Every day that Boris Johnson remains in 10 Downing Street is an insult to the over 150 thousand people who have died through Covid-19, the millions who were separated from loved ones, and those who couldn’t say goodbye to their loved ones.
To think that when the whole country was making tremendous sacrifices the prime minister, other officials, and staff were carelessly breaking the rules they had instituted, is deeply offensive.
There is no doubt that the prime minister and those connected with him who attended the Downing Street booze party broke Covid rules. I’m sure that the police broke up gatherings with far fewer people and imposed fines on less fragrant abuses than the official Downing Street booze party.
This whole affair represents not just a shameless disregard for the rules but a culture of impunity that thinks, “We are above the rules we make.”
So far as the prime minister has admitted attending the party when Covid restrictions were still in force all across the country, he broke the rules. We don’t need a review to establish that a party took place at 10 Downing Street and that the PM attended it. That’s already settled.
We also don’t need a review to determine whether the PM was warned about the party. He is the prime minister, for goodness sake, not a minor who needs not just to be told what they can’t and can do but must be watched and protected and so on.
The prime minister, and indeed any adult, who wished to observe the Covid rules would certainly have had scruples about attending any gathering. They should have assessed the situation themselves once they got there even if they had not been warned about it beforehand. If he knew about the gathering and attended it, then he could have cancelled it, if he cared to.
So, the decision to hold the party depended to a large extent on the mindset of the people involved in organising and attending it, not on prior warnings about this or that.
We’ve all had to do a lot of self-assessments over the past two years in order to stay within the Covid rules and also keep ourselves and others safe. Somehow we are being told by the prime minister that he needs someone to do that for him.
In this case, strangely, the PM is suggesting he lacks the capacity to determine whether a gathering he attended might be breaking his own rules.
No, what it tells us is that he didn’t care about the rules, nor the sacrifices people were making, and the pain it was inflicting on most of our lives.
It seems that most Tory MPs are unwilling to cast their vote against their leader just yet. They are, therefore, for now hiding behind an internal review to buy time and hope the pressure on the PM subsides.
It’s a classic political way of obfuscating an issue. But it won’t work this time. Whatever the outcome of the review, it wouldn’t change anything for me. And, I believe, for the majority of people who are disgusted by the prime minister’s rule-breaking conduct.
This whole thing is about judgement and respect!
It seriously brings the prime minister’s judgement into question once again. If the PM needs someone to decide for him whether the event he attended was a party, and therefore broke the rules, then we’re in trouble. Perhaps, we actually are in trouble.
Everything around us points to the fact that we’re actually in trouble with Boris Johnson at the helm. The least said the better.
As it has already been said, the decent thing would have been for the prime minister to resign. If he had respect for the people of this country and for the rules, he would have done the right thing, the decent thing, and resigned.
Clearly, he doesn’t play by the same rules we all play by. One rule for him and another for the rest of us.
It’s time to end the chaos and booze parties at 10 Downing Street.
The prime minister’s moral authority to lead is gone. It’s now time for him to go and for the country to move on …
Klog Reflections 