What were you doing on May 20th 2020? The Prime Minister was, as we now know, enjoying a “work event” in the Downing Street garden, but Britain’s children were less fortunate. Shut out of school, they spent the day at home. The lucky ones may have had a few online classes but there were no friends to meet and no playtime. Sports clubs, music lessons, scouts and guides were all cancelled. Playgrounds were taped off.

Now under pressure, the Prime Minister is spinning his way through half-hearted apologies and mealy-mouthed excuses. Political opponents scent blood and demand more. But the inquisitors have the wrong target: what was truly immoral was not the consumption of wine and cheese but incarcerating the nation’s youth. And it’s not just Boris Johnson who should show contrition: all the lockdown cheerleaders owe an apology to every child who missed out on education, exercise, friendship, rites of passage and just hanging out and having fun. 

Of course, this will never happen. Almost two years on from the first lockdown, children are still being asked to endure Covid restrictions arguably beyond what is required of most adults. As maskless adults chat in bars, masked pupils shiver in cold classrooms. Evidence of the benefits of masking pupils — many of them now vaccinated — is rather thin. But we know for certain that masks make social and educational interactions more difficult.

Prolonged periods of school closure mean thousands of children have “fallen off the radar,” according to Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England. Children not in the classroom are more at risk of becoming involved in gangs and criminal activity. Tragically, some are left at the mercy of abusive carers. All miss out on the educational opportunities that could transform their life chances.

Even the most diligent children have had to contend with debates about exams rumbling on unabated. Will exams take place? And, assuming they do, will the content match what pupils have actually been taught? This pervasive uncertainty makes drawing up revision timetables seem futile. Perhaps it is little wonder that children voted “anxiety” as their word of 2021 in a study conducted by Oxford University Press.

The partygate revelations make clear that while the Prime Minister and his Downing Street pals enjoyed “wine time”, children suffered. The vocal insistence on apologies for parties — but not the unnecessarily cruel and punitive restrictions placed upon children — suggests we have lost our collective moral compass. Boris Johnson will pay the price for his apparent reckless flouting of the rules that he set with his reputation and perhaps even his job. But this will not come anywhere close to compensating the nation’s children for everything they sacrificed – and continue to endure.