Live by the pint, die by the pint
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/live-by-the-pint-die-by-the-pint-dh0dqzftl
A PM who prospered by his lack of seriousness may be brought down by it
Dominic Lawson
In spring last year a friend of mine was offered a back-room job in Downing Street. By his account the get-together began at 4pm and ended at 11pm. He described the large quantities of wine circulating (apparently cheap and not good); outside, in the garden, the PM’s soon-to-be wife, Carrie, was having her own noisy party with mates, around a fire pit. My friend decided not to take the job, on the grounds that “this didn’t seem like a serious operation”.
This was, admittedly, not during lockdown, unlike the “bring your own bottle” event of May 20, 2020, about which the PM’s insistence that he didn’t believe it was a — then illicit — social event has as much credibility as Bill Clinton’s claim that what passed between him and Monica Lewinsky did not constitute “sexual relations”.
The crucial difference between the two deceits is that Clinton’s unconventional use of the Oval Office did not make the American people feel they had personally been made fools of (even if Mrs Clinton did). Whereas a nation that endured a painful — at times heartbreaking — curtailment of personal liberties by government decree can react in only one way when it discovers that the man who made those rules regarded them as optional in his own case.
It’s not as if he hadn’t been warned, at the time, that to go ahead with the party, trestle tables and all, was in obvious breach of the prevailing regulations (this was a time when old ladies were getting knocks on the door from the police after being reported having a cup of teas with their neighbours in communal gardens).
Last week I spoke to a former Downing Street official who said at least two people had told the PM, after seeing the emailed invitation from his principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds, that this was “a party” and should be immediately cancelled. I was told that Johnson’s dismissive response was to say they were “overreacting” and to praise Reynolds as “my loyal Labrador”.
I then asked someone who has known the PM for decades what could have made him take such an approach (other than natural hospitality and affability). His immediate answer was: “It’s because deep down he obviously thought the regulations were ridiculous — so why should he observe them?”
This corresponds with the account given to MPs in May by Johnson’s former chief aide Dominic Cummings (cast out at the urging of Mrs Johnson, who acts as principal adviser, and not just on expensive interior decoration, to an acutely dependent husband): “There’s a great misunderstanding people have that because [Covid] nearly killed him, therefore he must have taken it seriously. But in fact ... he was cross with me and others [for] what he regarded as basically pushing him into the first lockdown.”
That the regulations imposed in March 2020 were counter to everything this convivial libertarian held most dear was made clear by Johnson himself at the time: “I do accept that what we are doing is extraordinary: we’re taking away the ancient, inalienable right of freeborn people of the United Kingdom to go to the pub, and I can understand how people feel about that.” Now he is being made to understand how “people feel” about discovering that at the same time the PM was treating his own home and workplace — Downing Street is both — as a sort of open-all-hours pub.