Good evening – welcome to the first Full-Moon Briefing from the Wolves of Westminster team. Our aim is to provide you with an overview of the day’s top stories from the convoluted world that is Westminster.
21 MARCH 2023 | NEWS
MET POLICE ROTTEN TO THE CORE
A damning report has found that the Metropolitan Police is institutionally racist, sexist, homophobic and may contain more officers like killer Wayne Couzens and serial rapist David Carrick.
Baroness Louise Casey, who led the review, spent a year investigating the Met Police after Wayne Couzens murdered Sarah Everard. Casey’s conclusion was that Britain’s largest police force needs to be “overhauled” and may lead to it being “broken up”.
The 363-page report highlighted evidence of “widespread bullying, racist attitudes and deep-seated homophobia”.
Asked whether there could be more officers in the Met like Couzens and Carrick, Baroness Casey said: “I cannot sufficiently assure you that that is not the case.”
The Met’s Commissioner Mark Rowley said he accepts the report’s “diagnosis”, but not the term “institutional”. Home Secretary Suella Braverman echoed Rowley’s remarks, rejecting the label of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia attributed by Baroness Casey’s report.
Barverman told MPs in Parliament today that they should judge Scotland Yard on its actions and “not whether they accept a label”.
BORIS JOHNSON ADMITS MISLEADING MPs
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has accepted that he misled MPs over Covid rule-breaking parties in Downing Street, but has denied doing so “intentionally or recklessly”.
Mr Johnson will be grilled by the Privileges Committee tomorrow in a televised hearing, for which the former PM has already submitted a 52-page defence.
Family members of Covid victims have reportedly called the former PM’s claim that he acted in “good faith” sickening, and accused Mr Johnson of deliberately misleading MPs.
The committee, chaired by veteran Labour MP Harriet Harman, but with a Tory majority, has previously said that Boris Johnson may have misled Parliament on multiple occasions.
It also says it has evidence which “strongly suggests” Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street would have been “obvious” to the former Prime Minister.
Mr Johnson faces being suspended or even expelled from Parliament, if MPs decide that he deliberately misled them.
ERG UNDECIDED ON REJECTING WINDSOR FRAMEWORK
A group of Eurosceptic MPs has described an aspect of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Windsor Framework deal with the EU as “practically useless”.
The European Research Group’s chairman, Mark Francois, made this announcement today after the group’s legal analysis of the Windsor Framework – the UK’s new deal with the EU on post-Brexit arrangements when it comes to Northern Ireland.
Findings from the ERG’s analysis state that EU law is “supreme” in Northern Ireland and that the rights of its people secured in the 1800 Act of Union had still not been restored.
But Conservative backbencher and ERG Chairman Mark Francois declined to say how its members would vote on the deal, adding that the group would meet again on Wednesday to discuss the matter before the vote in the Commons on what is known as the ‘Stormont Brake’.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has already said it will vote against the framework.
Any backbench rebellion is unlikely to put the fate of the UK-EU agreement in jeopardy, however, with Mr Sunak able to rely on the support of Labour MPs and those from other parties in getting the deal passed through Parliament.
OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE
- Russia’s President claims that it is the West prolonging the war in Ukraine, as he warns that Moscow will react if the UK sends depleted uranium ammunition to Volodymyr Zelensky’s troops.
- Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have signed statements that “fully reflect the nature of Russian and Chinese relations, which are at the highest point in the history of our two countries”.
- NATO believes that Moscow has asked Beijing for lethal aid in its war in Ukraine.
ICYMI
- The Mayor of London has switched on the city’s first ever celebratory Ramadan lights.
- A demonstration to mark two years since a Kill the Bill protest turned into rioting in Bristol has passed peacefully.
- MPs have supported a pensions shake-up that Mr Sunak claims will help reduce NHS waiting lists.
- Ministers have been criticised over the “grossly unfair” treatment of leaseholders who are having to foot the bill for remediation works on unsafe buildings, due to a Government error.
- Counter-terrorism police are involved in an investigation into a man being set alight as he walked home from a mosque and a man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.
