It isn’t just the fines. It isn’t just the behaviour that has led to the Prime Minister being issued a fixed penalty notice by the Metropolitan police. It isn’t just the lies told about that behaviour, lies issued with the most sweeping confidence inside and outside the House of Commons. It isn’t just the fines and the indifference to the rules he and his ministers set for everyone else and demanded they follow – on pain of arrest – and the lying about that behaviour and the cavalier assumption that public opinion can go hang. It is all of those things wrapped together.
All of this makes the Prime Minister’s position intolerable and a fellow possessing a greater amount of self-awareness or – to employ an old-fashioned term – honour, would read the room and do the decent thing. That there are ample grounds for doubting this Prime Minister will do the appropriate thing is itself a further reminder of how standards in public life have been corroded.
For it is simply not possible to imagine Theresa May or David Cameron or Gordon Brown or Tony Blair or John Major or Margaret Thatcher carrying on in this fashion. They might each have had their shortcomings and blindspots but none would have presided over – and participated in – a Downing Street social scene of this kind at a time they were placing the rest of the country under significant social restrictions.
The behaviour is bad enough but might have been survivable had the Prime Minister and his allies not treated the public as fools. Do not believe the evidence of your own eyes and ears, they said, for what you see and what you hear is untrue. There were no parties. The rules were followed.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Don't miss out
Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.
UNLOCK ACCESSAlready a subscriber? Log in