Johnny Mercer Resigns
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56823348

Apparently there is at least one politician who still has some integrity.

Given the timing, I presume he didn't want any publicity for the cause.

The problem may be that he will be replaced by someone who gives not a sh1t.

That is always the undiscussed aspect of honourable resignations.

RESPECT Sir.

It’s rare to find an MP who stands up for what he believes in, utter Respect to you Sir.

Resignation Letter
 

Text of the Letter:

Johnny Mercer's resignation letter in full

It is with a heavy heart that I am forced to offer my resignation from your government.

I am very proud of the small team in the Office for Veterans Affairs who have worked hard against a strong prevailing wind in Government to establish themselves and start the significant piece of work of getting the UK Government to realise her responsibilities to those who have served in the UK’s armed forces.

I had hoped your premiership would signal a step change in Veterans Affairs in the UK. Whilst we continue to say all the right things, you will understand that if we fail to match that with what we deliver, we risk damaging an already bruised Veteran’s cohort further, as I told you last month in our first face to face meeting, we crossed that line some time ago.

The challenges of the Office for Veterans Affairs are well known – I have raised them time and again within Government to you and many others. It was always designed in a specific way in the Veterans’ Pledge that you signed when you were running to be Prime Minister in 2019. I was not the author; a cohort of charities, stakeholders, veterans and families came together with an ask of the next UK PM and both candidates signed it. However, after signing the pledge your team chose not to configure it in the way it was designed, and from the very first moment you appointed me, I made clear that this was unlikely to be successful.

I am of course, desperately sad events have transpired the way they have – I truly have exhausted my efforts and my team to make it work. But the truth is politics always was a means to change how this Country treats her military veterans, and I remain genuinely appalled by the experiences of some of the Nation’s finest people who have served in the Armed Forces. I fought and bled alongside them. I’ve been far more fortunate than many of them since, and I have a duty to tell their truth to power.

Perhaps nothing embodies this more than what we are asking our Veterans in their seventies and eighties to relive, through endless reinvestigations and inquests, into events often more than fifty years ago in Northern Ireland.

Almost all these events were investigated at the time, and without the emergence of any new evidence and simply a changing of the political tide, we have abandoned our people in a way I simply cannot reconcile. Whilst endless plans are promised and solutions mused, veterans are being sectioned, drinking themselves to death and dying well before their time – simply because the UK Government cannot find the moral strength or courage we asked of them in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, in finding a political solution to stop these appalling injustices.

You have known for some time this was my red line. I am deeply proud of my predecessors who served in Northern Ireland. They are not second-class veterans. They deserve the protections of the Overseas Operations Bill like everyone else. A police decision was taken not to include them. I made promises on your behalf that we would not leave them behind and would walk through simultaneous legislation for them. No discernible efforts have been made to do so, and I can see no prospect of this changing. I have no choice but to leave Government and campaign for them in Parliament.

JOHNNY MERCER MP

Agreed, but a great shame.

An MP with actions to match his stated principles. We haven’t seen such for an awfully long time.

The trouble is once resigned bar the initial political fallout, he is now fighting a corner on the outside.

Sorry I'm confused. He was told to resign and he did as he was told before dripping to the press about it - where did honour come into it?

As has been said, this is a valuable demonstration of truly moral leadership, as one would expect from someone who has served. He fully understood the implications of speaking out, and driving issues, prior to his resignation.

Until the politicians are required to experience first hand, that place, they will never understand how the decisions that they make or refuse to take, are perceived as abhorrent by the troops who set out at their bidding.

Johnny is to be commended for his leadership and ultimate stand. I trust that in the fullness of time he will be restored to his proper place as Minister of Defense. The UK needs more of his kind, rather than the pussy footed types found padding around Whitehall.

IG

Where does is say he was told to resign?

Problem is his principles may be wrong

"Almost all these events were investigated at the time," - is true but later investigations have turned up various coverups, misstatements and downright lies.


If the UK Govt wants to be rid of the subject they should just issue a blanket pardon for event s that happened 50 years ago or older. But that would have to cover not just the military and not just N Ireland

Perhaps we need a statute of limitations

Rudestuff,

He didn’t resign, he was sacked. What might be termed preemptive action.

To quote the Grauniad...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...k-of-resigning

”Johnny Mercer has been abruptly dismissed as a junior defence minister after accusing Boris Johnson of breaching a commitment to implement a controversial pledge to prevent veterans who served in Northern Ireland from being prosecuted.

The junior minister was preparing to quit on Wednesday but his resignation was accepted by the chief whip early on Tuesday evening, eager to put a stop to speculation he was on the brink of departure.

Downing Street said Johnson had “accepted the resignation” in a terse statement and thanked Mercer “for his service” as a minister since 2019 – forcing the ex-minister to publish a resignation letter dated to Wednesday.”......

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...k-of-resigning

anson harris #10
Please state your source of info. I believe I might have missed it.

So, the Guardian says he was sacked and then, in the same piece, says he resigned. Which is it? It cannot be both.

Same thing - in politics, as with many other areas, you are offered the opportunity to resign rather than being sacked. Which allows the PM to express his regrets and makes it easier to be reappointed to another post in the future.

However if it was intended to preempt the letter and prevent or limit any damage it obviously hasn’t succeeded.

Right, so they're two different things with two different sets of ramifications.

More from Politico’s London Playbook...

NO MERCY: Top POLITICO colleague Emilio Casalicchio got the scoop yesterday that Leo Docherty — who served as a British Army officer in Iraq and Afghanistan — will replace Johnny Mercer as veterans minister, after Mercer was sacked last night. Mercer decided he couldn’t stay in the government ahead of the Overseas Operations Bill aimed at protecting veterans from vexatious prosecutions returning to the Commons today, because British soldiers who served in Northern Ireland are excluded from the bill.

What happened: Per our Emilio: “Mercer was planning to resign [on Wednesday]. Downing Street feared he was going to quit with some big drama at the dispatch box so told him to quit tonight. He refused so was sacked.” A government insider told POLITICO: “We’ve destroyed his little plan to flounce out in a blaze of glory.” Mercer claims he was sacked by text but government sources insist he was told in person.

More detail … from the Telegraph’s Rob Mendick and Lucy Fisher, who says Mercer was summoned to Chief Whip Mark Spencer’s office just before 7 p.m. yesterday, but walked out mid-meeting. Spencer texted him after to make clear he’d been sacked. Mercer’s allies tell Fisher he feels he’s been bullied by the government.