National rage, and the findings of the Sue Gray enquiry, could make short work of Boris’s premiership. My constituents are understandably deadly serious in their fury and disgust at what seems to have gone on at No.10 – while the Government was telling them they could not so much as comfort a dying relative.
Two weeks ago, during Prime Minister’s questions, I texted a friend with a single word – “untenable”. Since then, public reaction is increasingly visceral as the crisis plays out daily, so I have gone back to try to look calmly and rationally at what happened. Having done that, I do not believe that the prime minister should be driven from office, however disrespectful the events of ‘Partygate’.
What do we know? The PM’s principal private secretary invited 100 No.10 co-workers to “have some socially distanced drinks in the garden this evening.” Writing at the height of the pandemic lockdown, he added cheerily: “Bring your own booze!” Seventy civil servants wisely stayed away, but thirty others showed up, as – crucially – did the Johnsons.
Let’s keep in mind some important facts (that we know so far)…all those who went had already been working cheek-by-jowl for weeks with zero social distancing. This was a gathering of work colleagues and was an extension of their business day. People moved outside from a No.10 that was at the time more akin to a war-time HQ. They had been working all hours, and they attended without their partners: I doubt they went to the garden to chat about Strictly. More likely, they were talking shop: Manchester infection rates; public information campaigns; hospital admission rates; Nightingale hospitals; furlough. Most seem to have gone back to their desks afterwards.
We hear of other, raucous “parties” before Prince Phillip’s funeral. Again, the facts matter. Boris was far away at Chequers, in Buckinghamshire, at the time, a vital detail omitted by BBC Newsnight when I watched their story. Some news bulletins seem determined to play the role of a court, stirring up the national jury to find him guilty and have him sacked. Tory MPs should not help and should be careful what they wish for.
When it comes to the single event we know he did attend, it is staggering that any politician who voted to impose the unprecedented pandemic lockdown would break the rules or even run the slightest risk of appearing to break the rules. I had inflicted these restrictions on my constituents and so was obsessed with following the regulations, both letter and spirit. My office team saw this very much the same way.
But we must keep things in proportion. When a constituent writes to me asking to confirm in writing that I was not at any of Boris’s (non-existent) parties, and when a BBC graphic makes the PM look like Hannibal Lecter, something is going wrong – and not just with the PM’s judgement in joining the working drinkers in the No. 10 garden, or the subsequent mishandling of this crisis.
Boris would have done us all a favour if, when this came up before Christmas he had set out the facts as I describe them above, said that he’d made a mistake, and apologised for not sending everyone packing – all six weeks after his brush with death in the Intensive Care Unit and with a new baby.
Partygate may be laden with damaging political symbolism but it is irrelevant to the serious problems we face: The return of inflation, crisis relations with Europe, energy bills, the continued extraordinarily successful UK fight against the pandemic, and perhaps too a Russian invasion of Ukraine. We have a leader who has come through the fire – both personally and politically – and is ready to deal with these problems. Since when do you lose potentially the most remarkable Prime Minister since Thatcher for spending 25 minutes thanking civil servants in his and their workplace?
Adam Holloway is MP for Gravesham
