Did the police stitch up Andrew Mitchell like a kipper? I was at a No.10 reception earlier this evening and a section of a room drained when Michael Crick’s extraordinary report about Plebgate came on Channel 4 News.The police claimed that Mitchell’s swearing shocked ‘several members of public’: CCTV footage, released by the Cabinet Office, showed there was only one onlooker (below, with his head blotted out).
This looks stranger still when you compare it to the account of supposed witness — who we now know to be a copper. He emailed John Randall, the deputy chief whip and his local MP:
‘I was with my nephew and was hoping to catch a glance of a famous politician. Other tourists standing with us were also shocked and some were even inadvertently filming the incident … I, having a keen interest in politics and the Conservative party, knew it was Andrew Mitchell, MP for Sutton Coldfield.
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