a 2 hour television debate. Farage was at his most effective in rallies where he had the stage to himself but in the 2015 General Election TV debate misunderstood how to appeal to voters whom he had not appealed to before. I suspect the same will be true of Le Pen on Wednesday. I hope to be pleasantly surprised, but I have hoped year after year. At least, in that historical aberration that was 2016, I have lived a life in which, albeit all too briefly, hope was realised that once.
The question is not whether they think Le Pen is guilty of embezzlement, but whether the WEF puppet and all round criminal is telling the truth? I hope the French don’t revert to type and for once in their lives do the right thing. I’m not holding my breath but I would raise a glass if they did.
Doris is off to India supposedly to further progress in the flagging free trade deal between our two countries but some speculate it is more to evangelise the romanticisation of the defence of Ukraine of which Doris is currently cultivating with vigour. As yet Mr Modi is not a convert. We all know how this may end – more immigration, more outsourcing of British jobs, more outward investment and a boost to Indian exports to Britain in a bid to save Doris.
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/uks-johnson-leave-home-woes-behind-visit-india-2022-04-16/
Jake…….the end is nigh. Johnson will be given the heave ho after what will be a annihilation at the local elections, that is if he is not pushed out beforehand. The fool has only himself to blame, and we will be much better off without him. Good riddance I say, but the next prime minister appointed by the Conservatives HAS to be a proper conservative, otherwise they will be done for…
The Ukraine situation is very convenient For BJ and his cronies in distracting us from other important issues…
Is there nothing in any media these days that is presented factually and neutrally instead of pushing a narrative? On Rwanda, last Thursday Mark Steyn spoke with a BBC Africa (who knew?) presenter, who largely (not entirely) confounded the expectation of ‘BBC’.
Yes she lightly chided Steyn for the context that these are predominantly elective male illegal economic migrants, not refugees: there is a humanitarian crisis, she said, people need help, why should Rwanda not stand up and play its part. Rwanda is a fast modernising country; we should not patronise. She kind of evaded Steyn’s point that since the inter-tribal genocide they are short of males. She would rather not put it that way on both points. But the whole thing was revealing and far from the narrative being pushed here, of us sending poor people thousands of miles to some subservient Godforsaken backwater. Rwanda (at least the BBC face of Rwanda) seems only too pleased, for whatever reason, to play its part.
How much is this costing us Phil O? This has corruption written all over it.
Desperation rather than corruption more like. Worth listening to that lady.
Probably costing not much more than the 24 hour rescue efforts, putting them up in 4star accommodation and then funding them and dealing with the cultural fall out whilst they stay in perpetuity. And if it deters a significant number it could save a lot.