Top 10 Corrupt Tory Parties
At the time of writing (14 December, 2021), Shaun Bailey is the latest conservative to get into trouble over the Tory Party’s Christmas parties last year (henceforth known as The Tory Parties).
Throughout November and December, 2020, the UK was pretty much in lockdown again. Christmas was a bit of a shambles as the government had made it a priority NOT to cancel Christmas but, as the big day approached, they changed their mind. Consequently, service stations were inundated with relatives passing presents to each other, desperately trying to keep 2m apart.
The country was put into tiers, depending on how bad the virus was in any one place. You weren’t supposed to leave your tier and, in London at least, you weren’t allowed to mix with any other household.
I exchanged presents with my sister in a car park near Basingstoke. We had sandwiches outside in an industrial estate. It was a curious time. I admit, I had travelled beyond the edge of London’s tier by a mile or two. I had expected a police patrol at the ‘border’ but cars were flowing along the M3 without any problem.
But everyone stood by the letter of the law. None of us had guests over Christmas. On the big day itself, we set up some nibbles on the wall between our house and our neighbours. In the freezing cold, we kept a good distance apart and remained outside for half an hour or so.
But in December 2021, it emerged that the very government who had set the rules failed to keep them. It started with rumours of a party at 10 Downing Street (there was no suggestion the PM attended but you’d think you’d know if there was something going on in your house). He denied any laws were broken but wouldn’t go so far as to deny the party itself had taken place (which, in itself, means the law was broken).
Tory Parties Out! Christmas Murder Mysteries In!
May I suggest that, instead of attending LIVE Tory parties last Christmas, the Tory party (and all other political parties, or party supporters) should have been playing The Lockdown Murder Mystery online.
And this year, instead of a Tory party in person, they’d be better off spending twenty quid on this Christmas Murder Mystery. Next year, rather than book any Tory parties, they should play me new mysteries (which I hope by then will included a Sherlock Holmes Mystery, the YouTube Mysteries and, maybe -inspired by you know who – Murder at the Tory Party Parties.
Who's Shaun Bailey?
Shaun Bailey was the Conservative party candidate for London Mayor. He didn’t win but he was the chair of the the London assembly police and crime committee.
And yet, here he was in the middle of a photograph, taken the the Conservative HQ, surrounded by twenty or so party-goers. There is NO social distancing, there are party hats, glasses of wine, smiling faces. If, in a quiz in years to come, you were asked to identify the year this photo was taken, you’d have no clue (other than the fact it COULDN’T POSSIBLY be 2020).
And yet it was!
Talking of quizzes, a few days earlier, the PM had had a photo released showing him at a Downing Street quiz at the same time. To be fair, there are only three of them in the picture and the party wasn’t quite so wild. Still illegal of course, but he is Boris Johnson.
Does a quiz fall into the bracket of Tory parties? Maybe. But you wonder if he can get any of the questions right. He didn’t know the answer to question 1: Was there a party at Downing Street in December?
I’d love to know what his final score was.
It’s quite possible the Daily Mirror (the paper responsible for breaking these stories) has taken the story down now, so this link may not work. There will be more Tory parties but forgive me if this link doesn’t work.
Why take photos at these Tory parties?
If you write murder mysteries, you are always looking out for plot ideas. Some believable, some not.
These photos got me thinking. WHO TAKES THE PHOTOS?
And why are they allowed to take them? That;’s the bit I don’t understand. The Shaun Bailey party photo shows several Conservative members (none of them MP’s) facing the camera and smiling. They KNOW they are breaking the law. They know they are doing it at the very heart of government. So, how come…?
It must have been passed by the Conservative party because there is commercial party food all around them, so a catering company were allowed to deliver. None of it is underhand. None of it covered up (“Can we cater for all of the Tory parties, please?”)
Are they stupid? Did they just forget to ban photos (and how many other parties were there where they did just that?) Either way, they are very careless. AND THEY ARE ‘CONTROLLING’ THE COUNTRY!
Imagine, as I did, you were a bank robber. Part of a daring team breaking in to The Bank of England, for example. You would know you are breaking the law (at least, I assume you’d know). Just at the very moment you’re shouting out the words, ‘Quick, lads, get the gold bars into these sacks and let’s get out of here’ (or similar), one of your colleagues says, ‘Hang on, let’s get a photo. Smile.’
Would you lift your balaclava (or drop your mask) and smile at the camera? Would you do a thumbs up as you hold up a bar of gold? Would it not cross your mind that this photo could, if it fell into the wrong hands, be used as evidence against you?
Or are you that confident, you just assume you won’t be caught. And even if you are, you’ll simply deny it and expect the stupid jurors to believe you.
Could that be used as a clue?
I suppose, if I think about it, my question is, ‘How stupid can a guilty party be?’
If you had committed a dreadful crime; murder, for example, would you ACTIVELY give yourself away? Would your vanity lead you to boast of what you’d done? Would you, could you, be SO STUPID, as to take a photograph of yourself at the scene of the crime?
Unlike my imaginary bank robbers, these people at Tory HQ weren’t wearing masks to disguise themselves, or protect each other from a deadly virus.
We know that there is CCTV and we assume a guilty person would do their best to avoid getting caught out.
But is there something – vanity, stupidity, arrogance – that may lead you to allow someone to take your photograph and, perhaps, publish it?
I think it is that that surprises me the most. We assume certain things. Most of us, thank goodness, can only visit these areas through our imagination because we don’t actually break the laws.
Most people are not criminals, let alone murderers and, until 2020, you’d never guess it could be illegal to attend a Christmas party. But the arrogance of a man in charge of crime and punishment in our capital city allowing himself to be photographed breaking the law!
You couldn’t make it up!
Only now, thanks to Shaun Bailey, Boris Johnson and the others, YOU CAN. So thanks to all the non-masked, non-distanced, non-clever partygoers of 2020 for the ideas they have inspired for murder mysteries of the future.
Cheers. Oh…smile!