Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The partygate scalp hunters can’t complain about the fallout now

Boris Johnson (Photo: Getty)

Robert Peston, the fiercely well-connected political editor of ITV News and a contributor to Coffee House, reports ‘a sense of injustice and considerable upset’ in Downing Street that ‘the 126 Partygate fines have been levied disproportionately on women and junior officials’. Robert quotes a source who complains that ‘the majority’ of those fined are ‘very junior diary managers’ on salaries of roughly £24,000 and that ‘these fines are really stacking up for them’. It seems there is considerable discontent among female staff fined ‘for events they were at with their male bosses who seem to have got away no problem’, and that ‘lawyering up’ appears to have made the difference.

It’s entirely understandable that civil servants, and particularly those on the lower end of the pay scale, would feel this way. Where they broke the Covid restrictions, they did so in the course of working for the people imposing them. Most confronted by this scenario at work would have deferred to their superiors on the assumption that the authors of the law would hardly be breaking it or having them do so.

For a morality play authored by noble seekers after justice, this feels like a somewhat unjust ending

While we may sympathise with their reactions, the same can’t be said for those who pushed partygate and now profess to be indignant over the supposedly inequitable distribution of the fallout. No one can be shocked that clamouring for police investigations into Downing Street parties has landed a bunch of junior civil servants with fixed penalty notices. Of course it has and was always going to. You can’t demand that the rules apply to everyone then complain when you get your way.

If it was unlawful for the Prime Minister to arrange or attend a workplace gathering during lockdown, then logically it was just as unlawful for every staff member at every level to have done the same.

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