This is quite right. But it is also true more broadly. Free speech and the open society only function where there is an agreed set of facts. Johnson, like all populists, attempted to sabotage that principle - through his own lies and the undermining of institutions.
They're absolutely nailing him to the mast here. Going out of their way to show due process followed, which makes his crybaby attacks even more pernicious.
The full list of ways in which Johnson misled the House. It's devastating. Just absolutely ruinous.
A reminder of how silly this all is. No-one who lived through lockdown was under the impression that you could opt for 'imperfect' social distancing if that's more convenient.
Johnson's comments on the report when it was passed to him under condition of confidentially was itself another act of contempt for the House.
And it's this final act of contempt which seems to have pushed the committee to recommend the extraordinary 90-day sanction and possibly the block on a parliamentary pass.
That shit is explosive: formal, thorough, closely argued, with a water-tight evidence base. They brought a sniper rifle to a knife fight.
This is the end of a story which began with Johnson's prorogation of parliament. It ends here, with another final act of contempt. He finally, belated, got his comeuppance.
"There has been a sustained attempt... to undermine the Committee’s credibility"
Report states that there will now be a second report to deal with the attempt to undermine it. That could embroil several other Conservative MPs, who acted as Johnson's advance guard, undermining its work and questioning the motives of its members.
I'm probably too blissed-out on a sunny Thursday morning, but could that include Dorries? Be hilarious if she ended up suspended for all her nonsense.
Johnson in a nutshell. Committees are only legitimate if they exonerate him.
The report really is a delightful combination of brutality and thoroughness. It's like watching someone be surgically disembowelled.
Johnson's first argument for why he did not break - basically that words like "usually and "wherever possible" mean they could be bent as desired. Then the committee response. If this was true, businesses could ignore all the guidance if it was hard to achieve.
When Johnson said he has received assurances rules had been followed at all time, he was predominantly talking about two Daily Mail journalists he had hired for press work, both of whom had been at the party.
More from Johnson's PPS on that really thorough advice Johnson sought on whether rules were broken.
"You wouldn't know her, she goes to a different school".
It's funny, We got so used to Johnson lying, that it felt almost like a starting assumption for whatever he said. But it's fascinating to see all the bullshit laid bare in front of you.
On the issue of whether Johnson intended to mislead the House, which his supporters have made so much of recently. The report's conclusion is, needless to say, merciless.
At this point they are effectively machine gunning a corpse.
So this is truly extraordinary. The initial conclusion was that Johnson's suspension should be, at a minimum, enough to trigger recall - ie ten days. Maybe it would have been ten days, or perhaps 20.
But that report would have been put to the Commons as a motion, which could be amended. You can easily imagine No.10 trying to massage it down to a nine day suspension and avoiding the byelection.
There was a still, I suspect, a potential way out for Johnson. But then this happened....
This constituted a secondary act of contempt.
And that secondary contempt triggers a tertiary contempt, because it suggests that Johnson even lied to the committee about whether he had lied about the committee.
It's like a whole new specialist field of science. The quantum of contempt.
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There's no intellectual debate to be had about what's happening. It's not about immigration, or integration, or Islam. It's about a bunch of violent thugs blaming Muslims for a terrible crime, being instantly disproved, and then continuing with their bullshit anyway.
If you start saying we need to change policy, or reconsider an approach to anything at all on the back of this violence, you are basically legitimising it. You are laundering the reputation of Nazi thugs.
There's really no complexity here at all. They're cunts. The reptile part of the human brain. They threaten the safety of Muslims and Asians in general. They need to be universally condemned by politicians and stamped on hard by police. That's it. That's the response.
Lots of things can be true at the same time. 1) In opposition, Labour knew the Tories were playing a stupid, irresponsible little game with their future departmental spending & tax cuts. And yet they played along anyway, because it was inconvenient to do otherwise.
2) The figures, particularly on asylum housing costs, were worse than we realised. Labour said wonk and wonk-adjacent critics would change their tune after the statement. They were right. Conservative irresponsibility was, as Reeves says, worse than we thought.
3) The core point is that the Tories basically sabotaged the state. Freezing asylum applications, even though it would cost millions in hotels. Promising tax cuts even though officials were earning them that the prison system was about to collapse. It's truly unforgivable.
Let's have an honest conversation about the election result: No party should secure 63.2% of MPs on 33.7% of the popular vote. And that's as true for Labour as it was for the Tories. shorturl.at/Yl3FK
Many seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time. 1) the election result is a triumph for the forces of reason and progress 2) The Labour vote is the consequence of a conscious and extremely efficient campaign 3) this result is democratically intolerable.
We should also be honest about something else, uncomfortable though it is. Reform deserved more seats. They got 0.8% of MPs on 14.3% of the popular vote. The Lib Dems got 11.1% of MPs on 12.2% of the popular vote. That's not right.
First, we've no idea if that Reform number is right. Second, come on people what's the matter with you. After 14 years of the most egregious reactionary horror, we're about to get one of the most progressive parliaments in history.
Everything changes now. Everything. Not just the policies, but much deeper than that.
The values and the personalities of the people in charge will be entirely different. You might not like every position they adopt, but they will hold a bundle of decent, humane, tolerant progressive instincts which are completely opposed to what we've seen for the last decade.
Right. TV debates. Basically the worst possible way to spend an evening. I'm starting with this. I do not rule out escalating to rum and possibly arsenic.
Are they in some kind of 90s video game?
Sunak has a difficult message here: Starmer will do this (BAD) but also we don't know what he'll do (ALSO BAD). He really needs to settle for one or the other. It's rather a struggle to convince people of both contradictory things at the same time.
A little while back, Gary Frank, one of the greatest superhero artists alive, put my book on the cover of his comic.
My brain basically collapsed with joy. When I had put it back together, I asked him if I could buy the original art.
He said yes - except that he refused to sell it to me and instead asked that I make a donation to Veterans Aid.
Original comic art is worth a lot, especially for someone at this level - 100s of £, often more. It's a preposterously generous thing for him to have done.