Sorry Johnson shows no contrition
The PM has apologised for his Covid parties. Will that mollify MPs – and voters? Stuart Watkins reports
Opposition leader Keir Starmer called the prime minister “a man without shame” during exchanges in parliament as MPs prepared to vote on Thursday on whether Boris Johnson should be investigated for misleading parliament about parties in No. 10 during lockdown, say Heather Stewart and Aubrey Allegretti for The Guardian.
Speaking for the first time since receiving a fixed-penalty fine for breaking his own Covid lockdown rules in June 2020, Johnson apologised with “full humility”, but said it had not occurred to him that the gathering was a breach of the rules. Senior Tory MP Mark Harper became the latest backbencher to call for the PM to go.
Further police fines and the Sue Gray report into lockdown breaches are pending and could spell further trouble for Johnson. The party for which the PM has been fined – the one where he was “ambushed by cake” on his birthday by staff he had already been in work meetings with – “feels marginal”, says Camilla Cavendish in the Financial Times. Nevertheless, it makes Johnson the first serving PM to be sanctioned for breaking the law, and the coming weeks may “change the political equation again” – Johnson is likely to be fined for at least two other events.
“Give me five or six more chances”
The PM’s defenders have tried to imply his fine was no more serious than a parking ticket, or that he didn’t understand the rules, but Johnson himself was “not so daft”, says Robert Hutton for The Critic. “He may be foolish, but he’s not an idiot. He has also had more practice than most of us at pleading for forgiveness. He could see that his one path through was just to take all the anger, keep repeating how sorry he was, and hope that eventually his detractors wore themselves out.” That has worked well for him and may well continue to do so. He’s become used to asking his party to “give him five or six more chances. Let’s face it, they probably will.”
Whether voters will is another question, says Philip Johnston in The Daily Telegraph. What has been lacking in the PM’s response to the disclosures that he broke the lockdown laws he imposed on the rest of us is any sense of contrition. Johnson’s defenders claim there are now more important things to worry about, but the real point is not about cake or after-hours drinks but about “probity, integrity and honesty”. Johnson clearly did not think that the “draconian” diktats restricting social interaction applied to him. If this interpretation of his behaviour is what comes across to voters, as polls suggest it already has, he will become a liability for his party’s election chances.
The implications of the scandal go beyond the electoral prospects for the Tories though, says Daniel Finkelstein in The Times – they represent a “constitutional crisis”. The British constitution, because it is unwritten, is vulnerable to its limitations being resisted at the top of government. No system can eliminate that risk – “only people can”. It is the responsibility of parliamentarians to insist that the PM be held to account and removed if necessary if he does not abide by the rules of conduct (which forbid his misleading parliament).
But constitutional changes would help. The power to investigate breaches of the ministerial codes and rule upon them should be made as independent of the PM as possible. Downing Street special advisers should be held to account as public officials. And parliament should slow down and scrutinise the laws it brings in properly, including the rules governing its own functioning. “The party scandal is a stone falling off the constitution from a great height. Instead of claiming no one has been seriously hurt, Conservatives should begin the work of repair.”