Fiona Onasanya MP has been found guilty of perverting the course of justice. The Labour Party have, correctly, withdrawn the whip. Sentencing will take place at a later date.
The circumstances are somewhat similar to those regarding Chris Huhne's 8-month jail sentence, although it should be noted that he pleaded guilty in that case to an offence from a decade earlier. Those who plead guilty generally receive a one-third discount on their sentence, which (presumably) means that he would otherwise have got a 12-month sentence.
That case related to 'points-swapping' - one party persuading the other to 'take' speeding points.
In the Onasanya case, the prosecution case was that she lied 'persistently and deliberately'. When receiving a Notice of Intended Prosecution for speeding, the form was returned stating that the offence was committed by Aleks Antipow - who was in Russia at the time.
She continued to deny that she had been driving the car at the time, but both her mobile phones' network data showed that she had been in the vicinity of the speed camera.
When the Cambridgeshire Police camera unit asked Onasanya to provide the correct information, she replied: "I have supplied the details made known to me as well as the licence information... I have provided a completed nomination previously". In a phone call on November 2 last year, she told an investigator that she 'stands by her nomination'.
The level of dishonesty described seems to me to be far in excess of that in the Chris Huhne case, and this is a recent (rather than historic) offence. She was also a solicitor; if anyone understands the gravity of the offence of perverting the course of justice, it should be her.
From the above, you'd expect me to have very little sympathy for her. What I've described would imply that she's likely to face a couple of years in prison. Over an offence for which she should just have got 3 points on her licence.
And yet...how easy it must be for one lie to lead to another, for such things to spiral out of control - lies growing bigger and bigger, feeling backed into a corner of defending them.
I suppose this is why truth as a concept matters; when we get used to little lies, they build to something more and more.
I can understand that people can get trapped into something they didn't mean to happen. And I can understand that Fiona Onasanya suffers from MS.
So, for some reason that was possibly too generous, I was inclined to have at least a modicum of sympathy for how someone can find themselves sucked into a situation where they end up committing a serious criminal offence like this one.
Fiona Onasanya professes to be a Christian. Now, everyone (even Christians) do stupid things from time to time. But she has apparently said this to Labour MPs in a WhatsApp group: "What I do know is that I am in good biblical company along with Joseph, Moses, Daniel and his three Hebrew friends who were each found guilty by the courts of their day."
NO! I have spent a lot of time working with the persecuted church, in any way that I can in my elected job, because I believe that the hundreds of thousands of Christians around the world who are being persecuted - often imprisoned - for their faith, are people who deserve a voice. Whether the regimes persecuting them are atheist, Islamic, Hindu, or anything else, those Christians being jailed for standing firm for their faith deserve a voice. (And, I've spoken up for other religious minorities being persecuted too)
To compare criminal actions, for a very serious criminal offence indeed, with being persecuted because of your religious beliefs - whether in Biblical times or today - is to conflate criminality with heroism.
That comes dangerously close to a theologian's definition of evil: to move beyond the mere choosing of 'wrong' over 'right', but to claim that the 'wrong' IS 'right'.
EVEN IF, to take the most charitable view imaginable, she has somehow been wrongfully convicted - EVEN IF the jury has unanimously made a mistake - such comparisons are wrong: being persecuted for your faith is different from being prosecuted for alleged criminal actions unrelated to faith.
I am disgusted. I hope I'm wrong, that this isn't so bad as it's being made out to be. But I don't see how.
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