After profusely denying any knowledge of the allegations against him, the Mirror quotes Ray Lewis as saying:
“I became aware of this growing conspiracy quite a while ago.”
It’s very possible that Lewis is merely aligning himself with Boris’s claims, but the Mayor more than anyone is guilty of exacerbating the confusion. The Bishop of Chelmsford states that he made City Hall aware of the claims when Ray Lewis was first appointed two months ago, while the Mail reports that the Mayor first sought legal advice on the matter last week.
So, Boris, when did you first hear of these allegations?
Tags: 7 Comments
7 responses so far ↓
Pippa Crear’s saying “Boris Johnson was in the dark about sleaze allegations against his deputy Ray Lewis when he gave him his job, his office said today…The Church of England said it warned the Mayor two months ago that Mr Lewis had been barred from practising over ” sufficiently serious issues”. “
Thanks for that, Helen.
The curious thing is that Crerar writes that the Chelmsford chaplain claims that Lewis was in Grenada in 1995, but all other sources state that he left for the Windward Islands in 1997.
[...] whole Ray Lewis episode, as bizarre and intriguing as it is, is being covered at length elsewhere and I’ll not rake over it here, except to point out that coming on the back of the James [...]
It’s possible that the conspiracy referred to isn’t the current allegations, but that Lewis feels that someone is out to get him generally. That doesn’t mean he expected this precise set of allegations at this precise time, but was of the opinion that something was bound to come up. Someone needs to ask him what this conspiracy he feels is against him is, and who’s behind it. Then we can judge if he’s genuine or merely displaying an isotope of conspiralunacy (being supported by Mad Mel Phillips doesn’t help his cause here).
Doesn’t excuse the Conservatives from not knowing about the ban on ministry despite being strongly associated with Lewis and his projects for four years or so. Also, looking at the various dates he was doing things, why is he referred to as ‘ex-prison governor’ rather than ‘ex-minister’? He did, after all, do the latter for much longer. Possibly it’s easier to sell a tough no nonsense image for a man who managed a prison* than for a C of E vicar?
* If that’s what he did - I think he only got to a lowish grade and left after a year, but I’m open to correction.
Tom, profile’s of Ray Lewis have hiim as governor of Woodhill Young Offenders Unit.
Woodhill is a large catergory A prison with a young offenders unit on an adjacent site
Here’s a question: according to Newsnight, he accepted the £29k (enough money to buy you a year’s worth of me) from the lady and *promised “a good return”*. It was further specified that it would be used in a “loan program”.
So he was promising to pay interest on it. The only way he can have been planning to do so from his “loan program” was if he was charging a higher rate of interest on the loans to (presumably) parishioners.
The new, business led Church of England. There was me thinking the Catholics had the clear lead in such thinking.