He went on to tell her: “I’m very, very sorry, your unhappiness about this. And I feel, obviously, that I’ve been very insensitive. There’s absolutely no question about that.”
The job was reported to be a City Hall role involving policing. She secured an interview weeks after her encounter with Johnson, but her appointment was then blocked by Malthouse.
During the 2017 meeting, Johnson is said to have told her: “Can I just say something? I did suggest you for a role and I was very disappointed when you didn’t get that role… I suggested you for the job and I was very keen for Kit to interview you, and I remember Kit interviewed you.
“I asked him about it afterwards, repeatedly, why he hadn’t given you the job and I was very disappointed he hadn’t. I remember.
“I’m afraid one of the reasons that he gave was that he thought you were too friendly with me.” He added that it was not possible to “just machine friends into jobs. You can’t. Not in City Hall”.
So, bird asks for job on basis of earlier affair. Doesn’t get one. This is now to be a scandal?
As with the Nut Nuts job. She didn’t get it – the system works to prevent it. And?
And he did it all without needing to find cooperative coppers among Our Friends in the North.
Sounds perfect set up.
Gets to shag the interns but is not able to assure them jobs in the organisation.
Sometimes excessive probity can work in one’s favour.
Wasn’t there a scandal around politicians hiring their own family with no oversight?
And another one with politicians expensing everything from duck houses to porn channels and then churning their 2nd homes?
In the grand scheme of things this one is a big yawn: man didn’t bite dog.
‘Sometimes excessive probity can work in one’s favour.’
That IS when you see it happening.
The front runners to replace him are Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss and everybody’s favourite rhyming slang Jeremy Hunt.
Grim.
“She told him her case was an example of how any young woman who “steps into this building is fair game”, there to be “leered at” by powerful men”
Presumably she’s OK with being leered at by the no-hopers? Or maybe low-class males don’t go in for that sort of thing?
Um, yes? He tried to do it. Attempted embezzlement would be a scandal even if prevented. It’s no different here (though it is decidedly more mundane).
It’s not a very interesting scandal, but failure to secure the job doesn’t mean it was all okay.
The safest solution would be not to have so many jobs in City Hall in the first place.
So she just ‘happened’ to have taped her 2017 conversation with Boris? How convenient. Sounds like she was getting all the ducks in a row to put the squeeze on him.
And had she managed to shag her way into a career in politics/public office (a la Kamala Harris) she’d be complaining just as vehemently, of course………