I briefly caught the end of a interview with the long serving Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown on Radio 4 this morning where he defended Boris Johnson with the extraordinary claim that when he told parliament there had been no parties and all Covid rules had been followed at all times, he genuinely believe it to be true. To me this is even worse than having to admit a lie. It is all turning on the word ‘knowingly.’
What Clifton-Brown seemed to suggest is that a sentient human being actually managed to attend up to six ‘gatherings’ at his place of work without realising they were gatherings at all or contrary to the lockdown rules in place at the time.
This is not asking us to believe the impossible. Boris Johnson almost certainly does think rules of any kind shouldn’t apply to him, not because he’s the prime minister, but because he’s Boris Johnson, a position in his own mind far above the office. But this towering sense of entitlement is worse than a lie isn’t it?
If you accept this argument, you are giving carte blanche to him to carry on breaking rules and laws with impunity simply because he’s Boris Johnson. That or the man in charge of our nuclear weapons is someone who is so artless and innocent, he doesn't know if he's at a party or not even when he's pouring the drinks.
Next, Sir Geoffrey explicitly supports Johnson in blaming civil servants for not telling him the gatherings were against the law. We don’t yet know if this is true and Sue Gray’s report may well show that he was told, but let’s assume he wasn’t.
Clifton-Brown told listeners this morning that "the culture in No 10 has to be set by civil servants" as if they were somehow responsible. The PM cannot escape responsibility. He sets the tone, the standard. Whatever he does or says effectively is government policy. Who are civil servants to question that? Johnson doesn’t seem to realise the office he holds gives him immense power to which people naturally defer.
His problem is that he wants to have his cake and eat it. He wants to believe he does have immense power over us when it suits him, but hide behind his civil servants when it doesn’t. He wants to think civil servants frustrate his grand plans but don't stop him when he's in the wrong.
He’s basically a coward.
We mustn't forget that he was the man responsible for setting the covid rules and turning them into laws which he urged people to stick to for their own safety and that of their families and friends and which he than casually ignored, broke or forgot about.
Clifton-Brown used the Ukraine war as the reason for supporting him but does anyone think there is a single MP in the Tory party or indeed parliament, who would approach the war differently? It's not even a party political issue, but at least Johnson's replacement wouldn't have to spend every waking hour defending the indefensible on party gate.
By all accounts Johnson is going to the House today to offer an apology and "set the record straight" which is like the convicted man declaring after a guilty verdict that he is going to explain to the judge how he is actually innocent.
Against the charge that he mislead parliament he is apparently going to rely on the word "knowingly" to defend himself. This is also a dangerous path to go down. The ministerial code (paragraph 1.3c says this:
"It is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister;"
He is actually going to say he didn't mislead deliberately or 'knowingly'.
This might just provide a get out for a prime minster who up to now has behaved impeccably, but we know Johnson is a liar - 75 per cent of the public think he's a liar according to a poll this weekend - who routinely misleads and lies and fails to correct the record. Paragraph 1.3c is there to protect ministers from minor accidental infringements, not cover up for congenital liars.
The code itself hails from Clement Attlee's time but was secret until John Major published it and the drafters obviously never contemplated a man like Johnson rising to become PM, otherwise they would not have assumed he is a suitable guardian of it. The code assumes the Queen's first minister is someone who is honest, trustworthy and punctilious about the truth. Johnson is anything but.
The problem with Johnson is that he doesn't accept that he is a bare-faced liar. He genuinely thinks he tells the truth. He almost seems offended when accused of misleading and believes he's hard done by.
The author Tom Bower claimed in his book Boris Johnson, the Gambler that Johnson's first wife, Allegra Mostyn-Owen once said, "He never lied. He just has his own attitude to the truth." I think this is true - he actually believes his own lies.
Bower's book also suggested an Oxford tutor once described Johnson as, "the worst scholar Eton ever sent us – a buffoon and an idler" adding that he also possessed a magic combination of intelligence, wit, cunning and exhibitionism.
This was more than thirty years ago and that cunning has taken him to the very pinnacle of government where the constitutional historian Lord Hennessy now says, "we are in the most severe constitutional crisis involving a prime minister that I can remember. It goes to the heart of the character of the prime minister."
"Tuesday 12 April 2022 will be forever remembered as a dark bleak day for British public and political life. It is the day that Boris Johnson became the great debaser in modern times of decency of public and political life and of our constitutional conventions."
Hennessy added that Johnson "has sullied" the office of prime minister "like no other, turning it into an adventure playground for one man's narcissistic vanity" and said he has "shredded the ministerial code".
This would be bad enough you might think but later today Tory MPs will stand in the chamber and defend him. He has corrupted our national life through Brexit and his party either can't see it, or are prepared to overlook it to remain in power.
It was leaving the EU, something he doesn't even care about, that got him to Downing Street. It has damaged this country and Europe in every possible way and now in order to remain in office he is dragging us into a constitutional crisis.
But honestly, did anyone expect his premiership to end in any other way?
