Unless you have been living in Peppa Pig World, you will know that Boris Johnson has been fined for breaking his own Covid laws.
The Prime Minister, and his Chancellor Rishi Sunak, have paid £50 fines after they were both at a birthday party in the Cabinet Office at the height of the Covid pandemic in June 2020.
Mr Johnson's allies have been desperately trying to downplay the rule-breaking bash, using excuse after excuse for the PM's behaviour.
Minister Conor Burns attempted to trivialise the event by saying the PM was "ambushed with a cake" by his wife Carrie Johnson, who has also been slapped with a fixed penalty notice by Scotland Yard.
“It was not a premeditated, organised party,” he told reporters earlier this year. “He was, in a sense, ambushed with a cake.”
The MP for Bournemouth West added: “They came to his office with a cake, they sang happy birthday, he was there for 10 minutes – I don’t think most people looking at that at home would characterise that as a party.”
A senior government source also tried to minimise the event, telling journalists: "It's not as if [Boris Johnson] walked into a rave in Ibiza."
Another source told the Sunday Times that people should not see the PM breaking the law as a big deal.
They said: “While there are people who say that breaking the law is a black and white thing, most of us live in a world where we have had parking tickets or speeding fines.
"Ministers on both sides of the House have had fixed penalty notices for all kinds of things over the decades.
“There is a difference between murder and manslaughter and there is a hell of a difference between a £50 fixed penalty notice and what we are generally outraged by being a breach of the law."
Another ally told the i’s Paul Waugh: “If you're caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn't mean that you were speeding at 140mph.
“It doesn't mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140mph, does it?"
Tory vice chairman Bim Afolami has said that while he is "extremely disappointed by what happened with the parties at Downing Street" and it "is clear that those who set the rules should have followed them", the PM should stay in post to guide the country through the Ukraine crisis.
He said: "However, the question is whether right now is the right time to be talking about the future of the Prime Minister and Chancellor? I do not believe that it is.
"With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, severely impacting on energy prices and wider inflation which is really impacting living standards, Britain needs strong leadership and the West needs to be united more than ever.
This morning, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis became the first minister to say the fixed penalty notice for Covid breaches was like a parking ticket or a speeding fine - but he was pulled up on his claims.
He told the BBC : "He accepts the fine, he accepts the police decision which is that a rule was broken. That's why he's paid the fine and apologised.
"We've seen reports of ministers who have had - both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party over the years - whether it's been speeding fines and things like that, if you accept that decision."
Pressed on whether this had happened while in office, he said: "I believe so, I'm just going on reports I've seen over the weekend."
When he was challenged to back up his comments, he then pivoted: "If somebody gets a speeding ticket, I'm not in any way trying to equate a speeding ticket somebody has had with the situation, the sacrifices people have made through Covid.
"I want to be really clear about that."
Boris Johnson's sister Rachel has also attempted to defend her brother.
She said "someone's got to stick up for him", adding: "As far as I could tell, if it was the matron in a hospital's birthday and she went into the staff room and there were nurses offering her a cake, would she have said 'No, I can't come in because this would break Covid rules'?"
She added: "I know the optics are terrible but everybody is easily putting the worst interpretation on every single episode."
