How the moral malaise that led to ‘Partygate’ metastasised across Whitehall

December 18, 2020: at Number 10 Downing Street staff — a few dozen — had gathered to let their hair down after a tough year. Drinks and snacks were served. Party games were played.

Outside the streets were all but deserted. Covid was running riot. Santa was shielding. Britain was in tight lockdown.

Four hundred miles north, at St Margaret of Scotland Hospice in Clydebank, journalist and mother-of-two Helen Harris lay dying . She had just been diagnosed with Covid-19. She died two days later. She was 47. She had been ill for some time with an incurable brain tumour.

Helen ’ s husband, Nick, also a journalist, and her daughter Daisy, an undergraduate, could not be with her at the end. To be precise, they were not allowed to be with her. They would have been breaking the law had they been at her bedside. Tier 3 restrictions were in place. Visits to hospices and care homes were banned.

Helen was dying — alone. At the seat of government, they were partying.

That week in December 2020 nearly 208 people in Scotland and nearly 3,000 in England and Wales perished because of, or for reasons related to, the virus: that ’ s over 3000 families, loved ones — fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, friends — all bereaved. Most, like Helen, died alone.

A close relative of mine died of Covid a few months earlier. His wife could only watch through a glass screen as he took his last, agonising breath, overwhelmed by a feeling of grief, rage and helplessness.

You may accuse me of sentimentality. Perhaps. But I choose to put a human face to this catastrophe. How else can we measure the impact, the cause and effect, of an event and its effect on our lives? We are more than numbers. Policy is not just a paper exercise.

Like the rest of the country — or those who are paying attention — I find it inconceivable that Boris Johnson did not know about the party that was not a party. Or learned about it soon after. Downing Street is a terraced house, not the palace of Versailles.

We are asked, by the Editor of the Article , to keep a sense of proportion in all this. I ’ m all for that. But what, if anything, is proportionate about the behaviour of our public servants on that day? 

What, if anything, is proportionate about a government that consistently, repeatedly, pathologically breaks commandments it expects others to follow?

It may not be a “hanging offense” but it is a gross, blatant, cynical breach of trust. What could be worse? 

The Editor, and I hope if he ’ ll forgive me for labouring the point (no pun intended) argues that “ the only people who wish to wallow in recriminations are those who hope to gain political advantage from it.”  

Does that include Daisy Harris? Is she “ wallowing in recriminations” ?

The Prime Minister lies and lies and lies again. And when he ’ s done lying, he lies some more. And when he ’ s finally got nowhere to run and he ’ s caught red-handed, he apologises. But there is no sense of contrition. And certainly no embarrassment.  

There will now be an “investigation” into the nauseating mock press conference three days after the party that was captured on video. Heads will roll. But not his. The first to go is Allegra Stratton, the Government spokesperson in the offending (and deeply offensive) video.

In Johnson ’ s world, the buck doesn ’ t stop. It ’ s something you pass back and forth like pass the parcel.

While all this malarkey is happening offstage, onstage Johnson is stealthily accruing more powers to prevent citizens from exercising their right to protest or from challenging the Government in the courts. Freedom for them but not for us.  

Civil liberties, the right to protest, the role of judges as guardians of our rights irrespective of political allegiance, are being eroded. Do as I say, not as I do.  

There is a moral vacuum at the heart of this administration, a malaise which has metastasised throughout Whitehall. This is accompanied by a kind of intellectual sloth that drives talented, honest, dare I say, patriotic officials up the wall.  

A case in point is Raphael Marshall, a former diplomat, who alleges that inertia and a short-hours culture in the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office led to thousands of Afghans with links to the UK being left to the mercy of the Taliban.

Dominic Raab, then Foreign Secretary, sunbathed and kept on sunbathing in Crete as Kabul fell and British troops struggled with a chaotic withdrawal under deadly threat from the Taliban and Isis.  

On the eve of the Universal Credit uplift being scrapped, driving thousands deeper into poverty, Therese Coffey Work and Pensions Secretary sang “The Time of My Life” at Tory party conference.  

Johnson holidayed in Spain as motorists across Britain queued for petrol during the supply chain crisis.

This is a government so detached from the lives of ordinary people it exists in a parallel universe, a fiction which it writes and rewrites as one episode ends, and another begins.  

This is trivial, the pundits say. This will blow over. People forget. Johnson will find a distraction. Impose Plan B. Throw more money at marginals. So runs the narrative. I ’ m not so sure.

Some of his own backbenchers are now saying openly that they can ’ t trust what their leader says.

There ’ s a limit to the number of times Johnson can use “the dog ate my homework” as an excuse.