Party’s over, now sling your hook

IT REALLY is time to bring out the empties from Downing Street.

After a two-year long party, Boris Johnson’s attempts to imitate Winston Churchill’s wartime drinking habits have ended in the biggest political hangover the Tories have faced since putting the Brexiteers in charge of the brewery.

It has gone on for too long. Every day, as the bottle-laden suitcases of scandal clink past the front pages, a fresh humiliation is revealed.

It is hard to think of a nadir lower than having to apologise to the widowed Queen for a disco dancing, garden swing smashing, rule-breaking shindig on the eve of her husband’s funeral.

But with this Prime Minister there is always room for more embarrassment, because he is immune to shame.

As he told Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross, Johnson does not see himself as having done anything wrong and is simply shouldering the blame for his staff ’s behaviour.

The reality emerging is that Team Johnson never saw Downing Street as the greatest privilege of public service in the country.

Instead they perceived it as their entitlement to turn the historic address into a drink-soaked frat house.

An attitude of elitism was apparent from the beginning, set in train by a factdenying defence of Dominic Cummings’ Barnard Castle trip before finally hitting the buffers with the unedifying spectacle of dragging a suitcase full of booze from the Co-op to stock an office wine fridge.

One can lose count of the amount of apologies from No10. The same goes for the total number of parties held there during the pandemic.

After the first flush of jaw-dropping rage, emotions turn to sorrow for anyone who lost loved ones and had to go to funerals alone because they stuck to the rules.

Johnson, the rule setter, and his entire team have to go.

He has shamed us all. Why on Earth is this man still Prime Minister?