Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters
In the great scandal pile-up of the current government, it can be hard to prioritise. What is more important, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s undeclared £6m low-interest loan to himself or Boris Johnson putting himself forward as the footstool, or the throttle – or the toadstool, or whatever the hell his libidinous analogising was trying to get at – to Jennifer Arcuri’s career? Which is more inappropriate – Chris Grayling’s £100k gig with Hutchison Ports or Andrew Mitchell’s six consultancy jobs with investment banks and accountancy firms? In the avalanche of dirt, it can be hard to tell which way is up.
Yet a new reality is beginning to emerge. We have hit the tipping point, where all the things that previously didn’t matter suddenly do: from 2019 until now were the “priced in” years; so Johnson invited Arcuri to his house, left her there to take selfies while he ran out to buy cheese, may or may not have engaged in sexual activities on his family sofa … isn’t that exactly what we expected of this oft-divorced, unknown-number-of-children politician? And doesn’t it naturally follow that standards of probity and transparency will be pretty lax in his party overall, that rich people gonna rich, and Tories gonna crony?
It has not been hard to find impropriety in Conservative ministers’ and MPs’ behaviour: infidelity during office hours, gargantuan contracts going to spouses and friends, that very distinctive whiff of people looking out for number one. It has been extremely hard, by contrast, to get anyone to react. Opposition lines about “one rule for them, another for us” have fallen flat. Conservatives have defended one another’s impunity with great gusto and been met hitherto with a collective: “Meh.”
Arguably, the Owen Paterson affair was a new low, his colleagues not only ignoring the rules but trying to overturn them. But was there anything new about that low, or have they been bumping along the sea bed for ages? It may be that we all just hit the hard limit of what we could swallow. Now every new detail hits the nation’s gag reflex. This could end in an elegant intra-Tory coup where they replace the leader and start again; or it could be much messier and altogether better. But it doesn’t have the feel of a tipping point that will easily tip back.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
