This endless navel-gazing makes our political class look utterly out of touch
As the inhabitants of the Westminster bubble breathlessly await publication of sue Gray’s report into Downing street ‘gatherings’ during lockdown, it is important to appreciate that Partygate is not only creating chaos at home, it is undermining Britain’s standing abroad.
How can the Prime Minister command respect in foreign capitals when even his own MPs are publicly speculating whether he can survive another 24 hours in office?
And events on the world stage have never been more tied up with our domestic preoccupations.
International factors might well exacerbate the looming cost of living crisis, for example, with gas prices set to soar yet higher if Russia – the world’s second-biggest gas supplier – goes ahead with an invasion of Ukraine.
As tensions rose last week, the American President Joe Biden committed a disastrous gaffe by saying that Russia ‘will be held accountable if it invades’ Ukraine but then added that ‘it depends on what it does’. In making a distinction between an ‘incursion’ and an ‘invasion’ he showed weakness at a highly sensitive point in the stand-off.
As Dominic Green said in a piece for the Daily Mail at the time, Biden had sent the message: ‘Putin is welcome to sink his teeth into a european state and an American ally – just so long as he doesn’t take too big a bite.’
Meanwhile, our former european Union partners dither over how to deter Putin, as Germany, the dominant power in Brussels, will not sanction any action that compromises its capacity to import vast quantities of Russian gas.
In such a situation we look to Whitehall to function according to its best traditions, and Britain to punch above its weight on the world stage. Yet all we see at the heart of government is paralysis and distraction.
THIs is disastrous on the home front too. People across the country, men and women in my old sheffield constituency, care much more about their own economic privations than parties in Westminster. They want their elected politicians to concentrate on what really affects their lives.
And by that I mean the cost of living crisis that’s hitting the poorest in society the hardest – and which is about to get a whole lot worse with the April double whammy of the removal of the energy price cap, sparking unprecedented rises in gas and electricity of up to 50 per cent, and a hike in national insurance.
Meanwhile, the great education bounceback has not even started, with one pupil in seven – a million children – currently off school due to Covid. And waiting lists for basic NHs procedures grow ever longer – almost six million are now queuing up for routine operations. With their frivolous navelgazing and obsessing over what did or did not take place in the Downing street garden, politicians of all stripes are making themselves look utterly foolish and disconnected from the voters, which is dangerous in any democracy.
This is not to say that what was happening in Downing street does not matter. I know that many people will never forget those who broke the rules while they couldn’t visit their own loved ones, not only in care homes or hospitals but in their own homes.
But the country needs to move on now and confront the challenges ahead. This is why I think it was a grave error for Cressida Dick, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to launch a formal probe into Partygate this week.
This last-minute intervention, which comes too late to be useful or credible, risks turning a logjam into a fiasco.
Worse still, scotland Yard’s folly in embarking on a belated examination of the various competing claims complicates the mission of sue Gray, the senior civil servant who was about to deliver her own report at just the time the police stepped into the ring.
When allegations were first made about ‘illegal’ gatherings in Downing street, there was certainly a case for the police to investigate, as many on the Labour benches argued. But by intervening now, just as Westminster is gearing up for the publication of Miss Gray’s report, the police can only muddle the issue.
I have known sue Gray for many years and I have an extremely high regard for her. she combines being gimleteyed with a fair-minded and independent approach. But she has been put in an invidious position this week, and I feel sorry for her.
It is inevitable that her report will overlap with the new police investigation, creating uncertainty and confusion where there needs to be clarity and transparency.
SHe is reported to be mired in negotiations with civil servants who fear their careers are threatened and who are demanding sections of the report be redacted.
The danger is that her report becomes devalued by the prospect of the separate police investigation coming in its wake. It may even be that she feels she must tone down some of the criticism she was about to make for fear of triggering criminal charges against those she has interviewed.
It also seems to me highly questionable that officials who believed they were giving evidence to a civil servant might now find their testimony used by the police in potential proceedings. The whole process has become a confusing mess and there is only so much drift and confusion that can be tolerated, by both backbench MPs and voters.
One day ministers seem to suggest the national insurance hike might be delayed; the next day, a U-turn is ruled out. This is not nearly good enough. Workers need to be able to prepare for tax increases; business rightly demands certainty.
I think it is perfectly possible, indeed likely, that Mr Johnson will survive the current crisis. Personally, I don’t care much either way.
But I am much more worried that if he limps on, he will never recover his standing and that he will be unable to govern either his party or the country.
There is a potential trap for the Labour Party, too. It has done a good opposition’s job of tarnishing an incumbent Prime Minister’s reputation. The Boris glitter has gone, I’m sure, forever.
But Labour needs to understand that the next general election will not be fought over who attended what party three years previously.
We will be back to discussing real politics and real issues such as the economy and education and law and order.
Labour will need its own set of policies to win back the core voters who deserted it at the last general election.
This current Westminster brawl is no longer about one man at Number 10, it is about the state of our country – and the need for a serious British government to get a grip so we can once again hold our head high in the world.