Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Partygate is shameful – but Boris shouldn’t resign

(Photo: Number 10)

I feel torn on partygate. Like most other people, I have flashes of rage over the vision of government ministers living it up with booze and birthday cakes while the rest of us risked arrest if we so much as popped round to our mum’s for a cup of tea.

But there is something in the pushback against partygate that grates, too. It feels opportunistic, possibly even anti-democratic, with Boris’s legion of loathers among the media elites clearly hoping that this scandal will do what they so spectacularly failed to do at the ballot box – get those pesky Brexity Tories out of Downing Street.

This is not to downplay the seriousness of what has happened. That the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have been fined for breaking laws that they constantly warned the rest of us to obey is extraordinary. That Boris and Rishi have made history by becoming the first PM and Chancellor to have broken the law while in office is just mortifying. For them, of course (I hope that birthday bash was worth it, Boris), but also for us as a nation. The world pulls together to face down a scary pandemic and our leaders are clinking glasses and rubbing shoulders in defiance of rules they themselves drew up? What an embarrassment.

Downing Street underestimates at its peril the simmering fury people feel about partygate. Even people I know who have no interest in politics are seriously ticked off. That ministers hosted depressing daily press conferences at which they warned the masses not to socialise and then had a jolly old knees-up with their work pals feels like a sucker punch to the public. It has a Marie Antoinette vibe, where the plebs were expected to endure all sorts of social privations while our supposed betters could carry on quaffing and partying.





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