Brexit On The Brink...

[Scooter]

Boris skipped the debate.

Should be an automatic disqualifier.

Piffle. An unofficial debate, called by a minor TV channel?

Ok, I didn't realize that, fair enough.

[Gob]

The voters have a right to understand all the positions of all the candidates, and to be able to compare and contrast. What poor behavior. It’s downright Trumpian.

Ermmm "the voters" don't get a say in the election for party leader. Only party members and MPs do.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Channel 4 may not have the viewership of the Beeb and its rivals, but it has a pubic service remit and is, perhaps, best understood in the US as a cross between PBS and C-Span. The other major candidates were there. There is of course no compulsion for Boris to be there; but I think Gob's assessment - an unofficial debate on a minor channel - is a little harsh. I'm not sure what constitutes an official debate - there is one tomorrow (Tuesday) on the BBC but it's no more 'official' than the C4 debate. Boris will AFAIK be on the Beeb for that. In many ways he is akin to Trump: not just his nationalist tendencies and his incontinent sex life, but also because he has quite a career of appearing as the lovable rumpled mess with the sense of humor on the telly. (And yes - he can be quite entertaining.) He has, despite his Eton upbringing, managed to create a 'man of the people' persona as did Trump. Unlike Trump, he has a three digit IQ.

[Guinevere]

The voters have a right to understand all the positions of all the candidates, and to be able to compare and contrast. What poor behavior. It’s downright Trumpian.

Ermmm "the voters" don't get a say in the election for party leader. Only party members and MPs do.

Yes, I understand that. They still have the right to be educated about their choices. And their constituents do too, for that matter.

[Gob]

Yes, I understand that. They still have the right to be educated about their choices. And their constituents do too, for that matter.

It' an internal party matter, so they will have their systems for doing so. But there will be a proper debate tonight, on the BBC after another round of selections.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Just to bring everyone up to date: they have completed the polling of the Conservative MPs and after five ballots only Boris Johnson (aka BoJo) and Jeremy Hunt (widely known and in fact referred to at least twice on the BBC [allegedly accidentally] as Jeremy Cunt). There was some suggestion that BoJo, well in the lead after the fourth ballot, suggested that a few of his voters should temporarily abandon him and vote for Hunt in the final ballot rather than Michael Gove who was seen as a more formidable adversary, thus ensuring an easier final contest which would be among all Conservative Party members in the country.

That sounds all very Machiavellian and normally I prefer cock-up theories to conspiracy theories, except that I would add that BoJo is likely to have read Machiavelli's The Prince in the original Itallian (Il Principe) or the pre-publication Latin version (De Principatibus).

Be that as it may, BoJo is unlikely to have endeared himself to the Tory faithful by having a very strident row with his GF to which the cops were called. BoJo has had a very colourful personal life over the last 20 years or so and is in the process of divorcing his second wife and mother of his four (publicly known) children. He left her for a much younger woman who was the Conservatives' Director of Communications (I suppose that would be like Trump and Sarah H-S getting hot and heavy [I apologize for putting that image into your head and I wish I hadn't now but the delete button on this keyboard is no longer working]}. Anyway on Friday evening a neighbour recorded a row in which she was heard to tell him to get out of her flat, blamed him for ruining her couch by spilling red wine on it ("You just don’t care for anything because you’re spoilt. You have no care for money or anything.”) He in turn was yelling at her “get off my fucking laptop”. Loud crashing noises, too. So the neighbour gives the recording to The Guardian and calls the police out of concern for the young woman's safety. Of course the Tory spinners are trying to make this out to be an insignificant lover's tiff of the sort we all have - I must be doing something wrong - I've never had the cops called on a discussion with my wife - and BoJo is said to be seeking an injunction to prevent the neighbour's recording from being released.

I think I preferred politics when it was boring.

[Gob]

Interesting that the neighbour gave the recording to Th Grauniad, Britain's premier left wing broadsheet rag. They would have got far more for it out of the Mail or other scandal sheet. Politically motivated?

[Scooter]

Giving it to any newspaper obviously meant wanting to see it made public. But if you are a politician whose domestic quarrels are loud enough to be recorded through walls and involve destruction of property, you can't expect to keep that a secret. And Johnson makes it worse by trying to restrain publication of the recording; his constituency is much like Trump's, and just like Trump's they would probably give it a pass if he had waved this off as the nothing burger that it appears to be with what know.

[ex-khobar Andy]

The neighbour who called the police has gone public.

“To be clear, the recordings were of the noise within my own home. My sole concern up until this point was the welfare and safety of our neighbours. I hope that anybody would have done the same thing.

“Once clear that no one was harmed, I contacted the Guardian, as I felt it was of important public interest. I believe it is reasonable for someone who is likely to become our next prime minister to be held accountable for all of their words, actions and behaviours.

“I, along with a lot of my neighbours all across London, voted to remain within the EU. That is the extent of my involvement in politics.

It's interesting, Gob, that you think it somehow 'interesting' that he didn't give the recording to whoever might pay the most £££. Some people have other priorities.

[Gob]

Carrie Symonds is 'too scared to go home' after she was recorded in a 'political stitch-up' by 'lefty' neighbours while she argued with her boyfriend Boris Johnson inside their flat, it was revealed last night.

Her argument with the PM-hopeful, 55, was reported to the police by Remainer couple Tom Penn, 30, and wife Eve Leigh, 34, who live in the flat above and were listening through the walls.

The 31-year-old spin doctor now fears for her safety after it was also disclosed she had been receiving hate mail at her home in Camberwell, south London.

Meanwhile, her street has been plastered with anti-Boris posters and leaflets.

Ms Leigh, who is the daughter of a millionaire, has boasted of how she gave the finger to Mr Johnson in the street and even took to Twitter to say 'all Tories suck'.

She is a New York-born writer and theatre director who describes herself as a 'Leftist'.

Ms Leigh was raised in a £15 million New York home and her father was American composer Mitch Leigh who wrote the 1965 Broadway musical Man Of La Mancha, which included the huge hit The Impossible Dream.

Last week wrote on Twitter that Tories were 'pretending to respect the memories of the Holocaust dead'.

Ms Leigh also had a leading role in a theatre project called Brexit Stage Left – a festival of plays held in January and partly funded from a £1 billion EU cultural project.

[Guinevere]

Link Gob, since you’re going to complain about the source of any negative story. Would be nice if you’d share yours.

Here’s something more on the story and what impact it may be having on BoJo’s campaign. He sounds more Trumpian every day:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... t-argument

Boris Johnson was struggling to keep his campaign to become prime minister on course on Saturday night as he repeatedly refused to explain why police had been called to his home after a loud, late-night altercation with his partner.

Senior Tories were quick to raise fresh concerns over the former foreign secretary’s suitablity for No 10 as the favourite to succeed Theresa May stonewalled question after question about the incident at the first hustings of the leadership contest in front of party members.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Gob you really shouldn't take your political news from the Daily Mail.

The same piece tells us that at least two other neighbours (not from the same building) heard the row and were concerned about it although they did not record it. I think it's news, useful to the population who may have a new PM in a few days, that the leading candidate has a screaming row with his GF and tells her to "Get off my fucking laptop." Boris Johnson can make the very Trumpian point, and it's a valid one, that people know he's an asshole (arsehole in BoJo's case) well before the election. He was fired by The Times as a journalist for making up quotes and had very public affairs while married. One, with the journalist Petronella Wyatt, resulted in a pregnancy which she aborted. Johnson was sacked by the Tory leader for lying about the affair. (This was in 2004 during the Blair years when BoJo was an opposition 'shadow' minister.)

I don't think that his having affairs is any kind of disqualification from being PM. Being a habitual liar is. Johnson once gave his fraudster friend Darius Guppy the address of a journalist who had been reporting on him (Guppy) so that he could be beaten up. (BTW - that was in the Daily Mail.)

More than anyone it was his lies which led to the UK population voting narrowly for Brexit in the first place. He it was who had the famous bus with the lie (which he has since admitted) that £350 million would be freed up for the National Health Service once the country was out of the UK EU. Again, there are perfectly valid arguments for pulling out of the EU. It would have been nice if they had been made and discussed instead of bullshit at which he is a master.

In short Johnson is about as qualified to be PM as his buddy Trump is to be President. In fairness to him, his IQ is probably the same as Trump's but with a 1 in front of it.

Edited to correct a typo (brain fart variety).

[Gob]

Ah, you've fallen for that one. It was not a lie, we were paying £350 million a week to the EU, (prior to getting a portion of it back,) and the bus did not say that that money should all go to the NHS. Here's what the bus said;

[ex-khobar Andy]

I did make an error in my post: just not the one you mention, Gob. Boris has never admitted that the number and the message was an error (plenty of people, including the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Andrew Dilnot, have disputed it) - it was in fact Nigel Farage (then UKIP - UK nationalist party - leader) who called it a mistake. When you are less honest than Farage you have a serious problem. That's one of those low bars which only limbo dancers have a shot at.

[Scooter]

So what's the spin here supposed to be, that this argument that someone was able to record from another apartment didn't actually happen? That the recording is a fake or was somehow doctored?

Because otherwise I'm not clear on how this alters the facts of what happened.

Except, of course, that being able to record their fight from within an apartment above, rather than adjacent to theirs, means that the dust up would have had to have been all the louder.

[BoSoxGal]

It’s a recording, so not much to spin.

Maybe she called the Guardian because that’s the paper she reads?

[Gob]

So what's the spin here supposed to be, that this argument that someone was able to record from another apartment didn't actually happen? That the recording is a fake or was somehow doctored?

Where has anyone claimed that?

Not only did the couple record the altercation, it also emerged yesterday they took the trouble to record police officers at the scene – and take down the registration numbers of their cars, all of which they passed to the Guardian.

Because otherwise I'm not clear on how this alters the facts of what happened.

Except, of course, that being able to record their fight from within an apartment above, rather than adjacent to theirs, means that the dust up would have had to have been all the louder.

A couple having an argument? Heaven forbid....

Scotland Yard said in a statement: “At 00.24 on Friday 21 June, police responded to a call from a local resident in [south London]. The caller was concerned for the welfare of a female neighbour.

“Police attended and spoke to all occupants of the address, who were all safe and well. There were no offences or concerns apparent to the officers and there was no cause for police action.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ie-symonds

[Scooter]

In my very first post about this, I referred to the incident as a "nothing burger". It is the reaction of Johnson, and now his squeeze, that is giving the story continued life. "Sure we had a fight, like millions of other couples do, so the fuck what," should have been the response. Trying to paint themselves as the victims of some nefarious plot ("remainers","listening through the walls","too scared to go home"), rather than of their own foibles, makes it look like they there was something more to the story that they are trying to hide.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Not only did the couple record the altercation, it also emerged yesterday they took the trouble to record police officers at the scene – and take down the registration numbers of their cars, all of which they passed to the Guardian.

I think it's more likely that, when the police arrived, they filmed them from their upstairs apartment. Then, when the Guardian called the Metropolitan Police office who could not confirm the altercation, they (Guardian) called the neighbours back and said well the cops don't confirm it. The neighbours probably said something like - hold on we have video of the cops and the IDs of the cars are on the roof (per Wikipedia which is always right - Police vehicles in the United Kingdom have markings of symbols, letters and numbers on their tops to enable aircraft to identify them. These markings show the use of the vehicle, its force code and a vehicle identifying mark or the police division to which the vehicle belongs.) so you (Guardian) can call them back and quote those numbers to them.

So I don't think that they 'took the trouble to record' the car numbers - it's more that they already had it passively from recording the arrival of the cops on scene.

From the Guardianreport:

“Police attended and spoke to all occupants of the address, who were all safe and well. There were no offences or concerns apparent to the officers and there was no cause for police action.”

I would dearly love some details of the police action. Did they search the flat? I hope they didn't just go to the front door and BoJo and his GF say - nothing to see here, move along please. If there is reasonable evidence (neighbour callout, recording) of a noisy altercation and sounds of female distress, one would expect them to check the whole place to make sure that there wasn't a third person there who in fact did need help. I am sure there was not; but are the police sure? I think this will run for a little while.

Don't get me wrong: I don't think that the fact that BJ and GF had a loud bust up is itself disqualifying. But it should be part of the general knowledge about him before we (they) select a new PM. I was ABB (anyone but Boris) long ago.

[Scooter]

There is that too, was the police response in any way compromised by who they found at the door when they came?