Obiter can appreciate that any newspaper worth its salt will be trying to find new angles on Boris Johnson’s current troubles.
But perhaps The Times got a little overexcited today with its (‘exclusive’) story on the prime minister’s response to potential questions from the police over alleged breaches of lockdown rules.
‘Boris Johnson to get private lawyer for questions on Downing Street parties’ was the headline, with the article outlining that The Times had been told Johnson had ‘lined up a legal expert on coronavirus regulations’ to help his potential defence.
The PM, it was noted, would be paying for his lawyer.
Far be it for us to criticise, but ‘man appoints expert lawyer to help him with legal issue’ is possibly not the humdinger the paper might be suggesting. It would certainly have been newsworthy if Johnson was preparing to conduct his own defence, or was instructing a lawyer who wasn’t an expert in coronavirus regulations, or had forgotten entirely the usual process for anyone contacted by the police. Even the fact he is paying for legal advice is hardly a smoking gun, given it was unlikely he was going to put it on expenses.
But it won’t have escaped readers’ attention that Johnson’s current predicament means his dismissive attitude to lawyers may be eased somewhat. It is less than 18 months since the PM told his party conference that ‘lefty human rights lawyers and other do-gooders’ were causing the criminal justice system to be ‘hamstrung’.
Whoever he appoints as an adviser in the coming weeks, Obiter imagines he might be rather grateful for the skills of a lawyer, be they lefty do-gooders or not.
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