1. This fictional party was a business meeting
There is, perhaps, a universe in which No 10 did not deny last Wednesday’s Mirror report about lockdown-busting Christmas parties in Downing Street. Or any of the hundreds of inquiries from hacks since. Maybe, as the Department for Education did last night, they coughed to a small, impromptu work gathering more or less immediately and apologised. This morning’s front pages, news bulletins, Ant and Dec, Gary Neville and just about everyone in the country might have been talking about literally anything else.
Alas, that universe is – as Allegra Stratton might say – a fictional one. Instead, after a week of credulity-stretching denials, evasion and obfuscation, here we are, watching an ITV video in which Boris Johnson’s advisers chuckle their way through a mock press briefing (at last we can say for certain that £2.6 million was well spent) in which they make light of a party that they have spent the past week denying was a party, still less a gathering that broke any rules.
It is the sort of jaw-on-floor footage that has to be watched at least five times to believed. Ed Oldfield, a special adviser to the prime minister, asks Stratton – then rehearsing for the daily TV briefings we were so cruelly denied: “I’ve just seen reports on Twitter that there was a Downing Street Christmas party on Friday night — do you recognise those reports?” Stratton smiles, pauses, and says: “I went home.”
Oldfield asks: “Would the prime minister condone having a Christmas party?” She laughs: “What’s the answer?” Giggling among themselves, the room attempts to help her formulate a response. “It wasn’t a party, it was cheese and wine.” Stratton asks: “Is cheese and wine all right? It was a business meeting ... this fictional party was a business meeting ... it was not socially distanced.”
It looks awful, it sounds awful – and it is awful. And not just because the prime minister had cancelled Christmas for millions just days before that footage was taken last December, 691 people died on the very day it was recorded, patients in hospitals were isolated from their families, London was under tight Tier 3 restrictions, or because the Metropolitan Police are now investigating No 10 (nobody tell Dominic Raab – he’ll think they’ve invented time travel). Not just because, as this morning’s Times and Telegraph report, ministers are working on new restrictions that an exhausted public might now treat as optional.
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No, the nub of it is this: this Downing Street is in the habit of stonewalling, obfuscating, and evading its way through questions that become crises. It’s no way to run a press operation. And it’s certainly no way to run a country.
2. What MPs say
Tory MPs – many of them still smarting from the Owen Paterson affair – are taking this about as well as you’d expect. Last night Sir Roger Gale was the first to go over the top, tweeting: “The No.10 party has all the hallmarks of another ‘Barnard Castle’ moment. No.10 clearly has some serious questions to answer. Fast.” Strong stuff.
Charles Walker, the vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee, said: “The No 10 party means that any future lockdowns will be advisory, whatever the law says.” On Newsnight last night Tobias Ellwood, the former defence minister said Downing Street would need to “get ahead” of the scandal before PMQs – and if there is a plan to do that, be it with an investigation, a sacking or a resignation, they’d better get a move on.
In a taste of what will inevitably come at noon, Sir Keir Starmer said Boris Johnson was ”socially distanced from the truth” (it’s the way he tells ‘em), and said: “People across the country followed the rules even when that meant being separated from their families, locked down and — tragically for many — unable to say goodbye to their loved ones. They had a right to expect that the government was doing the same. To lie and to laugh about those lies is shameful. The prime minister now needs to come clean, and apologize. It cannot be one rule for the Conservatives and another for everyone else.”
Most damaging of the lot, though, was this exchange from the members for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly. Last night’s I’m a Celeb opened thus: “They weren’t celebrating. They didn’t have a party. They categorically deny any suggestions that they had a party! And this fictional party definitely didn’t involve cheese and wine or a Secret Santa. GOOD EVENING PRIME MINISTER! For now.” I believe they call that cut-through.
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3. What ministers say
On Sky News: nothing. On Times Radio: nothing. On LBC: nothing. On the BBC: nothing. Shall I keep going? Usually at this time of a morning I’d be trying to transcribe whatever flannel from whatever minister the government had put up for the broadcast round. Not today.
It’s a measure of how difficult even the most unflappable studio presence would find spinning this one that there are gaping holes in this morning’s schedules where a cabinet minister would usually be, regardless of whether they have been pulled or are refusing. Last night Sajid Javid, the health secretary, had been due to tour the studios to mark the first anniversary of the first vaccination – oddly enough, the BBC reported this morning, he is nowhere to be seen.
You know it’s bad when not even wheeling out Grant Shapps, the transport secretary Downing Street trust on the stickiest of wickets, can fix it. Presumably at some point last night the prime minister considered giving Michael Fallon a peerage for the sole purpose of getting him in front of the cameras this morning. Does anyone know the area code for Sevenoaks?
Funnily enough, No 10 have a special adviser whose job it is to put people on the airwaves – one Ed Oldfield. Who knows: maybe he was busy last night. It is Christmas party season, after all.
4. Why it matters...
That pandemic is still on, and yesterday the cabinet was told of evidence that Omicron is “more transmissible” than Delta. South African laboratory experiments released last night, meanwhile, suggest the strain is able to evade vaccines better than any other variant. It’s against this increasingly gloomy backdrop that officials are working on plans for vaccine passports and mandatory home working.
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“We are looking at what more we might need to do,” a government source tells this morning’s Times. “We’ve done masks in shops and public transport so the logical next step is working from home and certification.” The cabinet are already split – Michael Gove spoke in favour, Grant Shapps against – and Tory MPs will absolutely hate both of those proposals. This morning we might ask: does the PM still have the political capital to do either?
5. I’m helping!
Still no sign of a government minister within a five-mile radius of a broadcast studio but Matt Hancock, of all people, has just taken it upon himself to do some freelance firefighting on ITV’s Good Morning Britain (someone really, really, wants to be a minister again). Asked whether No 10 staff should follow his lead in resigning for breaking the rules, he said: “Well, that’s one of those questions that starts with ‘if’. We just don’t know.” Yeah. That’ll help.
Patrick Maguire’s analysis first appeared in the Red Box morning newsletter