Nesrine Malik: Johnson expects this to be drowned out in the fullness of time
In any normal political climate, the Sue Gray report should be a final word. It is not short on statements that should condemn the prime minister, confirming the facts that have been out in the public domain for weeks now. Twelve parties – all but four of those that took place – are under criminal investigation. One of those, and this is not a passing detail, took place in the prime minister’s own flat. While the rest of the country was negotiating the fine technicalities of what constitutes a breach of the rules, in some instances pondering whether to sit on a bench in the park or not, these parties seem to suggest that No 10 and civil service staff, under the eye of the prime minister, believed they were exempt.
But this is not a normal political climate. It is one where Johnson and the Conservative party, even with their popularity severely diminished, have a large majority, no clear successor, and a grace period before the next election: if reports and conclusions can be spaced out far enough, and with fatigue and a heave-ho from the rightwing press, all this can be drowned by time.
There is potentially enough in the Gray report already to help the government along in this effort. There is enough bureaucrat speak, enough legally prompted restraint, for Johnson and his supporters to hang it all on the “infrastructure” of No 10, the proximity of the garden to the offices, the “fragmented leadership structures” that “blur” lines of accountability. There might be enough here for Johnson to say, as he has done, picking up on the lifelines immediately: “I get it and I will fix it.” That pledge sounds more like a wink than an earnest promise.
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
Frances Ryan: Every report of a party during lockdown is an insult to disabled people
In her report, Sue Gray stated that, “At times it seems there was too little thought given to what was happening across the country.” As one of the 3.7 million clinically vulnerable people who were shielding 24/7 at home as Boris Johnson and his team let off steam, I can only agree. Every report of a party during lockdown is an insult to disabled people who even now are still afraid to have a drink with a friend.
How did we get to this point as a country? The attributes that could have led the prime minister and those around him to potentially break the law – entitlement, carelessness, deceitfulness – have long been visible to those who cared to see them.
As Johnson shamelessly tries to cling on to power, attention should also turn to those who helped get him there. The Tory MPs who are now moving against Johnson allowed party members to choose between him and Jeremy Hunt as leader when it suited them, just as the rightwing press now crying foul helped him get the keys to No 10 in the first place.
The consequences of this will be felt for years to come. The greatest loss from Johnson’s time in office is the thousands of lives unnecessarily taken by coronavirus, but we should not underestimate the loss of public trust, too. Democracies are sustained by leaders with integrity, just as they are damaged by those without. The hangover from “partygate” will linger in Britain long after Gray’s sparse report gathers dust. For a man famously fascinated by great leaders and power, Johnson will indeed go down in the history books – as the prime minister who partied as his citizens died.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist and author of Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People
Devi Sridhar: From a public health perspective, we need modelling of appropriate behaviour from the top
It is simply a tragedy of history that when the Covid-19 crisis hit, Boris Johnson was prime minister of the UK. The scientific research from British academic institutions – and the NHS – is superb. We are envied by much of the world. Yet the UK response to Covid in 2020 was abysmal, as reflected by the death toll of 176,000.
In March 2020, there was no preparation, no plan and no leadership. Johnson missed five consecutive emergency meetings about Covid in the buildup to the crisis; boasted that he had shaken hands with Covid patients; went into hospitals without wearing a mask; and allegedly said (when pushed to introduce restrictions to slow the spread of the virus), “let the bodies pile high”.
The Gray report tells us little that we did not already know about Johnson’s poor leadership at this time. This is a report about the parties at No 10, but really it is not about parties at all. It is about the sacrifices – financial, social, familial – that normal people made to protect their communities and be law-abiding citizens, while the government carried on with seemingly little interest or care for the people of their country.
Covid will not be the last pandemic we face – and there is a real chance that another variant like Omicron could be just around the corner, and it could be much more dangerous. From a public health perspective, we need people to look out for each other because it’s the right thing to do. Because they care about the lives and livelihoods of others. This starts with modelling of appropriate behaviour and leadership from the top. Johnson has lost the trust of the people of this country. The consequence is that we are all more exposed and weaker in our pandemic response.
Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
Katy Balls: Johnson’s response to the report has put him back in the danger zone
Over the weekend, there had been a sense building among Boris Johnson’s allies that the prime minister was over the worst of it when it came to “partygate”. The rebels had lost momentum and the work of Johnson loyalists was beginning to result in more Tory MPs speaking up on behalf of the PM.
Even the police getting involved was seen by some as having an upside. The thinking was that it would drag things out, Johnson could remove anyone who was fined by the police from No 10 – and then declare, when the Gray report finally came out, that he had dealt with matters.
But Gray’s update, in which she was more than keen to stress this was not her report and just a summary, and Johnson’s response to it, has put him back in the danger zone.
First, there’s the sheer number of events the police are looking at. Second, there is the fact the PM was at some of them – and they include a gathering at his Downing Street flat.
Finally, there was the prime minister’s appearance in the Commons. When he needed to be statesmanlike and contrite, he was angry and combative – even refusing to commit to publishing the full report once the police investigation was concluded (a position Downing Street has already had to U-turn on).
His attack on Keir Starmer for the failure to prosecute Jimmy Savile (a claim that has been disproven) dismayed even his own MPs – while his questioning of drug use by the Labour frontbench was viewed as simply bizarre. “It was terrible,” says one member of the payroll.
The scale of Tory anger at Johnson was on full display, as MPs – from Theresa May to the 2019 intake – lined up to criticise him. Given that many of the MPs who spoke up in the chamber aren’t exactly known for being Johnson loyalists, there was no single intervention that signals a collapse in support for the PM.
However, behind the scenes, discomfort is building. Johnson’s response to the report has only added to doubts about his future. For all the talk from Johnson of change in how No 10 operates, the part that most worries MPs is that he may not realise that he needs to change, too.
Katy Balls is the Spectator’s deputy political editor
Rachel Clarke: While Downing Street partied, we confronted more death than anyone should ever endure in peacetime
How much did I need to hear this? Sue Gray just called time on some of the most nauseating codswallop of this entire saga. I’m referring to the Boris Johnson apologists who have tried to excuse the partying prime minister on the grounds that he was “stressed” at work. Dominic Raab, for instance – who incensed NHS staff such as me when he referred to Downing Street as “a cockpit for people working phenomenally hard under phenomenal strain”. Oh really? Try 13-hour shifts in full PPE, we thought. Try holding an iPad to a dying man as his wife howls with grief, alone at home. Try knowing the ventilators are being covertly rationed, yet being powerless to stop this. Try finding your most junior doctor trembling, traumatised, in a toilet. Try seeing your patients suffocate before your eyes – over and over and over again. And all the while, try knowing that the virus soaks your hair, your neck, your clothes, your shoes – and that you’ll bring it straight back home to your family.
So thank you, Sue Gray. Thank you for choosing quite deliberately to acknowledge the “difficult conditions” and “long hours” worked by Downing Street staff, only to then observe – with damning curtness – that key and frontline workers were “working under equally, if not more, demanding conditions, often at risk to their own health”.
Indeed we were. While Downing Street partied, we confronted more death and dying than anyone should ever endure in peacetime. In insinuating that Johnson has experienced something similar, Raab and his ilk sought to trivialise profound and lasting trauma. It was the cheapest of shots, a truly low blow to a broken NHS workforce. Gray just slapped it down – and for that I’m enormously grateful.
The more Johnson squirms, deflects, distracts and scapegoats others, the more he’s really just writing his own dire legacy. The only way for this government to claw back credibility is for him, and his defenders, to embark on a process of radical candour. Admit the rule-breaking. Be absolutely candid. No more evasions. Just face up to how wrong they got it. Above all, Johnson needs to resign rather than be pushed. I don’t believe anything less will defuse the nationwide anger.
Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor and the author of Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic
Lola Okolosie: My pupils, aged just 11 and 12, know that the rot begins at the top
Here we have it, in black and white, the simple outlining of 12 occasions in which the government defied its own laws. I think back to the third lockdown and can’t believe the gall of a political establishment willing to stand in support of such blatant disrespect for its citizens.
At the time, my partner began cancer treatment. I could not accompany him to the operation that removed his tumour, nor the chemotherapy appointments that followed. All of it he attended alone. At the time I counted us “lucky”. A chat with his cousin, a doctor working in a hospice, was evidence it could be much worse. That we were “all in this together” was taken at face value. It is difficult to not conclude we were taken as naive fools.
My partner’s cancer treatment left him with a weakened immune system, meaning that despite our being key workers, my children remained at home to be taught by us. I would end online teaching lessons to my pupils by telling them to keep thinking positively and reminding them that they were doing great – although I was worried by the impact it was all having on so many who were increasingly becoming withdrawn or disengaged. I’d then rush down to begin teaching my own children. When thoughts centred on how long we would remain in the tunnel kept circling back, I’d reproach myself. We weren’t the only ones going through hard times. To differing degrees, we were all shouldering a collective burden.
At the moment I am teaching my year 7 classes rhetoric. Today we covered a key element of the triad, ethos: a speaker’s credibility. The audience, I tell them, needs to believe that the speaker is, among other things, “trustworthy and someone who genuinely cares”. When I ask them who needs to be perceived as such, all write “politicians”. More than a few name our prime minister, Boris Johnson. At 11 and 12, so many already know that the rot begins right at the top. What a terrible lesson to teach.
Lola Okolosie is an English teacher and writer focusing on race, politics, education and feminism
