Month: May 2022

(Risky I know, but nobody’s confused me with Aretha Franklin yet so I’ll take my chances.)

A tiny little news story which in the hustle and bustle of daily life you could easily have missed this week, was the release at long last of the Sue Gray report.

I have to confess that every time I hear the name, my instinctive thought is of Linda GRAY who played SUE Ellen in Dallas – which is of course entirely inappropriate. Or so I thought. Now that the report has been published, detailing regular and excessive booze-fuelled events at Downing Street, there is a hint of Sue “Your mother is a goddamn drunk, John Ross” Ellen Ewing about it.

Unfortunately, the whole sorry saga has dragged on for so long that it’s not easy to remember where it started. In particular, this week’s ‘defence’ such as it was seems to have revolved around confusing or misinterpreting a work event as a party…

…Which is all fine and dandy except that, unless my memory is at fault, work events weren’t allowed under Covid restrictions any more than parties were. If we’re now being told that these were in fact permitted, then all those restaurants and pubs must be feeling pretty stupid for closing in 2020 rather than hosting a load of ‘work events’. ‘Work’ itself was allowed of course, but only in an inevitable ‘the show must go on’ kind of way; it wasn’t as if ‘the science’ had discovered you can’t catch Covid in the vicinity of staplers and filing cabinets.

For that matter, forget coronavirus restrictions – where I and/or Aretha came in is that even in normal times on the day of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral I would not expect a boozy event of any sort at the heart of government. It’s so fundamentally disrespectful that it should be enough on its own to have prompted a flurry of resignations.

Luckily, because I wouldn’t want anybody to think that this report has been in any sense a colossal waste of time and money, the Prime Minister has accepted full responsibility. Phew, what a relief, what a guy.

Except… He has ‘accepted full responsibility’ knowing that it doesn’t mean anything, because the Sue Gray report is all bark and no bite. Our system is built on the assumption that anybody at the top who has broken the law or deceived the house will honourably resign. When that doesn’t happen, it turns out there is no mechanism to force them out.

In effect the only people who can get rid of Boris at the moment are the other members of the Tory Party – which they won’t do while he might win them the next election, and which they’d do in a heartbeat if they think he’ll lose it. In other words, they’ll happily do what’s right for them but have no interest in doing what is simply right.

The same might be said of the Chancellor, who has been back to the magic money tree again. Less than four weeks after saying how silly it would be to provide more support for the energy crisis until knowing what will happen in the Autumn, he has decided that he’s going to do something after all and has announced it the very day after the Sue Gray report was released. Just coincidence I’m sure, it would be the height of cynicism to suggest otherwise…

Either way, it’s hard not to feel that the Chancellor and the government don’t have any real interest in helping people because they’re starving and/or freezing; but that they are all for it if it can divert attention from a report suggesting the PM, in claiming not to know a party when he sees one, is either a massive liar or a complete moron. In the interests of balance I wouldn’t like to say which of the two options is correct, but neither screams ‘leadership material’ at me.

But, for all that, unbelievably it seems that we are still stuck with Boris (and, heaven help us, his cabinet).

Better say a little prayer…