Every time we hear of yet another time when Downing Street staff behaved like the rules didn’t apply to them, it just brings back the pain. This isn’t just politics. It’s about reliving the emotions of a really difficult couple of years.
As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, it’s the hugs we didn’t have, the days we didn’t see our loved ones that really hurt.
Most of us bear the scars of this pandemic to a certain extent. If we hadn’t obeyed the rules, the death toll from Covid would have been so much higher. Staying at home for months on end was the only way to protect ourselves and others from a deadly virus.
But that came at a huge cost for many.
I am thinking of someone I love very much who wasn’t able to see their friends for months on end. They became very seriously ill as a result and could have lost their life. I heard yesterday about others who had not been so lucky and whose loved ones had died by suicide.
My son’s 21st fell not long before Boris Johnson’s birthday. He couldn’t see his group of friends. His treat for the day was a trip to the drive thru McDonalds which had opened a few days previously. To be fair, he did get a nice home-cooked meal, but it’s far from the celebration he wanted. I didn’t see my parents on their birthdays last year and my niece had to postpone her wedding. We’ve all got similar stories to tell.
It is genuinely infuriating to think that they were throwing caution to the wind in Downing Street, with cakes and singing (which was also prohibited at the time).
Ed Davey tonight called again for Boris Johnson to resign.
This can’t go on any longer.
“Party after party, lie after lie, this disgraced Prime Minister brings more pain every day to bereaved families who have already suffered too much.
“It is clear now the Sue Gray inquiry is not fit for purpose. The Met must investigate this to deliver justice for millions who sacrificed so much during this pandemic.
“Britain played by the rules which Boris Johnson wrote, but couldn’t be bothered to stick to himself. It is time he saved the country even more pain and resigned.”
If the Prime Minister survives it will be because nobody else wants the job. That is not a great position to be in.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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4 Comments
I’m also simply astonished at the party culture that appears to exist in Downing Street , and Whitehall generally, apparently. Apart from what the rules might have been at the time, were these people not supposed to be governing the country? Or have I mis-read this completely? Where I live, many people work at the nearby refinery. If anyone is so much as found in a refinery car park with a bottle of wine in the boot of their car, they would be instantly dismissed
It seems that the obvious title for any memoirs published by Downing Street staff looking back on 2020 should be “Carry on Partying”. It sums up their farcical response to the pandemic and their actions at the time. Of course, it needs filing in the horror category of the fiction section because there is nothing comic about their response.
I hear that the Met will be investigating the parties. However as Sue Grey has been looking into it her information will, till the end of police investigations ,therefore be delayed for some time.Can this be a way to allow the anger etc to die down and the hurt and pain to be forgotten as far as public interest is concerned? It will equally allow Johnson a reprieve,possibly save his job.l
I can believe that nobody else will want the job as it is a poisoned chalice for the Conservatives.They have no real leader.
I will be surprised if he resigns. He has the right to decide what is published in the report – “the findings” are all that are guaranteed to be published and that could be very limited indeed. Even if he is charged by the Met and found guilty he will continue to say that he did not realise he was breaking the law, give another half-hearted apology and move on. It’s best for us in the next election if he stays but, for the sake of the UK, Tory MPs should sack him.