On days like these it’s hard to know if the government is criminally insane or just criminal. Perhaps it’s both. After telling parliament several times that the very idea of illegality in Downing Street was unthinkable, Boris Johnson was forced to admit that a further 50 fines had been handed out to members of his staff. That takes the total amount of fixed-penalty notices well into three figures, with the police barely having begun their investigation into the 12 parties.
Other than the prestige of being the main resident of the most law-breaking venue in the entire country during lockdown, the only comfort for the Convict was that this time he wasn’t among those who got collared by the Old Bill. Though his time will surely come again. Instead it was just his underlings – who had only gone to the parties because they had been assured they were perfectly legal by the prime minister – who got the criminal record. Yet again, Johnson was the go-to man for laying down his friends for his life.
