Report with all the fizz of a jug of squash has not sunk the PM... yet
If this was our Profumo affair then its glamour quotient was sadly lacking. The Sue Gray report spoke of 4pm wine-time and “Pizza and Prosecco”. The accompanying photos showed an industrial-sized jug of apple juice on a Cabinet room table, next to a mournful looking pile of supermarket sandwiches and a grinning Rishi Sunak.
It all sounded like the very worst kind of “organised fun” and yet another symbol of national decline. If a scandal-plagued government is going to crash and burn let it be in a bacchanalian blaze of coke and strippers.
Still, if the criterion of Greek tragedy is a great man brought low by hubris, how appropriate that here a rather more flawed individual should be undone by a jug of squash.
Though the report’s major pictorial revelation was that No 10 is rubbish at throwing parties, the opposition MPS still swapped the photos round excitedly, like a group of schoolboys examining a forbidden stash of Playboy nudes.
The Prime Minister shuffled and squirmed, occasionally reddening, his voice rasping metallically: “This is my first opportunity – ” he began. “To resign!” came a yell from the SNP side.
Ian Blackford’s outrage landed somewhere between a Calvinist preacher and a disappointed mother of wayward teenagers. Elongating each vowel dramatically, he ranted about “sordid details!” “drinking and debauchery!” and “empty bottles littering offices”.
Labour’s Andy Mcdonald sounded more like an actor playing a trade unionist in a really hammy ITV drama about the Miners’ Strike. “How does he sleep at night with so much blood on his filthy privileged hands?” he boomed. (“Shut up!” yelled Kwasi Kwarteng.)
If you’d fancied a real party, not just a Downing Street finger food and apple juice do, a game of drinking Bingo to the PM’S various apologies yesterday would have rendered you senseless within minutes. Out trotted the performative humility: first to the Commons, then in a press conference and finally to the 1922 Committee. It was a deeply, deeply repetitive affair.
“I take full responsibility” came up a lot. “We are humbled – I am humbled!” he’d say, hastily correcting himself. He repeatedly praised Sue Gray, and directed all critics to read her report more carefully.
The PM found a cohort of Tory backbenchers who, like him, urged the Commons to move on to more important things. For Jonathan Gullis, this was the future of the Price and Kensington Teapot works in Stoke-ontrent. For Durham MP Richard Holden it was beergate. Many roared with laughter when the PM likened Sir Keir Starmer – “Sir Beer Korma” – appropriately enough, to the world’s most boring curry.
You could also have played a good drinking bingo every time an opposition MP asked a question of the “Does the PM know he is a Bad Man and will he resign?” variety. What, exactly, did they hope to get from these exchanges, beyond the all-important social media clip? Perhaps, after the 10th try, the PM would stand up, don the sackcloth and ashes and declare: “You know what, random Labour MP, you’ve got me there, squire. On reflection I realise I’ve screwed up big-time. I’ll step down after all.”
But nothing being forthcoming, the end result felt anti-climactic. Having sashayed in wearing a fitted white suit: shades of Death in Venice or Martin Bell c.1997 – Theresa May’s entrance promised fireworks, but in the event she slunk out without a word. The Cabinet rallied around with supportive tweets, similarly-worded enough to give off the vibe of a Stepford Wife or hostage reading a scripted message to camera (“I am not being mistreated”). Even Scots Tory leader Douglas Ross didn’t call for the PM’S resignation.
Nothing much changed today, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t significant.
One anonymous MP told a reporter: “Today is the day the PM is safe. Today is also the day the Conservatives lost the next general election.” Perhaps he or she was onto something.