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Partygate Shows Number 10 Didn’t Believe its Own Covid Hype, Says Former Supreme Court Judge

by Will Jones
29 May 2022 3:47 PM

Former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption in the Telegraph has weighed in on Partygate to say it exposes both the moral deficiencies of Boris Johnson and that those writing the lockdown rules clearly didn’t believe their own hype.

Partygate is not about parties. It never has been. It is about personal integrity and standards in public life. The Prime Minister can put the parties, the booze, the vomiting and all the rest of it behind him. What he cannot put behind him is the sort of person that he is.

Three points stand out from this grubby saga.

First, the Prime Minister personally decided to criminalise almost all social contact, and then behaved as if this did not apply to him or those around him. It really does not matter whether he thought that his parties were allowed by the regulations. Their rationale was that unnecessary human contact was so dangerous that it must be forbidden by law. He cannot have believed a word of it himself. Otherwise, he would surely not have exposed himself or his staff to this supposedly mortal danger, whether it was technically permitted by the regulations or not. He made his own risk assessment, while denying the rest of us the right to make ours.

Secondly, the Prime Minister has persistently tried to hide behind his subordinates. No one told him, he has said, that this kind of behaviour was not on. It speaks volumes about his moral values that he needed to be told.

This sort of special pleading is a cowardly reversal of ordinary lines of responsibility. Junior staff took their lead from him. They assumed, as Sue Gray points out, that if he was there it must be OK. More senior staff  had their doubts. But their only concern was that it would look bad if it got out (“a comms risk”). At the time they congratulated themselves that they had “got away with it.” Sue Gray goes out of her way to point out that their attitudes were not typical of the rest of Whitehall. We are entitled to ask what was different about Downing Street. The answer is that its occupants knew that the Prime Minister would share their instincts. Under a more exacting boss, they would have feared for their jobs.

The third point he makes is that Boris Johnson plainly misled Parliament in claiming not to have known about the parties, and that at a time of international crisis it is “more than ever important that we should be led by people of transparent stature and integrity, whom we can implicitly trust”.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Boris JohnsonHypocrisyLockdownsLord Jonathan SumptionPartygateUkraine

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107 Comments
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
3 years ago

The problem with Dolan is that he flip flops like too many on Talk Radio which is why I no longer listen.

10
-2
arfurmo
arfurmo
3 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Please give an example of his flip flopping. I listen to him most days and can’t think of one. If there is a more anti muzzle presenter please say who.

7
-1
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago

“Covid certificate plans might be dropped”. They better had be – it will be a casus belli if they’re not. But let’s be clear – requiring testing is not acceptable either, and we will not be able to resume normal life while such things are required. Since when was apartheid acceptable?

33
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago

I’d rather have Thai crisps.
I wonder what they’ll do when they’ve “vaccinated” as many as they can?

5
0
Julian
Julian
3 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

Regular booster jabs, forever.

7
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

Huzzah. Kerching!

0
0
TheFascistCoronaFraud
TheFascistCoronaFraud
3 years ago

I’m familiar with the ugly history of coronavirus vacines and Antibody Dependent Enhancement and but I know very little about the ugly history of mRNA injections/research. I think someone here or on another site said all mRNA attempts also led to animals dying. Does anyone have any good links to studies and layman’s terms information about this aspect of the genocide injections currently being administered and recklessly pumped into childrens’ arms by these war criminal traitorous pieces of human shit aka Her Majesty’s Government and the Opposition, or whatever stupid title they give themselves?

Last edited 3 years ago by TheFascistCoronaFraud
9
-1
SallyM
SallyM
3 years ago
Reply to  TheFascistCoronaFraud

I think the animals dying bit was about previous attempts to develop coronavirus vaccines (see this article and the references therein).

You might find something of interest in this article about Moderna.

1
0
Pendolino
Pendolino
3 years ago
Reply to  TheFascistCoronaFraud

This guy has a pretty sound critique of covid vaccines in his “18 reasons” for not taking the jab. See reason 3 for links to the animal studies you mention.

https://www.deconstructingconventional.com/post/18-reason-i-won-t-be-getting-a-covid-vaccine

1
0
TheFascistCoronaFraud
TheFascistCoronaFraud
3 years ago
Reply to  TheFascistCoronaFraud

I’m fully versed in ADE but I understand there is also a similar pattern of failure relating to previous efforts to create mRNA vaccines. This is what I am seeking information on

0
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago

they got everywhere, those Mongols. They could have crushed Europe easily if they hadn’t turned back. The modern “variant” might just succeed.

1
0
Brett_McS
Brett_McS
3 years ago

“Israel has suspended its Green Pass scheme”. Well that’s good news. It seemed very much out of character when it came in; hopefully a return to the old normal rather than the new one.

8
0
Annie
Annie
3 years ago
Reply to  Brett_McS

In the famous passage in I Corinthians 13, the word always translated as ‘hope’ is elpis. I scarcely think that St Paul meant ‘false expectation’.

4
-1
TheFascistCoronaFraud
TheFascistCoronaFraud
3 years ago
Reply to  Brett_McS

Out of character? No, totally consistent with the mindset of the power crazed, deranged, antihuman Israeli leadership and their obsession with technology and control. 9/11 and the wars that followed were centred around benefitting the state of Israel, 100% provable. Their own documents state as such, loud and proud. Here is an insight into that from the old Guardian, when it was actually a newspaper, not just a propaganda machine for war criminals and their corporate counterparts. The same could be said of the Panorama production too.

Playing Skittles With Saddam
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/sep/03/worlddispatch.iraq

The War Party – Panorama – BBC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtyndOoLMl8

Last edited 3 years ago by TheFascistCoronaFraud
8
-5
Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago
Reply to  TheFascistCoronaFraud

What antisemitic shite.

2
-12
Julian
Julian
3 years ago
Reply to  Brett_McS

Not sure exactly how out of character it is. Israel has been pretty determined in the pursuit of what it perceives as its interests. That sid, I was surprised at just how ruthless they were prepared to be with their own citizens.

2
0
RickH
RickH
3 years ago
Reply to  Brett_McS

“It seemed very much out of character when it came in”

Uh? It seemed very much in character for this repressive country.

1
0
Annie
Annie
3 years ago

It’s to keep us all on the Thai Rack.
To Thai us down.
To ensure we are not released any Thaime soon.

23
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  Annie

(I’d rather have thyme 🙂 )

0
0
Judy Watson
Judy Watson
3 years ago

Well i live in Thailand and this is the first I have heard about a ‘Thai variant’.

We are under military rule here and this government has flip-flopped all over the place. We are opening to tourist – no we are not, yes we are, not yet, soon we will open the Phuket sandbox. Only foreigners who have jumped through hoops to get here will be allowed in. No they are not, yes they are ad infinitum.

Bars are closed, restaurants are open but can only serve food no booze. Buut the convenience stores sell alcohol, open the beer for you and you take it and sit at the table outside. Crazy, crazy country but overall us ex-pats have fared better here than we would have in our own countries.

The poverty that has enveloped the lower paid locals is astounding and many of us do what we can to help

22
0
PoshPanic
PoshPanic
3 years ago
Reply to  Judy Watson

Thanks for your report. In the unlikely chance you see any news crews from the British Tele walking about looking for victims, be sure to tell them your story.

7
0
Monro
Monro
3 years ago

Thank heavens for the land of the free.

‘Mainstream Media’ is now being described as ‘legacy media’. Brilliant!

The public sector?

‘Every subsidy creates a power vacuum that will eventually be filled by bureaucratic or political ambition. The more things are financed by subsidies, the more activities become dependent on bureaucratic approval and political manipulation.’

A better summary of ‘Der Grosser Reich’ Britain in 2021 would be hard to find.

‘if you have a political party that puts the interest of teachers unions over the interest of kids being able to just access an education at all, that tells you all you need to know about the modern Democrat Party.’

‘“Redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the state.”

‘“temporary” programs will be extended and further divide Americans into two classes—those who work for a living and those who vote for a living.’

Over here, all our political parties think that way. But they should beware (and let us watch with anger the guilty shuffle back from centre left to centre right as the next general election approaches)

Mr Cummings has pointed out the gaping open flank for all political parties in this country.

The spineless, bovine stampede of parliamentary consensus has killed thousands of people unnecessarily.

This is a long game. Difficult though it may be to see it right now, sooner or later, there will be a reckoning.

‘‘Republicans gained 58,000 new voters in Florida last August….41 percent more than newly registered Democrats in the state. Florida also went red in the 2020 presidential election, with Trump winning 51.2 percent of the vote and Joe Biden taking 47.9 percent.’

What happens in the U.S. never stays in the U.S.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/27/ron-desantis-lockdowns-turned-many-blue-state-democrats-into-red-state-republicans/

https://www.aier.org/article/will-the-pandemic-promote-political-power-in-perpetuity/

7
0
Fingerache Philip
Fingerache Philip
3 years ago

I thought that Kamikaze meant “Divine wind” but I stand to be corrected.

2
0
Fingerache Philip
Fingerache Philip
3 years ago
Reply to  Fingerache Philip

Thank you for your comprehensive (as ever) explanation and reply).

0
0
BJs Brain is Missing
BJs Brain is Missing
3 years ago

Funny how these ‘variants’ remind me of takeaways. Chinese, Indian, Thai… What’s next?

You couldn’t make this nonsense up. Actually you could, and they do.

13
0
PoshPanic
PoshPanic
3 years ago
Reply to  BJs Brain is Missing

Donner variant?

6
0
MadJock1
MadJock1
3 years ago
Reply to  BJs Brain is Missing

Kentucky Fried variant?

5
0
Annie
Annie
3 years ago
Reply to  BJs Brain is Missing

The TexMex variant, soecially developed for neanderthals.

5
0
realarthurdent
realarthurdent
3 years ago
Reply to  BJs Brain is Missing

The Glaswegian variant, known locally as the “Munchie box” variant.

3
0
thefoostybadger
thefoostybadger
3 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

Dundee variant; a peh, (pie), on a roll!

2
0
realarthurdent
realarthurdent
3 years ago
Reply to  thefoostybadger

Hope it’s not a foosty peh though!

1
0
chris c
chris c
3 years ago
Reply to  BJs Brain is Missing

Falafel variant

0
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  chris c

presumably not a freedom (fries) variant (remember the second gulf war?)

0
0
PoshPanic
PoshPanic
3 years ago

Couple of headlines coming this weekend..

” “Get your jab, it’s perfectly safe” says rugby star”

“Gove U Turns on earlier vax passports comment”

” “Made in China to be classed as hate speech” says Nick Clegg “

5
0
Woden
Woden
3 years ago
Reply to  PoshPanic

Are you saying there is this’cognitive dissbollox everywhere?

1
0
PoshPanic
PoshPanic
3 years ago
Reply to  Woden

The R rate of the new variant “complete and utter bollocks” is through the roof

0
0
Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago

Lockdown is a mediaeval superstition, it was a communist doomsday cult to begin with.

5
0
John
John
3 years ago

If lockdown has become an ideology and it is being used to put fear into a group of people then it meets the criteria laid down in the legislation that defines terrorism.

14
0
James Kreis
James Kreis
3 years ago

He also supports traditional conservative family values which we discarded decades ago. He is without peer as a head of state.

10
-1
RickH
RickH
3 years ago
Reply to  James Kreis

… or mafia boss. Even if he got this one right.

1
-2
Monro
Monro
3 years ago

Mr Nelson, Daily Telegraph, on asymptomatic transmission: ‘Now we learn that one in three cases fall into this category’.

What is this assertion based on?

‘Available data suggest that at least one third of SARS-CoV-2 infections are asymptomatic.’

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6976

How is that data derived?

‘Longitudinal studies suggest that nearly three quarters of persons who receive a positive PCR test result but have no symptoms at the time of testing will remain asymptomatic.’

But the one lesson that has screamed out from the data from a very early stage is that the PCR test results are, at best, unreliable.

Here is someone who puts it better than I ever could:

‘Data from PCR testing – for which there is no proper determination of an end-to-end operational false positive rate – has almost exclusively dictated tier restrictions and lockdown policy in the UK.

PCR’s fingerprints can in fact be found all over the entire global response to this pandemic. Testing with Lateral Flow, other antigen tests and bedside PCR tests are all finding far fewer cases than diagnosed by PCR testing. Even a low sensitivity for all these other tests could not account for the size of the discrepancy.’

‘Mass testing and accompanying harmful lockdown policies are justified on the assumption that asymptomatic transmission is a genuine risk. Given the harmful collateral effects of such policies, precautionary principle should result in a very high evidential bar for asymptomatic transmission being set. However, the only word which can be used to describe the quality of evidence for this is woeful.’

‘Many early studies which purported to demonstrate the phenomenon of asymptomatic transmission were from China, yet the fact that Chinese studies are only published following government approval must bring into question their reliability’

‘…we examined the papers most frequently cited in support of the existence of asymptomatic transmission. Even despite our criticisms of the sources of the data above, we did in fact find only 6 case reports of viral transmission by people who throughout remained asymptomatic’

‘Moreover in all these studies, confirmation of “cases” was made via PCR testing without regard to the possibility that any of the cases found might be false positives. The case numbers found, are, in any event extremely small and certainly not sufficient to conclusively determine that asymptomatic transmission is a major component of spread.’

‘It is also notable that, in what would seem to represent an abrupt volte face by the CCP, a further (presumably government-approved) study from China was recently published (2) which entirely contradicts the earlier conclusions regarding the phenomenon of asymptomatic transmission, which had been driven by Chinese data in particular, early in the pandemic.’

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4436/rr-10

Or, in short, the idea that someone with no symptoms represents a major threat to your own health is complete nonsense, as our sensible grandmothers have always told us.

But still, the ‘legacy’ media, as we must now call them, just doesn’t get it.

Last edited 3 years ago by Monro
9
0
realarthurdent
realarthurdent
3 years ago
Reply to  Monro

The ads saying that 1 in 3 people may be carrying COVID asymptomatically infuriate me.
Even if we accept the whole concept of asymptomatic people being infections, which I don’t (there is little evidence, even according to the WHO), there is no mention in these ads that fewer than 1 in 1000 people in the UK currently carry the virus, or that only 1 in 666 infected people die.

So the chances of there being a death in the UK of a random asymptomatic person from COVID-19 today is about 1 in 6 million, and the chances of an asymptomatic person infecting a random person and them going on to die from COVID-19 is even less.

But I guess that kind of truth or detail doesn’t make for a snappy radio ad.

9
0
RickH
RickH
3 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

“only 1 in 666 infected people die”

Your maths is way out – it’s much less.

0
0
realarthurdent
realarthurdent
3 years ago
Reply to  RickH

Perhaps it is, but I’m going by Prof John Ioannidis’s latest study here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/eci.13554

which comes out with an average IFR globally of 0.15% = 1 death in 666 infected people.

1
0
Julian
Julian
3 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

In any such debate I think you need to consider the age and health of the group you’re talking about, as it is so variable, and their chances of dying from something else in the same timeframe. To what extent does covid increase person X’s risk of dying in the next year? Not easy to find such data, which is doubtless deliberate. Probably now we have a year’s worth, though it’s a bit unrepresentative as it was the first year and will reduce, you could look at all-cause mortality in various age groups and compare non-covid years to 2020/21, though the waters have been muddied by the lockdowns, semi-closure of NHS, care home debacles etc.

1
0
realarthurdent
realarthurdent
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

Yes, agreed, and the Ioannidis paper does cover the significant variability between countries, populations etc.

For example the IFR is probably higher than 0.15% overall in the UK because of our demographics and the state of health of the population (lots of obesity, diabetes, vit D deficiency, other risk factors).

2
0
eastender53
eastender53
3 years ago
Reply to  Monro

Mike Yeadon puts it simply. If you are carrying a big enough viral load to be a spreader you would be sick. Period.

There remains the tiny proportion of presymptomatic cases. However I’ve never seen the ’14 day’ incubation period mentioned before. It’s usually quoted as 3-5 days.

0
0
WorriedCitizen
WorriedCitizen
3 years ago

“ When I found out about Ofcom’s guidance, I was outraged. How dare an unelected quango censor journalists in this way?”

Toby, who do you think may possibly have briefed Ofcom to impose such guidelines?
This is the question you failed to ask.

5
0
Paul B
Paul B
3 years ago

What a Cretin: “In March last year, it was widely agreed by everybody sensible, me included, that talk of the pandemic originating in a laboratory was pseudoscientific nonsense,”.

How’s that working out for you Mr Sensible?

4
0
RickH
RickH
3 years ago

“Michael Gove has said there are “benefits” in Covid status certification”

OK. That settles any argument. If Gove says there are, then clearly, the mini-Mekon and destroyer of education is offering conclusive evidence that there are no benefits.

5
0
ebygum
ebygum
3 years ago

According to the newspaper I read this morning the first reports of the variant were found in people coming from Egypt, so it should be the Egyptian variant.
Just don’t tell your mummy!!

2
0
eastender53
eastender53
3 years ago

A foretaste of any Covid enquiry?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57280418?fbclid=IwAR1PKZbFYuppebwflvvcIkaReCpmJZyXSSqI7UzIAH5LGPhWtEjX7YjSe0s

0
0

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