CSM EDITORIAL

Last Wednesday night Boris Johnson’s ethics adviser, Lord Geidt, dramatically quit after conceding the Prime Minister may have broken the ministerial code over the Partygate scandal. In a statement released at the time, Geidt said:

“With regret, I feel that it is right that I am resigning from my post as independent adviser on ministers’ interests.”

Since his resignation Lord Geidt has been quite talkative, claiming that the Prime Minister’s attempts as Foreign Secretary to hire his then girlfriend, now Carrie Johnson, as Chief of Staff are “ripe for investigation”.

And on that subject of probity, there is another matter that seems ripe for investigation, which is Lord Geidt’s Wikipedia entry that claims:

During and after the war in Bosnia (1992–1995), Geidt was deployed to liaise with the Bosnian Serb leadership, including Radovan Karadžić, Momčilo Krajišnik and General Ratko Mladić, all later indicted for war crimes.^[18][19][20]

Having been in touch with those military officials who were actually there in person negotiating with the President of Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, and his political and military leadership team in Pale during 1994 leading up the signing of the first major cessation of hostilities on December 31 1994, none of those involved have any recollection of Geidt being present or being involved in the liaison process in any respect.

Clearly, Wikipedia is hardly the go-to resource for researchers seeking bullet-proof levels of provenance, and Lord Geidt is hardly the type of chap to have the time to bother editing his own Wikipedia credentials, but given the divergent accounts of this historical process it would be awfully helpful if Lord Geidt could set the record clear. After all, as his resignation shows, he stands for the most impeccable of standards in public life.