If you haven’t ploughed through the Sue Gray report yet, it is easily summarised: numerous parties were held in Downing Street, breaking the Covid rules that bound the rest of us. They were organised, approved and attended by some of the most senior politicians and civil servants who run this country. Some were even commemorated by an official photographer at the taxpayer’s expense. While elderly and ill people could not see their relatives and mothers underwent the rigours of childbirth alone, at the heart of government staffers drank till they threw up, enjoyed punch-ups and mistreated the security guards and cleaners they saw as beneath them. They laughed at the rest of us and congratulated themselves for having “got away with” it. The squalor of the set-up is inseparable from its outrageous arrogance.
What comes next? Judging by past form, not much. Some unlucky minister will be served up for a sacrificial roasting on the BBC. Others will fulminate to friendly journalists, knowing their juiciest quotes will be printed without the incriminating detail of their name. Some liberal columnists will bang their tiny fists and demand the prime minister’s resignation, as they have done each week of this affair, always with the same lack of success.
All will be turned into The Boris Show, just as everything in Westminster has been since he moved into No 10. Between them, the prime minister’s ego and the political classes clapping like eager seals have combined to turn the affairs of the UK into the longest-running and most grimly predictable box set of all time. Each episode starts with a scandal and ends on the same dreary cliffhanger: how does our antihero get out of this one?
