Boris Johnson has thrown so many lackeys under the bus, it is uncertain if the vehicle can move forwards or backwards any more. A prime minister accused of having no fixed principles and a tenuous relationship with the truth spoke from the heart in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Saying he was “sickened and furious” by a video of his aides joking about an alleged party in No 10 Downing Street during last December’s restrictions, Johnson threw his own advisers to the wolves. Allegra Stratton, his former press secretary and latterly the Cop26 spokeswoman, tearfully resigned in front of television cameras.
While I should declare that I had a misspent youth as a special adviser in the Irish government, I do think it borders on bad manners for ministers to throw their staff overboard. To have done so in these circumstances may even be a mistake. Johnson has bought time but ceded credibility.
No 10 Downing Street is larger inside than you expect, but not so large that the prime minister who lives and works there requires the cabinet secretary to conduct an inquiry into whether there was a party involving dozens of people last year. The reason for the inquiry is not that the truth is unknown, but that it is unpalatable. There was certainly a large gathering of staff on December 18. Perhaps if they had the services of Sir Humphrey, he could recast it as an official meeting. Stratton, who was not at the gathering, got the giggles when asked about it at a rehearsal for an in-house press conference because she knew naughtiness had happened.
Captured on video, it exposed the nudge and wink of insiders to the public gaze. No news room, garda station or staff canteen is free of black humour or comment that would not bear repeating. It is the ventilation required for sanity, but it needs privacy to circulate. When Stratton road-tested No 10’s new press centre, replete with authoritative backdrop and all the gizmos of modern communication, she was playing with the toys of her own destruction.
Outside Downing Street was a miserable world in lockdown. During the Second World War, King George VI lived on official rations in solidarity with his people. The ultimate British myth is that “we are all in this together”. Yet inside No 10, Boris’s hero Winston Churchill lived high on the hog, the better to raise morale. Transparency is a cruel and peculiarly modern standard.
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In turning on Stratton, Johnson effectively turned on his entire staff. Dominic Cummings, his first consigliere, had vice-regal power and could not be countermanded. He fell from grace and is now ventilating his hubris from the outside. Johnson, who has no discernible management skills, has overcorrected. Like his cabinet, his staff have become less seasoned and authoritative. Incapable of taking command on a day-to-day basis himself, the prime minister now has no one do it for him. There is chaos in a court of competing figures but no grand vizier.
I realise that advisers are the lowest lifeform in the political pond. They lack the mandate of the politicians on whom they depend. As political appointees, they also lack the stature or respectability of civil servants. Living like a governess in a better class of household, they may mix with the family but can be regarded as uppity servants. Resented for their access and suspected because of their boundary-less existence, advisers master the arts of obsequiousness and usefulness in a way that balances political power with personal insignificance. As occasion demands they should be seen but not heard, or heard but not seen, but never both simultaneously.
Johnson has told his staff, the only people who depend on him completely, that he does not have their back. He has reminded them that his great skills are adapting politically, being an opportunist, and sacrificing anyone and anything required. No one will be prepared to die for him again.
Questions over who paid for the redecoration of his No 10 flat, over his Peppa Pig speech and the debacle over allegations against Owen Paterson, the former Northern Ireland secretary, have all taken a toll. The bond with his backbenches has dangerously loosened. Behind the glossed black door of his official residence, politically he cannot sleep safely in his own bed. The gatekeepers themselves are suspect.
