So, here we are, after days of arguing over what might or might not constitute a Christmas party.
The Prime Minister has confessed, hoisted on the admission of his own spokeswoman caught out on tape, that something did indeed take place on December 18 last year inside the most famous address in Britain.
A full inquiry is promised because no one is more “furious” than the Prime Minister to discover that under the eaves of his own home, at the heart of his government, Covid rules might have been breached.
Simon Case, the head of the civil service is to investigate.
To decide if there was a party, he has to consider the evidence of a packed room, alcohol being served, people mingling and a swap of secret Santa presents.
It is not an inquiry that would detain anyone for very long.
The staff at Downing Street cannot be held entirely responsible for any rules that have been broken.
In all hierarchies, people take their cue from the top.
After the unbelievable hypocrisy of the Dominic Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle, staff working for Boris Johnson could be almost forgiven for thinking that they were exceptional and that normal rules, for normal people, did not apply to them.
So it is not good enough just to throw Allegra Stratton, the Prime Minister’s spokeswoman on climate change, under the bus.
She shed tears of regret, nay embarrassment, but these do not balance the scales of the arrogant laughter of the Downing Street press operation as they rehearsed how to avoid the truth.
Here is the truth. In the hospitals last December medics were scrambling to find iPads to allow dying, isolated patients to speak to their families one last time.
In Downing Street, they were toasting themselves at a boozy party, these masters of the universe, this exceptional self-selected elite.
They were meant to be the servants of the people but instead they were laughing at them.
The shame runs so deep that tears will never dissolve it.
The charlatan at the centre of this monstrous hypocrisy, the buffoon who wisecracked his way through a pandemic, is now calling on us to obey rules that will make life harder after squandering any trust he had on a party and a cover-up.
Boris Johnson is a man who cannot confront inconvenient reality or responsibility, whether that be the disastrous consequences of Brexit or his own personal affairs.
His government, which prioritised the evacuation of cats and dogs from Kabul over the Afghans who served the country, is a chaotic, dysfunctional mess.
Johnson is a bumbling rogue who, if he had only covered up one breach of Covid rules, should consider his position.
But this is a pattern of serial dissembling, of a glancing acquaintance with the truth, that diminishes the dignity of the office of Prime Minister and actually now endangers the need for observance of the rules that save lives.
For that reason, and many others, he must not just be opposed, he must be replaced.
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