Politics

Boris Johnson ally compared Partygate fines to speeding and everyone made the same point

Boris Johnson ally compared Partygate fines to speeding and everyone made the same point
Boris Johnson promises to 'set record straight' on Partygate fine in parliament ...
Indy

One of Boris Johnson's allies compared the prospect of him receiving more fines over Partygate to speeding and it massively backfired.

This week Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak were both slapped with a £50 fine by the police for breaking lockdown rules by gathering in Downing Street in June 2020 briefly to celebrate Johnson's birthday. You know, the one where he was "ambushed with a cake". In doing so, he became the first sitting prime minister to be sanctioned by the police for breaking the law in office.

Since then, and given the police are still investigating 12 events alleged to have taken place in Downing Street while the country endured strict coronavirus restrictions, people have considered whether Johnson and other members of the government might be fined again.

But one ally, speaking anonymously to the i newspaper implied that if he was, this wouldn't be that much of a big deal, using this speeding analogy:

“If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”

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“It may be a neat mathematical trick, but it’s morally and legalistically not the case. And if you look at the nature of the event, when a guy steps into an office immediately outside his own for nine minutes, then it doesn’t mean that a second one goes over some new threshold, does it?”

But people pointed out that if you are caught speeding multiple times, the law doesn't treat each incident as isolated and if you build up 12 penalty points (with a minimum of 3 awarded for each incident) within a 3 year period, you could be disqualified from driving, perhaps because of the cumulative effect of the risk you pose by speeding so often...

The government's own website tell us just that.

Here's a taste of the reaction:

Partygate's hangover continues...

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