Misconduct and Corruption

Some people believe that a national emergency allows politicians to use exceptional powers to tackle the problem. In some circumstances this may be true but it never warrants misconduct, corruption, dishonesty and negligence in our leaders. I believe that our Prime Minister is guilty of all these things and I have made an official complaint to the Conservative Party. I am quite sure they will fob me off with something about ‘exceptional circumstances’. So you can judge for yourself, I have copied my complaint below.

“Dear Mr Elliot and fellow members of the Board of the Conservative Party,

Mr Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour Party, was recently suspended from the Party for his failings regarding anti-Semitism. I believe the failings, misconduct, corruption and negligence of the Conservative Party Leader, Mr Boris Johnson, leaves you, and the Board, with no alternative but to suspend him from the Party and I ask that you do so.

I believe the Conservative Party’s Code of Conduct has been breached by Mr Johnson on multiple occasions.

Misconduct:

1. In September 2019, he attempted to Prorogue Parliament. He involved the Queen in an action which 11 judges from the Supreme Court unanimously ruled to be unlawful.

2. In November 2019, the House of Lords overwhelmingly rejected Mr Johnson’s plan to renege on an International Treaty he had signed. Baroness Smith said, “There are serious concerns across the UK, and beyond, about ministers putting themselves above and beyond the rule of law.”

3. The introduction of the Coronavirus Act was rushed through Parliament without time for proper scrutiny. This Act does not give Parliament the power to confine healthy people, via lockdowns and other restrictions. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 gives the power to confine healthy people but it requires stringent Parliamentary control. The Government did not use this legislation to confine tens of millions of healthy people but, instead, chose the Public Health Act 1984, which does not require such Parliamentary control but is written in unspecific general words. It is a basic constitutional principle that general words are not to be read as authorising the infringement of fundamental rights, but Mr Johnson’s Government has precisely done that. I refer you to a lecture by the former Supreme Court Judge, Lord Sumption, entitled, ‘Government by decree: Covid19 and the Constitution’ in which he describes all the constitutional failings of Mr Johnson’s Party. It was as long ago as 1689 that Government by Decree was made illegal in England by the Bill of Rights.

4. Mr Johnson appointed Dido Harding, the wife of a Tory MP, to run the £12 billion Test and Trace scheme without consideration of other candidates. He appointed Kate Bingham, the wife of a Tory MP, to lead the Vaccine Taskforce without consideration of other candidates and without her having any experience in vaccines. A company called Randox has been paid £497 million pounds to produce Covid test kits: Randox pays a Tory MP, Owen Patterson, £100,000 per year as a consultant. Legal action is already in progress against the Government regarding £3 billion of contracts, which cannot be accounted for. There are too many other examples to list them all. Surely, corruption is enough, by itself, to have a Minister suspended from the Party. 

5. Having been thwarted, by the Supreme Court, in his attempt to eliminate input from our democratically elected representatives, it seems to me that Mr Johnson has partially Prorogued Parliament by stealth. Social distancing rules have reduced the maximum number of MPs in the Commons from 650 to 50. If the close contact of players in football and rugby teams is allowed because they have all tested negative, why can we not have a full house of MPs if they too have tested negative?

Negligence

1. The Lockdowns and Tiers he has enforced upon tens of millions of healthy people have inflicted some level of harm on every single person in the UK. For many, the harm has been catastrophic. It is negligent to do this without first studying a clear analysis of the benefit compared to the harm.

2. He has imposed these restrictions using dishonest information. The daily death toll as reported across all the media includes people who died of any cause within 28 days of a positive Covid test. People who have died of untreated cancer or suicide caused by the lockdowns are counted as dying of Covid if they tested positive. This accounting method makes it impossible to know how many people have died as a direct result of Covid. It is a corruption of the truth and it is negligent not to insist on more accurate data.

3. Mr Johnson relies entirely on advice form the Sage committee, who have demanded lockdowns to reduce the spread of the virus until a vaccine is found. Any sensible person who was going to spend a considerable sum on, say, home improvements would always get two or three quotes. Mr Johnson has spent hundreds of billions of pounds on draconian measures without seeking any alternative opinion from other, independent experts. He has also failed to realise that 12 members of the Sage committee work for, or have been funded by, organisations involved in the manufacture of vaccines. Patrick Vallance and Chis Whitty both have conflicts of interest in this area.

4. Lockdowns have been imposed based on ‘case’ numbers. Mr Johnson has failed to understand that the PCR test upon which ‘cases’ and lockdowns are predicated is not fit for purpose. The test identifies a piece of viral genetic material but it cannot tell if that material came from a live virus or the remnants of a dead virus which has already been killed by the person’s immune system. To suggest that every positive test represents an infectious person is dishonest.

5. Mr Johnson has imposed Lockdowns on the premise that they are needed to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed. The NHS is constantly under pressure because of this country’s high prevalence of obesity and all the associated metabolic diseases. Apart from a brief mention of his own obesity, he has consistently failed to highlight the fact that 95% of Covid deaths have been in people with pre-existing metabolic diseases. He and Sage have misled the nation by implying that everyone is equally susceptible to this coronavirus, which is not true. Metabolic ill-health is by far the greatest threat to the nation’s health and is involved in the vast majority of Covid deaths. It is incompetent and negligent of Mr Johnson to tackle a virus with so much money, time and effort whilst doing nothing about our far greater health crisis.

The argument in favour of Mr Johnson’s actions will no doubt rely on the notion that these are exceptional times and require exceptional measures. As a medical professional, I dispute they are as exceptional as claimed. Covid19 is undoubtedly a nasty disease but the death toll from it is not exceptional when compared to previous severe outbreaks of flu. The winter of 2017/18 saw 64,000 flu deaths and there were no restrictions on our daily lives. Mr Johnson’s lockdowns are completely disproportionate to the danger posed and therefore in breach of section 1 of your Code of Conduct.

The good name of the Conservative Party is at stake and I trust you will carefully consider the long-term consequences for your Party if you condone misconduct, dishonesty, corruption and negligence in a Conservative Minister.”