What the commentators said
We should all be fretting about the impact of the Omicron variant, said Matthew d’Ancona in the London Evening Standard, but all anyone really wanted to talk about this week was “the juicy details of the knees-up” that allegedly took place in No. 10. Ministers can’t get their stories straight about this. Some flatly deny that a party took place; others suggest that it was conducted in a way that didn’t contravene restrictions, which is impossible given that the Tier 3 rules in London at the time forbade social gatherings of any sort. On the day the No. 10 crowd were apparently boozing and playing party games, the UK registered 489 Covid deaths; some people were unable to be with their relatives when they died because of Covid rules. Voters may not be shocked by political lies these days, but “hypocrisy is a different matter”.
Commentators have been putting on their “best disgusted-on-behalf-of-Britain” voices, said Freddy Gray in The Spectator. But a lot of their outrage is phoney. While it was of course hypocritical of government staff to break the rules, it’s ridiculous to make out that Stratton and the rest of the press team in that leaked video were “laughing at us”. “They were laughing at the absurdity of their situation; a mock press conference during a strange and seemingly endless pandemic.” The video nevertheless spells trouble for the PM, said Rowena Mason in The Guardian. Yet another leak from within a clearly unhappy civil service, it adds to the “sense of untruthfulness” emanating from No. 10, and the perception that Johnson’s team believes it is above the rules it enforces on others. This is creating “an enduring sense of rancour”.
It wasn’t meant to be like this, said Katy Balls in The i Paper. Ministers had hoped that, thanks to the vaccine boosters, the UK would now be heading for a fairly carefree Christmas, even as many EU states were imposing more restrictions, giving the Government a boost. But the arrival of Omicron means that “any Yuletide cheer comes with a sense of trepidation”. Johnson is desperate to avoid introducing any more restrictions, not least because he knows – especially since this week’s video leak – how hard it will be to keep restive backbenchers on side.