Af ter the damp squib, time to turn the page

IF a picture paints a thousand words, the photographs taken in Downing Street’s Cabinet room on June 19, 2020, are an essay in ordinariness.

Boris Johnson stands at a table thinly spread with sandwiches and juice. rishi Sunak and officials look on. a computer screen for presentations is on standby.

It is nothing more or less than a portrait of life in no10 as the Prime Minister and his staff battled 24/7 against the worst global health emergency in a century.

Yet this mundane scene, revealed in Sue Gray’s Partygate report, is the impromptu birthday ‘celebration’ that earned Mr Johnson a £50 fine for flouting lockdown.

Some bash! From the self-righteous lather that Boris’s enemies had worked themselves into for months, the nation might have expected images of the PM quaffing champagne with dancing girls, like some degenerate roman emperor.

A smoking gun it certainly isn’t. Most fairminded people will look at these innocuous photos and ask: is that it?

Don’t get us wrong. after senior civil servant Miss Gray published her full report, Mr Johnson was right to show contrition and offer a sincere apology.

Her 37-page dossier makes depressing reading. there was clearly a cavalier attitude to Covid restrictions in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, with regular after-work drinking sessions taking place.

The details are lurid. Drunken staff vomiting and brawling, partying until the crack of dawn, the former principal private secretary boasting that ‘we seem to have got away with’ one drinks gathering.

And the abuse and mockery doled out to cleaning and security staff at no 10 by intoxicated officials is beyond shameful.