Editorials

The Irish Times view on Downing Street parties: A damning picture

Where once there were outright denials, now there are vague apologies and pleadings of ignorance on Johnson’s part

There is already enough information in the public domain, supported by Sue Gray’s outline of events, that shows Boris Johnson has failed the moral test. Photograph: Jessica Taylor/UK Parliament/AFP/Getty

Mon Jan 31 2022 - 22:58

An ongoing police investigation into parties at 10 Downing Street may have forced the senior civil servant Sue Gray to shorten her own interim conclusions into those events, but even the heavily abridged "update" published today offers an utterly damning picture of life at the heart of Boris Johnson's government. The document makes clear the scale of Gray's inquiries; she has looked into 16 separate events at Downing Street and confirms that 12 of these are now being investigated by police, including one gathering in Johnson's private flat.

As a result of those police inquiries, Gray makes only minimal reference to the events she examined. Her update therefore comes to a mere five-and-a-half pages, its conclusions summarised in a single paragraph. And yet her observations are as critical as they are succinct, describing a culture that would be deemed unacceptable in any modern organisation, let alone at the centre of a national government. “At least some of the gatherings in question,” she writes, “represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of government but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time.”

The British public has been conditioned not to expect much from Boris Johnson. As the controversy over parties at Downing Street has gone on and the walls have closed in around him, his defence has grown steadily more modest. Where once there were outright denials, now there are vague apologies and pleadings of ignorance on Johnson's part.

The police investigations will now take their course. In time Gray's full report will add further perspective

However, Gray clearly does not accept that the blame for these low standards can rest only with junior staff. She describes a systemic problem that goes right to the top – a failure to consider what was happening across Britain at a time when people could not even attend the funerals of their loved ones, a failure to consider the risks these gatherings presented to public health, a failure even to think about how they might appear to the general public. “There were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times,” Gray writes. “Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place. Other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.”

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The police investigations will now take their course. In time Gray’s full report will add further perspective. But while the legal questions cannot yet be answered, there is already enough information in the public domain, supported by Gray’s outline of events, that shows Johnson has failed the moral test. That does not seal his fate – the timing of his departure still depends on how his Conservative MPs assess their chances of retaining their seats under his leadership – but it does create a sense that a man his party not long ago saw as its biggest asset is now living on borrowed time.

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