Boris Johnson isn’t getting away with it this time

According to Paymaster General Micheal Ellis, “in this country the same rules apply to everyone”. But Ellis’ mere presence at the despatch box debunked his own words. When summoned to appear before MPs, backed by the Speaker, not everyone has the option of sending in a junior substitute.

Dodging a summons has become a fairly common way for the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues to avoid further roasting when they find themselves in the hot seat. Cries of “where is he?” from opposing MP’s have taken on a ritualistic quality.

“We can all see he’s not the Prime Minister,” Sir Lindsay Hoyle pointed out wearily, as he appealed for calm so Ellis could be heard making excuses for Johnson.

The Prime Minister could hardly avoid Prime Minister’s questions the next day, although he must have been tempted to crayon in a second red line on his lateral flow test. 

He employed another familiar blame avoidance technique instead: the Non-Apology apology. Almost universally deployed these days by anyone in an elevated position who gets caught out, this involves a big “if”. 

“I apologise unreservedly if anyone has been offended” i.e. “I’m not admitting I did anything wrong but if anyone is stupid/vindictive/misguided enough to think I have would they please get off my back?”.

Johnson apologised for the dim view the public is taking of the “workplace event”, for mistakes made by anyone else who might have been at it, and for not closing down a gathering which he now concedes may have been misguided. 

He did not admit to having done anything wrong himself, did not entertain the possibility that he might have broken his government’s own Covid rules, or take any responsibility for an event organised in his own office and residence by his principle private secretary. 

So far, so predictable. The interesting thing about this winter’s series of scrapes is that this time Boris Johnson isn’t getting away with it. 

Unlike his previous questionable behaviour, these latest revelations have “cut through” to the general public. Johnson’s personal poll ratings have plummeted and, more importantly, the Conservative Party is now significantly behind Labour in opinion polls. United opposition parties and a handful of Tory MPs are calling for him to go.

Unless there are further damaging leaks in what seems to be a carefully calculated campaign to destroy Johnson – of which many believe “serial psychopath” Dominic Cummings may be the mastermind – it is unlikely that the Prime Minister will have to resign immediately. 

He may well have already sketched out enough loopholes to avoid an explicit guilty verdict in the inquiry report by the senior civil servant Sue Gray. But his bubble has burst. Never glad confident morning again! 

Boris Johnson will never again be viewed as an invincible election-winning machine. Every activist in his party is wondering about what and who next. 

Many popular celebrities cultivate a bad boy or naughty girl image. None more so than Boris Johnson with his ruffled hair and rumpled costumes, his “aw-shucks” smirk, and his boast that overcoming disasters creates the opportunity for fresh disasters. 

Sneaking admiration for such an act only sours when there is a cost born by the onlooking public. It is easy to laugh along with a shagger or a grasper for other people’s money unless you or someone you care about are their victims. 

The trouble with Covid rules is that everyone has already been a victim. Everyone endured the vicissitudes of the first lockdown and faced punishment if they broke the rules put in place by Johnson’s government. 

When the story of Downing Street parties started to be revealed before Christmas, Johnson knew which side he needed to be on for self-preservation. 

“I can understand how infuriating it must be to think that the people who have been setting the rules have not been following the rules, because I was also furious to see that clip”, he assured the Commons, protesting ignorance of the alleged party giggled over on tape by Allegra Stratton and her colleagues. 

But subsequent revelations have confirmed, what many had suspected all along, that he was one of them — the party-goers — not one of us in lockdown. 

His refusal to condemn what went on exposed the character flaw identified in a school report on boy Boris by a master at Eton: “he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else.”

Once he became Prime Minister, this instinct hardened into his determination to use the party whip to bully his MPs into voting to get Owen Paterson and himself off parliament’s disciplinary hook. 

He won the vote but the wave of revulsion that followed immediately awoke his cannon fodder to the realisation that Boris boosterism could have severely adverse consequences for their own careers. 

Novak Djokovic has made a similar error, with a similar casual assertion of entitlement to special status. We are all victims of the pandemic, so there is scant sympathy for anyone who tries to escape its consequences by underhand means.

Inadvertently or not, the star’s team admit they gave inaccurate information about his Covid-relevant behaviour to the Australian authorities, and have yet to explain why he seems to have violated Serbia’s own rules. 

There could be no tougher testing ground for him than Australia, which has imposed some of the strictest Covid regulations on its citizen and where chippiness about anyone getting above themselves is a world-famous aspect of the national character: “Who d’ya think you are, Mate?”. 

In contrast to Johnson, Djokovic has indisputable talent and a golden record of achievement to fall back on — he really is the World King of Tennis.

Outside Serbia, he has never been a pin-up; more an admired and ruthless professional who many love to hate. He will win no new friends even if he forces himself into the Open and wins it.

Boris Johnson needs to be loved. In democracies, political success depends on being popular. In a controversial and rare extended television interview with then the London Mayor in 2013, Eddie Mair itemised some of the known lies and skulduggery already on his record and asked, “You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?”. 

Johnson rode that one out with barely a scratch all the way to the gates of Downing Street. Any victims of his behaviour were a handful of private individuals, and few shed tears about that as they cheered on the loveable rogue. 

The brazenly selfish can get away with “one rule for me and another for everyone else” for years, but it has turned into a curse because everyone else has felt the pain of this pandemic and Boris Johnson’s rules.