The Met’s Partygate probe makes the VIP sex abuse witch-hunt look proportionate. But even that’s nothing next to the deranged reaction of the political class
THE boss stumbles into the room looking somewhat dishevelled. He gawps at the camera like a rabbit in the headlights as he adjusts his clothing. At the computer sits a tieless minion, mid-Zoom meeting, with a string of tinsel draped around his neck. In the background, a woman fiddles with a mobile phone.
On the desk is an open bottle of prosecco or cheap champagne, gold foil torn carelessly at the neck, and a packet of crisps.
It could be a scene from the brilliant Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant mockumentary The Office, with David Brent peering over Tim’s shoulder while Dawn from reception looks on.
Elsewhere, Gareth is still trying to get off with Rachel, from Swindon, and Big Keith is cueing up Slade on the twin turntables.
Soon, sales rep Finchy will arrive with his fierce thirst and repertoire of lewd comments. But this isn’t Wernham Hogg paper merchants, it’s 10 Downing Street in the run-up to Christmas 2020.
The boss in this case is a bleary-eyed Boris Johnson, who looks as if he has just been enjoying a little afternoon delight on the Lulu Lytle chaise longue in the flat upstairs.
We’re told the Prime Minister was about to host a quiz over Zoom to thank staff for their efforts during the pandemic.
News of this event was first revealed a couple of months ago as part of a desperate attempt to keep the Downing Street parties scandal going. When the picture was taken the country was in Covid lockdown and social mixing was banned.
At the time we were told the quiz was ‘alcohol-free’. The emergence of a photograph of an open bottle of pop in close proximity to the PM is now being treated as a hanging offence.
In the Commons during Prime Minister’s Questions, an obscure Labour MP worked himself up into a ridiculous lather of righteous indignation over this apparent breach of lockdown regulations and demanded the PM’s immediate resignation.
The MP effectively accused Johnson of taking part in an illegal bacchanalian orgy when people were dying alone in hospital because their relatives were banned from visiting them.
SCOTLAND Yard announced it would be reopening its investigation into this particular incident. The Prosecco Squad is already planning to send questionnaires to 50 Downing Street staff and is sifting through 300 other photos taken at a number of suspect ‘gatherings’, including the now notorious Bring Your Own Booze bash and Boris’s 56th birthday celebration.
The Old Bill also say they now intend to mount a corruption inquiry into who paid for Carrie Antoinette’s fancy wallpaper.
It’s not as if the Yard has much else on at the moment, like a knife crime epidemic, or an abject failure to solve more than three per cent of domestic burglaries — or the small matter of the Commissioner being forced to resign last night.
The so-called ‘Partygate’ probe is beginning to make the Operation Midland ‘Paedos In High Places’ witch-hunt look proportionate. Even that pales into insignificance alongside the frankly deranged reaction of the political class over the past few weeks. The Bubble has gone stark, staring bonkers, to the exclusion of virtually all else.
We should expect little better from Labour, which has nothing to offer other than confected outrage. But the behaviour of a large section of the Conservative Party is not only self-destructive, it borders on clinical insanity.
This column doesn’t generally go in for conspiracy theories, although it has always subscribed to the view that just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. The feeding frenzy over the No 10 parties has all the hallmarks of a Remainer plot, the revenge of the pro-EU establishment.
They couldn’t overturn the referendum result, so they have decided to dethrone the leader of the Brexit campaign instead.
Their useful idiots among the Red Wall Tory MPs who owe their seats to Boris should be careful what they wish for.
Even Johnny Major was disinterred yesterday to slag off Boris, joining that other equally useless, pro-EU, ex-PM Mother Theresa in the sour grapes stakes.
Look, for the record yet again, I’m not defending what went on at No 10 during lockdown.
Those who make the rules have a duty to live by them. But in mitigation, at least they turned up for work — unlike most other civil servants. And if they had a few sherberts at the end of a gruelling day, who cares ultimately?
The proper way to get rid of a Prime Minister elected with an 80-seat majority just over two years ago is at the ballot box. He shouldn’t be toppled by a palace coup, cooked up in the bars and tea rooms of Westminster.
Voters will make their own minds up come the next General Election. Most have already. Whether they are in forgiving mood once the dust settles remains to be seen.
The early optimism which followed the 2019 landslide was detonated by Covid.
Brexit has been blown seriously off course, which is why the appointment of Jacob Rees-Mogg to make sure we exploit the opportunities created by our leaving the EU should be a cause for encouragement, not derision.
Boris should also appoint a high-level Cabinet enforcer to get Britain back to work, starting with bone-idle civil servants.
This column has long advocated doing what President Reagan did to striking U.S. air traffic controllers. Any public servant refusing to report back to work, without a legitimate doctor’s note, by March 1 must be summarily dismissed, without compensation.
The Hobnob-munching, Netflix-watching, Peloton-pedalling, WFH brigade have had it far too easy for far too long.
This week we should be celebrating the Prime Minister’s announcement that all Covid restrictions are being lifted from February 24. It should be all systems go.
We should be dancing the Conga in the streets, partying like VE Day, with Boris giving a Churchillian wave to the delirious crowds from the balcony at Buckingham Palace.
Instead, the ‘science’, the intransigent unions and entrenched ‘human resources’ departments are squealing that it’s still not safe for staff to go back to their desks.
If HR had been around on VE Day, they’d have been warning everyone to stay in their Anderson Shelters, still wearing their gas masks, and steer clear of the masses in The Mall, just in case there was an unexploded doodlebug in St James’s Park.
The other great excitement in the Bubble this week revolved around a few headbangers shouting at Keir Starmer in the street.
Ludicrously, this was all blamed on Boris because of his Jimmy Savile jibe against the Labour leader. Even Speaker Hoyle, usually a level-headed chap and certainly a welcome improvement on that gurning gargoyle Bercow, had to get in on the act.
BORIS was accused of inciting these maniacs, indulging in Trumpian-style politics. Ever since Trump supporters invaded the Capitol Building in Washington, Boris’s detractors have been itching to pin something similar on him.
OK, so most of his travails are self-inflicted. But this was the week when the Boris haters over-reached.
Dragging up a two-year-old photo of the PM in the same room as a bottle of fizz and pretending this constituted grounds not just for resignation but for prosecution was a bridge too far.
As for Plod, well, as I asked recently: Could Dick of Dock Green guarantee that no senior copper at the Yard opened a bottle of Glenhoddle and shared a slug or two with the troops during lockdown?
And if Boris is to be held responsible for everything which goes on in No10, then Dick had to carry the can for the actions of her own ‘bad apples’ and Starmer must own the failure of the CPS to nail Jimmy Savile, who remains dead.
We knew what we were getting
when we elected Boris, warts ’n’ all. And so did Tory MPs when they made him leader. If they’re now suffering buyer’s remorse, that’s their own fault.
No one seriously expected him to be a hands-on, details man who adheres strictly to all the rules.
He’s a chancer, often economical with the actualité. His current shortcomings have now also been priced in and the voters should be allowed to pass their verdict at the next election, whenever that comes.
When push comes to shove, none of the alternatives is all that appetising, whether it’s the over-praised Dishi Rishi within or cardboard cut-out Starmer without.
Let’s not forget that Boris achieved Brexit against the odds, delivered a successful vaccination programme, and has led Britain out of Covid restrictions ahead of the rest of the world.
Now that the pandemic is in the rear-view mirror, he deserves to be given the chance to see what he can achieve as a ‘peacetime’ PM.
Coincidentally, I’ve just been rewatching The Office on iPlayer. I was struck by a couple of David Brent’s famous quotes, which could also apply to Boris.
Not just: Some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue. But also:
‘When people say to me: “Would you rather be thought of as funny man or a great boss?” my answer’s always the same. To me, they’re not mutually exclusive.’
Fact!