Moving on to what ? Fascism ?

I've read the much-awaited Sue Gray report in full. As you may imagine, I am not happy.

First let me start by mentioning a number of oddities about the report itself. By her own admission, it's incomplete :

Given the piecemeal manner in which events were brought to my attention, it is possible that events took place which were not the subject of investigation.

Which is understandable, but given the goal of only establishing a broad narrative of what happened and not assigning individual responsibility, does mean it's extremely limited. This would not be so bad were the independent investigation by the Metropolitan Police itself not subject to deep concerns about impartiality and transparency, e.g. by not naming who was fined and by only fining select individuals at the same events. This means there isn't all that much scope for accountability for those right at the heart of government :

It is not my role to make a judgment on whether or not the criminal law has been broken; my focus has been on establishing the nature and purpose of the events and whether those events were appropriate in light of the Government's own guidance.

I also find the relationship between the two investigations to be a bit suspicious. Gray says she didn't think it necessary or appropriate to investigate matters the police were dealing with, but doesn't say why. Surely two independent investigations are better than one ? And she provided materials to the police but this flow of information seems to have been only one-way. While there are legitimate grounds not to sieve every detail through a fine-tooth comb (and I agree with Gray that there is no need to release every photo examined*), this just seems far too weak. We should have the absolute right to know when those in government commit illegalities. It does not make any sense to me not to release the names.

* Total transparency would be a mistake. Insofar as one-on-one speech is concerned, I have some very strong sympathies for free speech absolutism. In private settings we should have the right to say things we don't really mean without being dragged over the coals, and we should not make private discussions public retroactively. It is only when we enter explicitly public, open venues that I would take a very different stance.

And yet, even given its highly limited scope and somewhat suspicious context (especially the meeting with Gray apparently initiated by Downing Street), the report itself to me still seems to be damning.

I will not do a line-by-line dissection of the report, there doesn't seem any need. But in the interests of fairness, I will say that a few events do seem to have been in broad agreement with government guidance. The presence of food and even alcohol is not what the controversy is about. Of course you're going to need to food at a long meeting, that is unavoidable. And if you want a glass of wine or a beer, I don't have a problem with that. Even if you take a moment to do some non-productive work activity, e.g. thanking colleagues, wishing them well if they're leaving, that sort of thing... that's basically an unavoidable necessity, in my view. Having a drink outside does not automatically constitute a garden party. A few minutes to thank colleagues does not transform a work meeting into a work event.

This, however, is to expose the ridiculousness of "beergate". Because it was never about whether people had food (even cake !) or drank alcohol. It was about whether they gathered together exclusively for socialising (in contravention of the rules) and whether they lied about it afterwards. It has very little to do with whether the events in question actually posed a significant public health risk, but with whether those at the top of government were a bunch of lying hypocritical scumbags. On what grounds should they be allowed to have shindigs when other people couldn't have funerals ? How could the Prime Minister possibly be confused about whether he was at a party or a work event ?

A few of the events in Gray's report do seem to fit into the non-productive work category. But the vast majority, including some the Prime Minister attended, don't. Some highlights :

..."would like to do speeches tomorrow when we have our drinks which aren't drinks"...

Helen MacNamara, Deputy Cabinet Secretary, attended for part of the evening and provided a karaoke machine which was set up in an adjoining office to the waiting room.

The event lasted for a number of hours. There was excessive alcohol consumption by some individuals. One individual was sick. There was a minor altercation between two other individuals.

The event broke up in stages with a few members of staff leaving from around 21.00 and the last member of staff, who stayed to tidy up, leaving at 03.13.

Alcohol and food was available in Downing Street and at Whitehall, supplied and paid for by staff attending. The quiz and prize-giving lasted approximately three and a half hours.

A small number of individuals (three or four) remained in the Pillared Room for a while longer and then went to the Private Office area, where they continued to drink alcohol until approximately 01.00.

There are plenty more like that in the report. The pattern is clear : most of the events were pre-planned, explicitly social events where the whole purpose was to drink alcohol and consume food, not to get any work done - sometimes until the small hours of the morning. Even if some of these were arranged in relation to colleagues leaving (and not exclusively social occasions like Christmas), this still goes well beyond the pale. Yes, you might normally have a special, outside-of-work hours evening for this, but you can't do this during a pandemic - you just can't. So forcing it in during work hours instead is really rubbing it in the noses of everyone who actually did follow the rules. Sorry, but in these situations, you have to limit yourself to a brief thank-you, maybe a present-giving : not a whole evening and a party, for crying out loud.

And sure, during work hours you need breaks. That's fine. But you don't organise social activities for those breaks. And that sometimes the messages show the attendees were actively trying to keep the events covid-safe only makes it worse : how could they possibly be aware of the dangers of the virus but not the rules around it ? How could it possibly not have occurred to them that these openly social events weren't in violation of rules to protect everyone from a virus that they themselves were in fact trying to avoid spreading ? That the Prime Minister himself says it "never occurred to him" I find deeply insulting.

Even if the BoJo had never attended any of the events, to my mind it would still be a resigning matter. He presided over a culture of excess at the heart of government during a prolonged national emergency. If he wasn't aware of what his own staff were up to, he would clearly be too incompetent for government himself. But he did attend. He knew, inevitably, that there were explicitly social events happening in his own house. And I see no other interpretation of his denial of this other than a barefaced lie, especially given that he routinely repeats factually incorrect statements in the House of Commons as a matter of course.

That the events took part at all is bad enough. We should expect better than hypocrisy from those running the country. That they repeatedly lied about the events afterwards, that the report shows they were aware of rule-breaking ("we seem to have gotten away with it") is truly damning. If we can't trust the Prime Minister of the country with such trivialities as cake, if he is either so incompetent that he doesn't realise that parties until the early hours of the morning were going on beneath his very nose, or felt so devoted to the need to socialise that he felt compelled to lie about them... how can we trust such a man with anything ?

And the icing on the cake... now we find out the Prime Minister is marking his own homework again, changing the ministerial code so he won't have to resign. That's an outrage. Telling us all to move on is, not for the first time, deplorable. This is openly fascistic : not actually fascism, but very definitely in that direction. If you allow the Prime Minister to lie and change the rules about removing ministers from office, where exactly do you draw the line ? Just what accountability to standards is there ? Doing it entirely by general election ? That is pure populism, and altogether too close to true fascism for comfort. I honestly don't care that the situation is worse in other countries : all of us deserve better. And it's only by complaining, by getting angry at the small things, that we prevent the political offences from becoming real, personal offences.

I've done enough rhetorical pieces against Boris that I've run out of things to say, so I'll conclude this one very simply : fuck you, sir. Fuck you.