The prime minister is belatedly learning that a few jokes cannot distract from a catalogue of ego-driven mendacity
He lied. He clearly lied. But so what? As Boris Johnson hangs on by his fingertips, we wait to see who will stamp on them. The answer is presumably Sue Gray, to whose final mercies he has desperately handed his fate. Surely nothing she says can rescue him. At question is not his guilt, only his punishment.
Johnson can plead that he was “advised” that office parties were within the rules. He can protest they were “implicitly” work-related, but with even more revelations about Downing Street parties on the front pages today, the edifice of Downing Street concealment and deceit is crumbling before voters’ eyes. In that uniquely British political theatre, the House of Commons, the prime minister was subjected on Wednesday to the nearest democracy gets to medieval trial by ordeal. MPs abandoned all dignity, nuance, sympathy or sense of proportion. They gleefully yelled and jeered and hurled insults until hoarse with rage. When in the mood, parliament does not talk truth to power: it screams in its face.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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