A civilised society rests on the ability of participants to fake emotions. A warm smile towards a colleague you can barely tolerate, synthetic gratitude to grandma for a pair of socks at Christmas (full disclosure: I like all my co-workers and love kitschy socks). But contrition is hardest to manufacture. Especially when you are Boris Johnson.
The Prime Minister stood at the dispatch box of the House of Commons today and declared: “I am humbled and I have learned a lesson“. This suffers from a couple of shortcomings. First, it is always more convincing to show rather than tell. A comedian doesn’t walk on stage and say ‘I’m actually quite funny’. They tell jokes.
Second, Johnson still seems to think that the Gray report — which concluded that there was a drinking and party culture at Number 10 during Covid lockdowns and that “the senior leadership at the centre... must bear responsibility” for it — largely clears him.
I won’t in the confines of this newsletter adequately precis the report. For that, follow our excellent live blog and our Parliamentary team’s report here. So I will focus on one, seemingly minor detail that our indefatigable Courts Correspondent, Tristan Kirk, has highlighted.
It has to do with the incident for which the Prime Minister received his one and only fine, the birthday cake incident. Johnson’s defence was that he was standing up in the Cabinet room for nine minutes. In other words, the fixed penalty notice he received amounted to mere officiousness on the Metropolitan Police’s behalf. Sue Gray’s report sees it differently. I’ll quote the relevant section in full:
“The event lasted between 14.25 and 14.45, throughout which the Prime Minister was present. Those attending consumed food and drink, and some drank alcohol. There are photographs of the event.”
It is hardly the world’s greatest inconsistency. But it is instructive. The nine-minute defence has for months been wheeled out to minimise the incident. But it appears not to be true.
Similarly, he said the so-called ABBA party had been “extensively investigated”, but Gray explicitly acknowledges that she did not investigate it.
For the moment, Johnson survives because Tory MPs cannot agree on an alternative candidate. And anyway, ignore the mid-term polling they say, the Prime Minister retains real strengths. But what if they’re wrong?
I keep thinking back to the lead up to the 2015 general election. The Liberal Democrats’ popularity was in the toilet, their poll rating at one stage falling to 6 per cent. Their leader, Nick Clegg, was a virtual pariah. Everyone could see the party was going to get hammered.
But the Westminster village thought it knew best. The Lib Dems, we were told, retained a strong local presence and don’t forget, they clung on in the Eastleigh by-election. Of course, come election day, the party collapsed from 57 seats to a rump of eight. The polls were right, elite conventional wisdom was wrong. Conservative MPs may soon find out whether they have fallen into the same trap.
In the comment pages, Defence Editor Robert Fox explains how Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has gone so badly wrong, but warns we are only now appreciating the war as an accelerator of global crises from food and famine to climate change and migration.
While Professor Azeem Majeed of Imperial College London says we should be vigilant but not unduly anxious about monkeypox.
And finally, the ever nosey Londoner’s Diary is packed with great stories, from Gary Lineker revealing there’s a top footballer contemplating coming out (he also calls football “probably the campest sport around“) and the possible return of Rory Stewart to politics.
