Ayesha Hazarika
(Picture: Daniel Hambury)Boris Johnson is a keen historian and yesterday achieved a landmark first for all the wrong reasons. The first sitting Prime Minister to have broken the law — a law he introduced — along with his Chancellor and his wife. Not the Chancellor’s wife. She’s a bit tied up with sorting out her tax affairs.
The police have issued about 50 fixed penalty notices, which surely must make Downing Street the country’s top Covid crime hotspot. Remember, No 10 is meant to be a sober seat of power and government, not a scene from Shameless.
While the Johnsons partied away with their staff, friends and even the interior designer, the rest of us obeyed the rules they imposed and lived miserable existences. There will be some — like Jacob Rees-Mogg — who say this is all just fluff and that we should move on. Tell that to the people who lost loved ones and didn’t get to say their goodbyes. People who will never forgive themselves for listening to Johnson and never forgive him for breaking his own rules.
Rees-Mogg has tried to use the excuse that the rules were too harsh. Well, who made them? And why could the rest of us stick to them? “One rule for them, one rule for the rest of us” is an old political slogan yet it has never felt so apt. It’s the Chancellor’s wife’s tax avoidance. It’s the Home Secretary being found to have broken the ministerial code by bullying staff, but it was the guy who investigated her who had to resign. And now we have a Prime Minister who not only may have lied to Parliament, but also broke the law he made. If this was any other walk of life, these people would have been found to have brought their organisation into disrepute and have been sacked.
No 10 will find some comfort in the fact that this has all broken during Easter recess which means that there will be no PMQs and embarrassing scrutiny by Parliament. But we are in the middle of local elections across the country, which just got a whole heap more interesting. You might be fed up with how this country is being run and by how our leaders behave and want an opportunity to send a message on May 5. You have until midnight tomorrow to register to vote and I suggest you do. I’ve even had Tory MPs who have told me that they hope the public does give the leadership a bloody nose because they feel things are out of control.
Getting away with bad behaviour does not make for good government especially right now, during a punishing cost of living crisis and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For what it’s worth, I’m glad that Johnson got to visit Kyiv on Saturday. It’s important to show solidarity with Ukraine. It’s also probably the last time he’ll get that warm a reception on a public walkabout for quite a while.
