The Guardian view on being Boris Johnson’s ethics adviser: the impossible job
If the issues at stake were not so serious, and the behaviour of the prime minister not so egregious, it would be tempting to view the latest Partygate developments as a real-life Whitehall farce. When Christopher Geidt agreed last year to become Boris Johnson’s latest ethics adviser, it was already apparent that counselling a prime minister with no moral compass would be a tall order. His predecessor, Sir Alex Allan, had resigned in protest at Mr Johnson’s refusal to sack Priti Patel, despite Sir Alex finding her guilty of bullying and in breach of the ministerial code. Lord Geidt – who served with distinction as the Queen’s private secretary for 10 years – apparently believed he could help restore confidence in the role. With Mr Johnson in charge, this aspiration proved – to put it mildly – naive. Within months, Lord Geidt was being grievously misled by the prime minister over the procurement of funds for the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat.
From then on, the bar of probity in No 10 has only got lower. Mr Johnson has ducked and dived under it during the investigations by the Metropolitan police and Sue Gray into Partygate. This week, it appears that Lord Geidt came close to the end of his tether, reportedly threatening to resign after judging that the fixed-penalty notice handed to the prime minister was making a mockery of his position.
Lord Geidt’s annual report, published this week, represents an indictment of a rule-breaking culture – one in which the biggest headache for Mr Johnson’s ethics chief has been the conduct of his boss and his own powerlessness to independently investigate it. In its exasperated preface, he records his reluctance to advise a “prime minister about a prime minister’s obligations under his own ministerial code”. Instead, he repeatedly requested that Mr Johnson give a public explanation of why breaking the law did not constitute a breach of the code. These requests were ignored until it became clear that Lord Geidt was on the brink of quitting, at which point a prime ministerial letter was dashed off. This duly contained Mr Johnson’s stock evasions – that his breach of lockdown rules was “unwitting”; that he had not knowingly misled MPs.
Unfortunately for Mr Johnson, this disingenuous bluster will not wash any more. On Wednesday, the chair of the independent committee on standards in public life backed Lord Geidt’s criticisms of Downing Street’s approach to the ministerial code. Even Andrea Leadsom, a former cabinet minister and Johnson loyalist, agrees with Ms Gray that the prime minister has been guilty of “unacceptable failings of leadership”. Among a growing number of Tory MPs, there appears to be a dawning realisation that the lasting moral damage wrought by Partygate cannot be repaired while the man who presided over it remains in office. It is telling that even in the absence of an obvious successor to take Mr Johnson’s place, a confidence vote in his leadership is now a serious possibility.
In the interests of their party, as well as the country, Conservative rebels should screw their courage to the sticking place and make it happen. During the Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations, the country will celebrate the life of a figurehead who embodies for many voters the idea of selfless service and integrity in public life. The contrast with the current occupant of No 10, as Lord Geidt could testify, could not be more stark.
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