After today’s fun and games, I’ve been reflecting on this. One should always be alert to confirmation bias, and the possibility that the PM’s own legal advisors drafted his thread without any regard to my witterings has to be carefully considered.
But I just can’t see it [1/6]
But I just can’t see it [1/6]
If so, it would mean a PM who has never before engaged in any form of detailed legal exposition - his style is famously broad brush and bright colour - decided apropos of nothing to publish a lengthy legal explainer on a complex issue, hours after mine was widely circulated [2/6]
It would also mean he decided, purely coincidentally, to link to the same PRT document that I linked to, and even digressed (as I did) into clearing up a comment by Leveson LJ that was misreported in the press: [3/6] 
If govt lawyers were involved in drafting this (as opposed to a hack working off a summary designed for non-lawyers), one would expect them to get the basics right. There are five distinct sentencing regimes relevant to this case, not four (he omits post-2015 EDS) [4/6]
I’m obviously not best placed to independently assess this. But the number of people who have (apparently independently) noticed the similarities in substance, even if the language has been changed, leads me to believe I’m not going mad. [5/6]
The most obvious explanation is that Johnson (or likely his SPADs) have taken their info from the blog, stripped out the inconvenient context and used it to present Johnson as a legal sage sharing his wisdom.
Or, as I’m told academics would term it, plagiarism. [6/6]
Or, as I’m told academics would term it, plagiarism. [6/6]
