The day off didn’t seem to have done much to improve Sajid Javid’s mood. The health secretary had cancelled his slots on the Wednesday morning media round on the grounds that he was “too upset” to appear.
Upset not so much by the Downing Street lie rehearsal video, but more by Boris Johnson’s enthusiasm for getting other people to cover up for him. Cowardice is one of Boris’s more unreported qualities. For once the Saj had said no – the prime minister could do his own dirty work if he was so keen to have someone from the government on the airwaves – but he hadn’t had the self-worth to tell Johnson to sod off two days running. And he hated himself for it.
So it was a decidedly grumpy and defensive Javid who tried not to make a fool of himself explaining to Radio 4’s Today programme why it was fine to get pissed with your colleagues at a party but not work alongside them, all the while knowing that the really tricky questions were still to come. Sure enough, presenter Mishal Husain got there in the end. If there had been no party, as the prime minister and Javid clearly believed, how come Allegra Stratton had been allowed to resign? It just didn’t make sense. Without a party, Stratton had merely been having harmless fun.
Now the Saj got positively chippy. He had been given cast-iron assurances that no party had taken place and he had believed them. Who had given these assurances? He couldn’t say. Were they the same person who had been at the parties that hadn’t happened and had reassured the prime minister? He would have to kill Mishal if he told her.
Husain acted confused. If Javid was so convinced, why didn’t he just tell everyone the facts and save us the hassle of an investigation by the cabinet secretary? Because. Just because. Realising he had been backed into a corner, the Saj tried to distance himself from everything. His new line was that he didn’t know anything about anything. He hadn’t been in the room for any of these parties. In fact, he hadn’t even been in government when these parties hadn’t taken place. So Mishal could talk to the hand.
The health secretary retreated gracelessly. Not because he had been caught out in the interview, but because it had panned out just as he had expected. He had reached the end of time and no longer saw the world through a glass darkly. Like everyone else who had worked for Boris, he now realised, somewhat late in the day, that his main job was to be entirely expendable. To take the flak so that the greased piglet could escape unscathed. To be collateral damage.
There was more collateral damage on view in the Commons later on, when the oleaginous junior minister Mike Ellis – his boss Steve Barclay was mysteriously missing in action – was sent out to answer an urgent question from Labour’s Fleur Anderson about the remit for the cabinet secretary’s investigation. Ellis started by being ever so ’umble. Ever so apologetic.
He too had been horrified by the video footage that had emerged that made fun of a “gathering” – Ellis couldn’t bring himself to say “party” for fear of incriminating himself and others – that definitely hadn’t happened, because he too had been given assurances that no party had taken place and no rules had been broken from the Somebody Whose Name Could Not Be Mentioned. But even though nothing had happened, the investigation would now be extended to two further “gatherings” that also had not taken place. We were all going to play a game of Let’s Pretend.
It was like shooting fish in a barrel for Anderson. But she wasn’t going to let that stop her. It’s not every day anyone can stand up to take free potshots at a minister in the Commons and he’s obliged to suck it up. It all came down to a matter of trust, she said. And right now it was impossible to believe a word anything the prime minister or his lackeys said. A sentence that could have been written at almost any point in the last two years. Lying is what Boris does for a living. Being prime minister is his freelance second job.
Anderson continued. Would the cabinet secretary be investigating any further parties? The number of parties the Tories appeared to have had last year was now multiplying faster than Omicron. Almost every hour there was a new variant. And would the prime minister resign if he was found to have misled the house – yeah, right; was that a pig flying? – and could the cabinet secretary promise not to have attended any of the parties that hadn’t happened.
Ellis gave a solemn undertaking that Simon Case definitely hadn’t been at the three “gatherings” he was currently investigating, as they hadn’t taken place, but couldn’t offer guarantees about any other “gatherings” that hadn’t happened. Magical thinking for a magical realist.
The opposition benches gleefully piled on. Was it the cabinet secretary who had been going round giving all the assurances that nothing was amiss? Ellis couldn’t say as he was sworn to secrecy. And how, if it came to that, could we trust the police to investigate, given that the plods based in Downing Street seemed to have missed all the action?
But it was the Tory benches who made Ellis’s life most difficult. Desmond Swayne observed that No 10 was very large. It wasn’t clear if he was defending Boris not knowing about a party or pointing out that there could have been two or more parties taking place at the same time. Boris could have been having a bash in his flat while the apparatchiks raided the wine cellar downstairs.
Peter Bone, Philip Hollobone and Bob Blackman also contended that the government had to be held to higher standards if they wanted the public to obey Covid rules and that Johnson had to obey the spirit as well as the letter of the law. Not Boris’s strong point.
Tellingly, there were almost no Tories in the house, and none that would defend Boris. So it was left to Ellis to praise his boss. He had known Johnson for years and believed him to be a man of honour and integrity. Which said more about Ellis’s judgment than anything else. Most of the house just wondered if there was a second Boris Johnson running around Westminster, one that nobody but Ellis had met.
The session ended with a question about the fine imposed on the Tory party by the Electoral Commission regarding the payments for doing up Johnson’s flats. Ellis said nothing. This was above the paymaster’s pay grade. It was an appropriate end to the Tories’ crime week. They had certainly given the police plenty to do.
