Dignity-wise, I see the Johnson administration has moved to the stage of a man in a dirty tracksuit saying he’ll do a polygraph. Dominic Cummings’ insistence that the prime minister is lying, and that he’ll swear to it, makes you wonder if Sue Gray is really the person to run the inquiry into Downing Street parties. In many ways Jeremy Kyle has the more relevant experience, though of course it would be the first time the presenter had stood in judgment on people lavished with every possible economic, educational and social advantage in life.
A number of anonymous sources have confirmed Cummings’ account to the BBC, giving rise to the sort of unfortunate news coverage that is in no way behind Boris Johnson’s plan to smash the national broadcaster like a mirror that won’t tell him he’s the fairest of them all. And we’ll come to so-called Operation Red Meat in a second.
