The Pincher scandal is just another Partygate without the canapes, an all too familiar tawdry tale of deceit and dishonour from No10.
We will probably never know exactly what Boris Johnson knew and when about the alleged sexually predatory behaviour of the former deputy chief whip, Chris Pincher. Pincher stood down after assaulting two fellow guests at the Carlton Club – a Tory party private members’ club in London’s Piccadilly – last Wednesday evening.
Pestminster has become a glazier’s fantasy of glass houses and the opposition parties have been pretty much neutered given their own sex scandals. Parliamentary workers’ unions are now declaring Westminster an unsafe environment for staff.
And now civil servants are taking the rare step of openly cutting through the bull and attacking the lies of the PM.
Johnson’s own Cabinet ministers are so sapped of the will to defend that most are refusing to speak to the media about Pincher. Junior minister Will Quince was yanked from obscurity to do some early press and dutifully denied the PM knew anything.
Quince naively went on TV and said he spoke to No10 and asked “firmly and clearly” what had happened. He said it was made clear to him that “the Prime Minister was not aware of any allegation or complaint made against the former deputy chief whip Chris Pincher”.
After it emerged this was mince, Quince’s bit part in the drama was relegated to the equivalent of a corpse in Casualty. Quince, minister for children, was sent back to his office to tackle the big issues such as whether Noddy is appropriate school reading.
Next up the PM’s loyal walkie-talkie doll Dominic Raab was sent forth to gobbledygook his way through interviews. Raab has turned obfuscation into an art form but even he looked like his batteries were failing as the day progressed.
He blustered his way through an interview on Sky at 7.15am yesterday with limitless gall and lawyerly pedantry. He summed it up with: “My sense was that Chris Pincher was actually an exceptional minister and very well regarded.” Translation: Apart from the men he groped, he was a good egg.
But while Raab was on air at BBC Breakfast, former top civil servant Lord McDonald tweeted his bombshell letter claiming that the PM was told “in person” about a complaint over Pincher back in
in 2019.
But in the face of such blatant lying, he could keep schtum no longer and set the record straight that Johnson had been briefed personally about “Pincher by name, pincher by nature”.
McDonald must have set his watch as the timing of the tweet was impeccable, and nice that he could see Raab’s reaction live on screen. When confronted on air with the bombshell, Raab looked like he was considering whether to answer the question or feign a stroke.
It was only 7.30am and thereafter Raab’s day’s proceeded in hourly increments of hellishness. If he had any integrity this might have bothered him.
Next to slice him off the spit and serve him up as kebab was Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain. How Raab must have longed for the day when Piers Morgan used to drown out Susanna’s journalism with random exclamations of “snowflake”.
Yes, Rabb said, a complaint against Pincher had been upheld but that didn’t make him “guilty”. At this point he had decided to drop all pretence of truthfulness and brazen out the lies with the confidence of a flat earther.
The former head of the civil service then declared a pattern of No10 trying to “mislead and confuse stories”. Lord Kerslake said it was “inconceivable” that those around the PM were unaware of the sexual misconduct claims.
Civil servants might throw a slipper at the telly if they get frustrated with the Government, they never tweet out pants-on-fire claims about the PM. That’s how serious this Government’s deception has become. Pincher was promoted to deputy chief whip for his loyalty during the no-confidence vote in Johnson.
Another vote of no confidence is perculating but ultimately we all have to sit here and be governed by sex pests and liars until the Tories decide. Surely, they must find a conscience eventually and rid us of men like Johnson, Raab and Pincher.
Childless aren’t to blame for our problems
The country’s birth rate is declining and we’ll be faced with a shortage of workers in the future. The answer one might assume could be to give asylum seekers the right to work.
Or perhaps relaxing our immigration barriers to welcome back all those European workers who left after Brexit. But according to demographer Dr Paul Morland, we should tax the childless.
In a national newspaper, Morland suggested populating our country with our own people. He said we should “provide most of the population growth from births within our racially and ethnically diverse country rather than immigration”.
Morland said we should be “incentivising families to have more children and to have them when they are younger”.
For viewers of the Handmaid’s Tale, this might seem familiar, the idea of young women being reduced to breeding factories.
If women want to have children when they are young then great but they should never feel pressured into making that decision. Instead of taxing childless couples, we should increase taxes for the rich.
Increased immigration is the answer not only to our population shortage but to the global refugee crisis. It would also be cheaper than Government-sponsored trafficking flights to Rwanda.
Minion madness
Gentleminions, youngsters dressed in suits, are being banned from cinema showings of the latest Despicable Me spin-off.
The craze follows a TikTok craze where teenage boys dress up and film themselves shouting Minion gibberish at the film
It’s hardly razor gang material and these kids have been cooped up for two years, so just let them be Minions for a couple of hours.
