Partygate And Appropriate Swearing

I've read the Gray Report on what has predictably come to be known as Partygate. For those of you who may have been on another planet, or more accurately aren't British and are therefore less than interested in the machinations of our shitty political class, this is the sorry tale of the serial breaches of Covid Regulations that took place in Downing Street. I have let the dust settle for a few days and I find that my reaction has not changed. And here I have to apologise to more delicate readers because I will have to lapse into the coarsest language. My conclusion? Boris Johnson is quite clearly a complete f****** c***. He plays you and me, dear reader, for complete fools.

Let us remind ourselves that this man was educated at Eton and Oxford - now I didn't go to either of these august institutions but both sell themselves as being best in class. So let us first dispose of the most charitable interpretation of Johnson's behaviour - that is to say, that he misunderstood the tenor of the Regulations - those very Regulations he kept explaining to us at innumerable televeised press briefings. Horseshit. If he's that thick he shouldn't be in government. End of. I saw that dreadful creep Michael Fabricant pleading on Bozza'a behalf that a Prime Minister could not be expected to know the finer details of every Regulation - ok, I'll just about buy that but not of a man who had laid out to his poor old public what the rules meant. This shouln't really matter but Johnson's case is hardly helped when the man espousing it does so in a truly dreadful Boris Johnson fright-wig. Get a grip Fabricant.

So what other excuses have been paraded for the Downing Street shenanigans? Well, apparently they were all working very hard and under intolerable pressure. Oh the poor little poppets. Here's what Gray, in her fabulous civil service prose, has to say about that:     

Those challenges, however, also applied to key and frontline workers across
the country who were working under equally, if not more, demanding conditions,
often at risk to their own health. It is important to remember the stringency of
the public health regulations in force in England over the relevant periods and
that criminal sanctions were applied to many found to be in breach of them. The
hardship under which citizens across the country worked, lived and sadly even
died while observing the Government¶s regulations and guidance rigorously are
known only too well.

So what does the sober-sided civil servant  conclude about all of this?

I have already commented in my update on what I found to be failures of
leadership and judgment in No 10 and the Cabinet Office. The events that I
investigated were attended by leaders in government. Many of these events
should not have been allowed to happen. It is also the case that some of the
more junior civil servants believed that their involvement in some of these
events was permitted given the attendance of senior leaders. The senior
leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for
this culture.

All of this at the end of a report that also catalogues incivility towards the security and cleaning staff at No. 10. This sort of boorish behaviour upsets me even more than the odd illicit drink. Perhaps I'm old-fashioned. So there we have it - Boris you're a c***. Resign!