Diary of a nobody

Lady Heather Hallett was appointed to head up the goverment's Covid Inquiry in 2021. The Inquiry's terms of reference were agreed in 2022. Both things took place under Boris Johnson's premiership. Now Lady Hallett is engaged in a spat with the Cabinet Office over access to unredacted papers, WhatsApp messages and Johnson's official diary.

The Cabinet Office has responded helpfully: "It’s our position that the Inquiry does not have the power to compel the government to disclose unambiguously irrelevant material, given the precedent that this would set and its potential adverse impact on policy formulation in the future". Lady Hallett has replied that it is not for the government to decide what is relevant to her Inquiry and has threatened legal action in the face of continued Cabinet Office obduracy. Oo-er!

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson (from Las Vegas, where he was being handsomely remunerated as an after-dinner speaker), has reacted angrily to his legal team's disclosure to the police (as they were legally obliged to do) of details they have uncovered in his private papers relating to possible further Covid lockdown breaches. In a fit of pique he has sacked his team - appointed by the government to represent him and already paid a quarter of a million quid of public money to do so - but whoever takes over this thankless task will still be paid out of the public purse. Who said Legal Aid is being cut back?

Insofar as we are still capable of being shocked by anything this egregious narcissist does, it is pretty gob smacking that, after everything that's happened, he still feels entitled to behave in this high-handed manner. But, of course, entitlement is the whole point in his case. The main reason Lady Hallett wants to see the diary is a suspicion (surely well-founded?) that Johnson's eye was off the ball at the beginning of the pandemic and that lockdown breaches occurred not just in Downing Street but at Chequers, the Prime Ministerial country retreat, too. We all now know about Partygate in London but it appears it continued in the depths of rural Buckinghamshire. Fieldgate perhaps?

While some Tory right-wingers like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries (the usual suspects in other words) are fulminating about Johnson being unfairly hounded and persecuted the majority opinion, amongst Tory MPs at least if not the party membership, seems to be that he is yesterday's man and effectively an irrelevance. Move along, nothing to see here. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they. Lady Hallett obviously begs to differ. 

Rishi Sunak and his front bench ministerial team might have welcomed this brief distraction but the spotlight was only momentarliy off them. For example, will Sunak find the balls to spike Johnson's resignation honours list? They do say revenge is a dish best served cold and scuppering Johnson's alleged plan to award his father a knighthood (having handed his brother, Joe, a peerage in a previous gong-giving exercise) would certainly piss on his chips - a northern expression I'm sure the MP for Richmond, Yorkshire is familiar with. (Then again, perhaps not.)

Suella Braverman must have breathed a sigh of relief to be let off lightly from the Pointsgate fiasco with the mildest of rebukes from the boss but if so her respite was short-lived. Today's embarrassing publication of the latest annual net migration figures (up to 606,000) will have spoiled her weekend. "Too high" says Sunak. Well, if he doesn't like it, he only need have a word in the ear of the woman sitting next to him on the government frontbench (though for how much longer only he knows).

What's that you say about her undeclared links to a Rwandan charity...?

Popular posts from this blog

On old age

"The fact is that when I come to think it over, I find that there are four reasons for old age being thought unhappy: First, that it withdraws us from active employments; second, that it enfeebles the body; third, that it deprives us of nearly all physical pleasures; fourth, that it is the next step to death."  Writing his essay,  De Senectute (On Old Age), in 44 BCE, Marcus Tullius Cicero went on to refute these four supposed reasons in characteristically robust and forthright manner. Cicero wasn't one to sit about moping in his own old age; he remained actively engaged in the political life of the Republic whose survival, in the face of tyranny, he championed so fiercely.  Cicero was nine years younger than I am now when he met his untimely end yet he considered himself already an old man; or, rather, his society judged him to be so. His second point about age enfeebling is more germane. Physical decline had not yet impacted him but, six years on from my retirement, I
Read more

Born to rule

When, ten days ago, I posted my piece about the manipulated image of Catherine, Princess of Wales, and her children (see Snap Judgment) I didn't know of her cancer treatment. Had I known, I would have adopted a gentler, though I hope no less critical, tone. But I didn't know, and nor did any of us outside the immediate royal circle, which rather goes to strengthen the case against the monarchy. For Kate and her family the diagnosis of cancer (as yet unspecified) will have been a devastating blow, as will the chemotherapy she is currently undergoing. On a human level, of course I sympathise and extend my best wishes for a full recovery as, indeed, I did at the time of her father-in-law's diagnosis. It is particularly cruel, then, that on top of all this she has been obliged to record a video statement to reassure the public. As if she didn't have enough to contend with already. But such is the unpalatable obligation placed upon any royal personage - noblesse oblige. Whic
Read more

Working to rule

An avowed republican I may be but news of King Charles III's cancer diagnosis is nevertheless a cause of sadness - I might not want him, or anyone else, as my king but I wish the man no harm.  However, Jonathan Swift's opinion that "health is the greatest of all possessions; a pale cobbler is better than a sick king" serves as a timely reminder that ill-health in the monarch is not simply a personal matter, it has constitutional implications. To be blunt about it, Charles' death, in constitutional terms at least, would be no great problem; the king is dead, long live the king. The succession is assured and the crown would pass immediately to the Prince of Wales, who would be pronounced William V. The ship of state would sail on. A long-term or debilitating illness, on the other hand, could have far-reaching consequences for the institution of the monarchy at a sensitive time, coming so soon after the death of Britain's longest-reigning monarch, Charles' mo
Read more