Don't Take The Slack

There is a person in this country who probably took a First at Oxford or Cambridge, but whose job is now to carry a suitcase to the Co-op, fill it with booze, and carry it back again. How many workplaces allow alcohol at all these days? Yet in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, nothing ever seems to happen apart from that night's party, and then the cleanup operation by the servants in preparation for the next one.

This is Boris Johnson's second strike against the Queen. The Supreme Court found that he had lied to her in order to have Parliament prorogued. She alone had any role in conferring the Order of the Garter on Tony Blair, and had she not done so, then she could, and no doubt would, have sacked Johnson today, secure in the support of the immemorial King's or Queen's Party in the country at large. But Blair's Garter probably means that no such constituency any longer exists.

Johnson's claim that he was not present and did not know is laughable. Either he is lying and he did know, or he had no idea what was going on in what was both his office and his home. Which is it? And James Slack's leaving do was because he was off to become the Deputy Editor of The Sun. Like the Police, the Lobby knew about these parties while they were happening. They could have brought down the Government the next day. Johnson's every day in office since then has been, and is, their conscious and calculated political choice.