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Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

It's more amazing that Williamson was ever Defence Minister in the first place.

Latest: "Theresa May considers the matter closed."

So there we are. No police investigation into a rather serious matter of national security. Meanwhile Williamson himself is absolutely insistent he's innocent and that the internal investigation was ineffective - which means that if he is innocent, someone else was responsible.

And if he's telling the truth, that person remains unnamed, and in a ministerial position.

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The UK has a Crown Prosecution Service which is a public service responsible for bringing charges against people. It’s not up to HMG.

According to wikipedia Attorney General is responsible for the CPS, who answers to the Ministry of Justice...which is a Government department.

An AG interfering with or blocking the CPS from bringing a prosecution would be a _big_ deal.

That's one way to look at it, sure. But technically it is up to the Government though?

Justice Department answers to Trump. Doesn't mean he can tell them to just go arrest someone. No matter how many times he tries.

The US is not the UK

Quite sure thats a Yes Minister episode.

All of Thatcher-In-The-Rye's tenure has been an extended 'Yes Minister' episode. Though I think the writers would never have gone quite as far as Boris 'Fuck Business' Johnson. Who may very well become our next PM.

I had to google Thatcher in the Rye :) Thanks for the laugh. That said I have hope. The more clowns in power, the more pressure on real leaders to step up. This is a phase where the media and social media have allowed things to happen that no one expected. But we learn from that and things change. For the better. They always do. Or we'd still have a King running things.

>Or we'd still have a King running things.

I think you would be surprised how many people in the UK would support that. I have run into a fair amount of very old-school monarchists who fully believe that Liz should seize power in a coup. They also tend to think that we should retake the British Empire and I find myself having to politely explain that these days the rest of the world is slightly better armed than when we first had a go.

As Williamson will no doubt appreciate, a similar story was an important plot point in the original UK House of Cards (the PM's brother was accused of taking advantage of inside knowledge of government decisions, the PM was implicated in leaking them to him, but the investigation was dropped as soon as he resigned).

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