Boris treads the high wire again
THE career of Boris Johnson has always resembled a high-wire act, balanced precariously between triumph and disaster.
But this week, there is a real danger that he could plunge from the tightrope, following the disgraceful revelations about the boozy party held in the garden of Downing Street at the height of the first lockdown in May 2020.
The contemptible idiocy of this event’s organiser Martin Reynolds, No 10’s Principal Private Secretary, is matched by the shameless irresponsibility of those who accepted his invitation to enjoy the “lovely weather” over drinks.
Given the strict anti-Covid rules in force at the time, many staff who received Reynolds’ invitation were incredulous. “Is this for real?” asked one. Yet around 40 people are estimated to have turned up in defiance of the Government’s own rules.
According to several witnesses, the Prime Minister and his wife were among the guests. It is a sign of how serious this episode has become that it has now been referred to the Metropolitan Police, amid claims that Johnson could be questioned as an accessory to a crime.
Whatever the legal challenges, this saga has inflicted severe damage on the Prime Minister and the Tories.
It is just the latest in a pattern of alleged lockdown breaches by Downing Street and Whitehall, which are under investigation by the top civil servant Sue Gray.
On pain of heavy fines or imprisonment, the British people were effectively under home curfew, barred from socialising or even seeing loved ones in care homes or hospitals. Weddings were cancelled, parties abandoned, schools closed, funerals restricted. Yet the politicians and officials who devised this regime were partying as if the rules did not apply to them.
Indeed, just an hour before the Downing Street garden event got underway, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden was on television issuing a stern warning against meeting more than one person from another household, even outdoors.
The Prime Minister is using Ms Gray’s investigation as a pretext to avoid answering questions, but the tactic is not doing him any good.
He should come clean with an explanation. The anger against him at Westminster is not just from the opposition but even from his own party.
Fiasco
The Scottish peer Lady Ruth Davidson has described his behaviour as “indefensible”, while just two ministers turned up yesterday to support the Paymaster General Michael Ellis when he gave an emergency statement, which was greeted with widespread laughter and derision.
Johnson has long been seen as an asset for the Tories, but he is at risk of becoming a liability. What makes this fiasco especially harmful to him is that it reinforces his negative image of being cavalier and self-indulgent. The North Shropshire by-election last month was effectively a referendum on his leadership – and he lost badly.
Yet Boris is the great survivor. Even from this farce, he could still pull through by sacking Reynolds, refashioning his team and issuing a genuine apology. It is too early to sound the death knell on Boris’s premiership.