Aside from their personal combinations of buffoonery, difficult relationships with the truth, and attendant fondness for shielding themselves from scrutiny, Scott Morrison, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have one thing in common. The schedule of scandal they created in office was so packed, each controversy tended to blur into one another.
So it takes a second to remember that it wasn’t actually “partygate” that did for Johnson’s time as UK prime minister, but his alleged knowledge of assault allegations levelled at the man he appointed the party’s deputy whip.
Still, partygate — the revelation of several soirées at Number 10, politicians and staffers getting tipsy and breaking the pandemic lockdown legislation Johnson himself introduced, while ordinary Britons were unable to visit their dying relatives — must go down as his defining scandal, the moment from which there was no return.
This week Johnson faced a committee of MPs looking into whether he intentionally misled Parliament about those parties.
Opening the hearing, he swore an oath on the Bible and declared that “hand on heart, I did not lie to the House”, insisting that while he misled the House, it was unintentional, and he corrected the record as soon as it was practical: “I take full responsibility for what happened on my watch.”
It all went… well, how you’d expect.
We did everything we could to follow the rules, except for all those instances we clearly didn’t
At the parties, “we avoided physical contact [ed’s note: some more rigorously than others… ], we didn’t touch each other’s … pens, we didn’t pass stuff to each other if we could possibly avoid it,” Johnson insisted, in that trademark, bumbling, posho rhythm of his.
When confronted with the fact that people were visibly passing drinks to one another in the footage, he said, as if it were so obvious as to not be worth mentioning, “of course”.
What would you have me do, change what’s currently scientifically possible?
“It is clear in Number 10 we had real difficulties … in maintaining social distancing,” Johnson said, having been shown footage of people not maintaining social distancing.
But “we had no choice but to meet”, he insisted, and he couldn’t exactly place a “force field” around everyone.
Also, are the committee sure that the brazen indifference to social distancing they think they’re seeing is actually happening? “You don’t see Perspex screens there, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t sanitiser and efforts to restrict the spread of COVID.”
Tired of experts
Johnson insisted that everything he had told MPs regarding the serial partying in his office was “in good faith and based on what I honestly believed at the time”.
Johnson became particularly miffed when asked why he hadn’t sought assurances from anyone more qualified than his communications advisers that COVID rules had been followed during the get-togethers before telling MPs that they had.
Tory MP Bernard Jenkin said, “I have to say, if I was accused of law-breaking and I had to give an undertaking to the House of Commons, of all places, that I had not broken the law, I would want the advice of a lawyer.”
Johnson replied angrily: “This is nonsense. I mean, complete nonsense. I asked the relevant people and they were senior people.”
For what it’s worth, Cabinet Secretary Simon Case denied giving Johnson any reassurances that COVID rules and guidelines were followed, and said he was unaware of anyone in Number 10 doing so.
I’m not naming any names (I don’t know any)
Indeed, Johnson was pretty vague on which officials actually gave him the broader assurance he would rely on later in Parliament: “I can’t name these officials. I don’t know if I can. I think that most of them have indicated they don’t want themselves to be named.”
Johnson has agreed to write to the committee privately with further details.
But he wasn’t always quite so tight-lipped. When there was a disagreement about the number of attendees at a going-away party for two civil servants in January 2021, Johnson started rattling off names unprompted.
“Sorry, forgive me, I shouldn’t mention the names,” he said, as the people around him buried their heads in their hands.
Naturally he could not possibly be expected to remember the rules that he had instituted for the plebs…………….
……….they simply do not exist for him outside of elections or photo opportunities.
No doubt taking his lead from World War 1 generals……………
……….just keep sending ’em over the top and hope something turns up before you run out of cannon fodder.
They’re not one’s chums, after all.
Recent articles on this by Guardian columnists Marina Hyde and John Crace are well worth a look.
Absolutely amazing that the Partygate inquiry has been dragged out for so long. Even now the committee has imposed yet another delay before giving its results. Another Guardian columnist, Simon Jenkins, made the very good point that while Johnson has certainly brought UK politics into disrepute, the glacial pace of this inquiry has been farcical and risks doing even more damage than Johnson has managed, paticularly if it finally ends with a whimper. The critical line to get across is suspending Johnson from parliament for at least 10 days, which would make it possible for his constituents to demand a by-ellection.
“Justice delayed is Justice denied”
attr. inter alia Wm. Galdstone
Make that “Gladstone”……………..
Its origin goes back to Magna Carta. As Tony Hancock asked years ago: did she die in vain?
Some version thereof probably goes back to the Romans…………….
……….. hence “inter alia”.
At least there is a record of Gladstones usage.
Magna Carta of course also has a record (several contemporaneous copies being still extant) and is particularly significant on the subject of delay being inimical to justice as it is a formal legal document agreed by King John in 1215 and not just a quotation or popular saying. Clause 40: To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.
Obviously a clause overlooked by the Conservatives in the UK……………
………..who will sell anything to the highest bidder.
Like you I have been following the coverage on the Guardian UK and have read all the articles by John Crace, Marina Hyde (though only one from her in the last month), Simon Jenkins plus a few others.
..suspending Johnson from parliament for at least 10 days, which would make it possible for his constituents to demand a by-election.
From everything I have read, since he left the PM’s office Johnson has spent barely ten days in his electorate. He has taken holiday following holiday (two while the Tory grandees were choosing Truss to succeed him) and is perpetually away making speeches for which he is paid handsomely, though no-one seems to make much sense of his bluff and bluster presentations.
So my question is: would his constituents really notice any difference in his usual truancy patterns if the Commons Committee were to suspend him for ten days?
And another thing.
In today’s Guardian article by Katy Balls this sentence appears: Former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg declared: “Boris is doing very well against the marsupials.”
Marsupials are animals native to Australia and PNG plus a couple of possum species native to North America.
Plus there have been quite a few references to the Commons Committee hearing as being a kangaroo court.
I am greatly offended by such references to Australian native animals. Let them stick to their own animals – foxes, rabbits and the like.
Their own animals? Yes: weasels, various grubs and pond life, there’s plenty of choice. Rats, on the other hand, deserve better than being compared with politicians, though perhaps I’m biased. And a recent Private Eye front page referenced the dire shortage of fresh food in UK shops at present by printing a photo of the entire Tory cabinet and a speech bubble, ‘There’s a shortage of vegetables’, and PM Sunak responding, ‘Not in my government’.
An update of the 80s joke – MrsT and some Cabinet members go to dinner. After she orders the waiter asks “What about the vegetables?” to which she answers “They’ll have the same.”
Ah, Boris, the blustering, bullsh$tting, Brexit buffoon. When will this human train wreck finally move on? Anyone’s guess, but sadly it seems he’s driven by ego, testosterone and a need to never be out of the limelight…such a sad situation for the UK. Oh, and I guess Australia, now it’s linked to that land through AUKUS. So, two partners, one that had Boris as leader, and the other that had Donald, the divisive, deluded and dangerous demagogue, devoid of decency, morals and empathy, but replete with ignorance and a lifelong sufferer of mythomania. What could possibly go wrong?
Boris. Scott. Donald. With one media company to boost them all.
i wonder who the useful idiots are, who keep downvoting certain responses
“…we didn’t touch each other’s… pens.” Is there an ‘i’ missing somewhere?