We can always opt out

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Whatever Johnson was apologising for yesterday, it wasn’t for the holding of an illegal party in Downing Street, an event which he still claims never happened, despite it having taken place just a few yards from the office where he was allegedly ‘working’ at the time, and despite the increasingly detailed reports, including this one (from a Tory-supporting newspaper, the Times) saying that the party started at 6pm and ended with people leaving “rat-arsed” shortly before 2am. I’m not even sure that he was apologising for the jokey way in which his staff tried to work out how they would handle questions if the press ever found out about it. I suspect that what he was really ‘apologising’ for was the fact that the recording had become public. It’s a misdirected ‘apology’ if ever there was one.

He also said that he was furious. I believe him on that, but given his past record and the nature of the man, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that his real fury is directed at whoever leaked the recording. And more time will probably be spent investigating that than investigating whether a party was or was not held, the latter being a question to which they already know the answer. In the meantime, the first person thrown under a bus by the PM is someone who wasn’t even at the non-party; and it seems likely that other staff will shortly suffer a similar fate.

Leaving aside the jokiness in the video, which inevitably looks callous and unsympathetic in the circumstances, the question asked of Stratton at the rehearsal was a clear sign both that the staff knew how damaging the party could be and that they needed to have answers ready if it did come to light. It would have been better if, knowing that, they hadn’t ploughed ahead and held it anyway, but there is a sense in which preparing a response in advance is a sign of a residual degree of professionalism. It makes the eventual handling of the response when it did come to light look even more clumsy and incompetent. They had 12 whole months to prepare their answers and they botched it. The reason for that comes back to the man at the centre: preparation and sticking to an agreed script is not exactly one of his better known character traits. He much prefers to ‘busk’, to fly by the seat of his pants, to make up whatever answer he thinks will deal with the immediate question, and then stonewall and bluster until the media get fed up and the issue goes away. Professional staff are wasted on him.

It’s too easy, though, to see this whole saga as being about what happens when a lying and incompetent clown gets elected to an office where there are no real checks and balances. The questions we should be considering are how he ever got into a position for which he is so obviously unsuited, and why there are so few checks and balances that his ultimate downfall lies in a sufficient number of Tory MPs becoming convinced that his continued occupation of the role makes them more likely to lose than to hold their seats. The answer to both of those questions is that we have a political system which is arcane, broken and unfit for purpose, and which neither of the two main English parties seem to have any motive to fix. Any sincere unionist, who really believed that the UK as an entity was worth preserving, would be giving serious thought to the questions but they prefer to close their eyes to reality and preside over the continuing decline and rot. No matter what Welsh or Scottish politicians think, only English politicians can solve this. We don’t have to remain part of it, though.

Have we reached a turning point?

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The Tories are not the only party to have been accused of using peerages as a means of rewarding large donors; the legislation banning the sale of honours followed the sale of honours by the Liberal leader Lloyd George in the 1920s, and Labour had its own little scandal under Blair. The price may have increased by more than the rate of inflation, but then the Tories have long expected larger individual donations than the other parties. Their role is, after all, to represent the interests of the wealthiest.

In the strict terms of any police enquiry, the latest suggestion that becoming Tory Treasurer and donating at least £3 million virtually guarantees a peerage is not something over which Johnson needs to lose any sleep. The problem with the legislation, which effectively stymied any prosecution for Labour’s activities under Blair, is that the burden of proof is so high. Mere correlation between donating large sums and being ennobled, no matter how strong that correlation may be, isn’t proof of a transaction having taken place. It appears that, unless the prosecuting authorities can amass evidence that there was an advance agreement that if X gave £Y, then X would become a peer, then there is inadequate evidence to mount a prosecution. Nods and winks, to say nothing of the entirely coincidental precedent that the previous n treasurers were ennobled, don’t count. In effect, the bar is set so high that there is never any danger of prosecution as long as those involved are careful never to record anything. The legislation has been rendered irrelevant, and Johnson can continue to distribute peerages as he chooses. Inspector Knacker is unlikely to be banging on the door of Number Ten any time soon. Well, not for selling honours at any rate.

It isn’t as simple as just the legalistic question of a criminal offence, though. Last week, something changed. It’s not that the Tories became any more venal or corrupt than they have been for the past couple of years, although the Paterson affair was perhaps more blatant than previous issues. It’s not that Johnson became any more dishonest or mendacious; he’s been that way all his life and that’s not something that will ever change. No, last week, for the first time really, some of those who have naturally supported him / covered for him / repeated his lies as though they were true / made excuses for him started to turn against him. The media began to press harder, to draw more attention to the amoral morass which surrounds him, and to actively look for new angles to keep the story running. Some of his own MPs and other senior figures in his party started to call him out for what he is and to make it clear that their future support is conditional at best. It’s doubtful that he realises it yet – perhaps he never will, given his apparent ability to believe whatever he chooses to believe – but his position weakened considerably over the period of just a few days. Given the size of his majority, the only people who can end the current nightmare are those within his own party (although who knows what new nightmare they would then inflict upon us). They’re not there yet, but if the polls start to move significantly further against him, Tory MPs can be a ruthless bunch.

On which point, outside the Westminster bubble, the reality of the incomplete Brexit project continues to impact the lives of those whom the world king believes to be his subjects in ways which are almost universally negative. Heaping entirely believable accusations of corruption and sleaze on top has so far had only a minor impact, but as one of his predecessors (a certain John Major) discovered, momentum can build uncontrollably. His best line of defence at the moment is the general public perception that “they’re all as bad”. His problem is that using such a line means admitting that he is in any way ‘bad’ himself. It’s an admission that he is utterly incapable of making. We may yet get to look back on last week as the long-overdue turning point.