As the Sue Gray report into lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street was finally released this week, one wonders what her enquiry will ultimately achieve.
We’ve been offered some salacious details of goings-on at one or another of the social gatherings in No 10 – the over-consumption of alcohol, someone throwing up in the corner, an altercation between two individuals. The report states the “senior leadership team … must bear responsibility”. But no personal recriminations have been made.
The bigger picture
The public mind is in little doubt that Boris Johnson did indeed lie – to us, and worse, to Parliament (because lying to the House of Commons is regarded as undermining the legislature’s role in our democratic system). The Prime Minister’s defence that he either did not see what was happening, or else attended but did not think they were social events, seems implausible. How could he possibly have been so truly ignorant?
How could he possibly have been so truly ignorant?
Many question the need for such intense scrutiny into some workplace socialising, given the bigger picture of a fully-fledged war on the other side of Europe, the world-wide famine that it has already begun to unleash, and the even more ominous possibility of a nuclear attack threatened against us.
But given that the Partygate events occurred in the midst of tight lockdown, when, at the insistence of the Prime Minister’s own government, the entire nation was being forced, under law, to abide by strict social distancing rules, the goings on in No 10 are quite reprehensible.
Being found out
Is Boris bothered? Bothered about being found out, and potentially forced to resign, of course. But lying or misleading the public (even Parliament) does not seem to be a particular concern to many of our politicians these days – it certainly doesn’t appear to faze Mr Johnson, who seems determined to hold on to power. But untruths will always come back to haunt the one who told them, as Matthew 10 reminds us: “For there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known”. (Mt 10:26. See also 1 Pet 3:10-11; Ps 120: 2; Col 3:9-10).
But untruths will always come back to haunt the one who told them, as Matthew 10 reminds us.
What the No 10 gatherings do reveal is that Boris, and all his partying colleagues, didn’t see the need to take seriously the draconian restrictions that they imposed on others. They were deemed unnecessary, worthy only of being flouted.
And that is the point, as many see it. For countless citizens around the country felt exactly the same way. It was the inhuman rules that were unmanageable, not people meeting together (in a sensible manner). As God himself declared at the beginning of creation, “It isn’t good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18; cf Eccles 4:9-10. See also Heb 10:24-25; Matt 18:20).
Perhaps the inquiry that really matters is the one on the UK Covid response; that is, whether lockdowns should have been imposed in the first place – along with the programme of fear unleashed on the populace, through false risk assessments and mass media propaganda. If anything, that’s the report many of us want to see.
Will Baroness Hallett’s inquiry really expose all this, or will it be a whitewash, allowing future governments to implement similarly damaging restrictions once again?
