Never mind the rest – ‘Partygate’ report shows No10 didn’t view Covid as a risk

As one official put it at the time, “we seem to have got away with” it. You know what, I think the b****r might just be right.

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MOST journalists have completely missed the point on ‘Partygate’ (no news there, of course).

For me, the most important aspects of civil servant Sue Gray’s report into lockdown rule breaking at Number 10 were the highlighting of requests for staff to leave parties via the back exit; for them to “be mindful”, as one special advisor put it, of the rolling cameras following a press conference, when staff should avoid “walking around waving bottles of wine etc”; of former Communications Director Lee Cain warning about a “rather substantial comms risks”…

What were they all trying to avoid? Not the virus, though they harangued us about this through our screens, newspapers, radios (and, in turn, through our neighbours and, perhaps, loved ones) day after day, and although this was used to ‘justify’ shutting down the country for months on end, without a care about the damage this might inflict. No, they were avoiding being caught out on the fact they did not view Covid as a threat.

They forced babies and departing souls to spend the most important and difficult moments of their lives without those who should have been there, but Whitehall didn’t even think Covid was a risk. (Why, then, did they do it, is the obvious question.)

This, also, is why Sir Keir Starmer’s rantings on ‘Partygate’ are so insulting. Not because he has been pictured with a bottle himself, but because he backed the very measures that have so damaged our country. He is just as guilty of this as the rest.

But, as Johnson’s then Principal Private Secretary, Lee Cain, put it at the time, “we seem to have got away with” it. You know what, I think the b****r might just be right.