Wednesday 19 January 2022

Johnson on the brink

The PM is clearly as unfamiliar with the old adage about stopping digging if you’re in a hole as he is with the truth. Faced with some tough questions about partygate from Beth Rigby of Sky News, on his first public outing for days, he had no ready answers and simply claimed ‘categorically’ that nobody warned him the drinks party on 20 May 2020 was against the lockdown rules at the time. As several people have already pointed out, he was the man appearing nightly on national television telling us what the rules were! 

He imposed the rules on nearly 70 million people but apparently didn’t understand them himself!

Johnson regularly says he ‘takes full responsibility’ but is patently not doing so. He apologised to the Queen again yesterday for parties that he didn’t attend and before Sue Gray’s report confirmed they were parties. How did he know the party on 15-16 April last year wasn’t work related? Yet he was happy to offer ‘sincere’ apologies for that incident as if he was certain it was a party. Who told him it was?

Strange how only the events he attended were work related.

Here is Rigby asking the questions:

He seems to think he’s the head of state rather than the prime minister, wheeled out occasionally to read some stuff written by a civil servant which he barely understands and can forget immediately afterwards. He doesn’t seem to appreciate he’s in charge.

Bizarrely, he is now waiting for a civil servant’s report to tell him what he did on 20 May 2020.

The Times had an editorial, part of which was about Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary who came out in defence of Johnson:

"Mr Zahawi is a capable minister and ought to have felt some embarrassment. He surely knows that a scrupulous prime minister, intent on safeguarding public health in a historic emergency, would have had no hesitation in shutting down a drinks party rather than cavil about legal definitions. Nor is it necessary, let alone dignified, for Mr Johnson to await the word of Ms Gray. He was there, and he needs to account for it."

Quite.

Cummings has already said he (and others) did warn him, is prepared to swear on oath that he did and is now said to be preparing to give evidence to Sue Gray’s investigation.

David Gauke, the former chief secretary at the Treasury and justice secretary, explained on Twitter the process which a minister goes through when decisions are made, certainly important ones like setting out the covid restriction rules. It is a convoluted system involving lots of policy option papers, arguing the pro’s and con’s with senior civil servants and political advisers and eventually coming to a settled position. 

Johnson would have had to be involved with all of this, and as Gauke says, a prime minister shouldn’t need anybody in Downing Street to tell him a drinks party of 40 people was out of the question - actually, illegal.

It’s clear he either wasn’t paying attention at the time or he’s telling lies now, or both. They are equally likely aren’t they?

There’s no doubt he will try to cling on. He is experienced at muddling through scandals and doesn’t seem to mind being laughed at. This time however, he is looking like what we used to call a right prat. If he didn’t realise the party was a party - and remember, by his own admission, he spent 25 minutes there - one begins to worry if he should be in charge of a whelk stall. 

Sam Coates at Sky tweeted that about 20 of the 2019 intake met yesterday to discuss Johnson’s future. The cabinet are not happy that Tory MPs who they say owe their seats to Johnson are prepared to betray him. But these new MPs have had less time to build a support base in their constituencies, have less to fall back on in terms of future earnings and are rightly nervous that Johnson is going to put them out of a job.

Coates also reports one senior MP telling him that it is the ‘settled will’ of the Tory party to get rid of Johnson. The only thing to be decided is the how and when. Some MPs are waiting to hear Sue Gray’s report so there is a great deal riding on her report. She isn’t going to reach any conclusion but merely set out the facts.

However, Gray cannot be unaware of how key her words will be to Johnson’s future, at least his immediate future.

If you're looking for something to cheer you up this morning, a journalist from STV News, a Scottish on line news outlet, Kathryn Samson, tweeted this last night:

Personally, I think this is unlikely today, but you never know. PMQs should be a lively affair again at lunchtime.

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