Public service takes many forms.
I believe this newspaper made a signal contribution with our exposure of the Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street.
The story of illicit Christmas parties among Tory aides last winter wasn’t just a journalistic scoop. It lanced the boil of deceit in high places.
And it acted as a lightning rod for all the frustration and rage of people who have endured so much and feel let down by the government’s incompetence, duplicity and delay during 18 months of coronavirus crisis.
When “Partygate” was made public, people who had lost loved ones reacted with understandable anger. Their wrath against “one rule for them, another for us” boiled over across the media. It all came out.
We have seen a similar upsurge of voter disgust before. It swept John Major’s sleaze-ridden government out of office in 1997.
But this time it’s personal, directed against an individual Prime Minister who they know is the chief architect of this scandalous state of affairs.
The people’s fury has forced arrogant Boris Johnson out of his lethal lethargy. He was compelled to invoke Plan B-lite restrictions, against his own inclination and in defiance of his hard-line MPs.
And he had no option but to set up an inquiry into the shenanigans in his own office. The investigation by Cabinet Secretary Sir Simon Case must not be another Whitehall whitewash. If the rule-breakers are not brought to book, public distrust with government will increase.
The Metropolitan police should also be jolted out of their supine indifference to the antics of the Tory Bright Young Things who think the law is for “the little people” – like you and me.
The video of these highly paid jacks-in-office laughing and joking about their Downing Street party tipped this story over the edge into public outrage.
But none of this would have happened without the Daily Mirror’s disclosures ten days ago, which were repeatedly denied by the Number 10 lie machine.
And still are refuted – by the very aides who partied way into the night while everyone else was compelled by law not to mix with their own family. Vomit-inducing.
The time has come for someone – preferably Sir Keir Starmer – to stand up in Parliament and repeat the words of Oliver Cromwell to the Long Parliament in 1653, and Tory MP Leo Amery to appeasement premier Neville Chamberlain in 1940: “You have sat here too long for any good you are doing - in the name of God, go!”
