Our last PM but one cropped up this week performing a fake snore in an interview when he was asked about the details of his downfall. The country though, is not snoring, but still reeling from the unstable government and moral vacuum he represented.

The Partygate scandal and select committee report have understandably concentrated on the events that Boris Johnson did attend. But in early 2022 the Daily Telegraph broke the story about two events he didn’t. It emerged that there were two parties held at No 10 the night before Prince Philip’s funeral. The famous “Winetime Friday” suitcase had been trundled to the 24-hour Co-op on the Strand to collect the booze for this event and a bacchanalian time was had by all. The Sue Gray report later confirmed the dancing, broken swing and all the rest. This at a period of national mourning and continuing lockdown; a time when no more than two people were meant to socialize indoors and no more than six outdoors.

As the details emerged Johnson did an interview with Beth Rigby on Jan 18 2022:

He wears a blue disposable mask and hangs his head in shame as Rigby begins to interrogate. There is an audible sigh at 10 minutes 52 seconds in, and what appears to be abject sorrow as he listens:

Rigby: “Was having to apologise to the Queen about those parties the night she…she laid her husband of over 70 years to rest, was that a moment of shame for you?”

Johnson: “I deeply and bitterly regret what happened and can only renew my apology both to her Majesty and to the country for the misjudgments that were made”.

A Downing St press release said a letter of apology had gone to Buckingham Palace but Johnson’s response in the Rigby interview was widely reported as, and clearly meant to give the impression that, a heartfelt in person apology was made. He had nodded miserably when Rigby said: “was that a moment of shame for you”.

So, compare and contrast with an interview with Fiona Bruce, broadcast on September 14 2022 in tribute to the Queen, six days after her death:

In a break from what is largely, in view of the circumstances, a soft interview, five minutes 11 seconds in Bruce refers directly to partying at Downing Street on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral.

Bruce: “I am just wondering you…you had to see the Queen after that. How did you get past it?

Johnson (hesitantly) “Because of her great constitutional tact, she never got into that sort of conversation. It was…she was absolutely focussed on what she saw as impartial issues…that never came up.”

Bruce: “It was never discussed”

Johnson: “I can tell you absolutely not”

Yet another discrepancy in a career which has turned economy with the actualité into an art form.  But this discrepancy seems in particularly poor taste as it involves our long serving and deceased head of state who cannot answer back on her own behalf. What takes the breath away about this is that for any other PM/Monarch relationship in history such a discrepancy would be the subject of fevered interest. For Johnson it is just one more porkie, just a smaller one than all the rest.

In his stream of bile about Harriet Harman’s report the ex-PM refers to his pride that the Elizabeth Line, named of course, after the Queen, was opened on his watch. As with much of the rest of his woeful contribution to our national life, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has a right royal nerve.

* Ruth Bright has been a councillor in Southwark and Parliamentary Candidate for Hampshire East