the times | Thursday January 13 2022 2GM 7News
matthew parris
Is it possible to smell fear through a
television screen? This man was
carpeted. He looked like a naughty
schoolboy. He hesitated, he stam-
mered, he stared at the floor and you
could see panic in his watery eyes. More
surprisingly, you could see weakness.
Boris Johnson can’t do contrite. He
does cheeky, funny, shameless, but
yesterday the only regret he was able to
convey with sincerity was regret that
he’d been found out. Facing the con-
trolled anger of Sir Keir Starmer at his
sharpest and most focused, Johnson
looked close to falling apart. But curi-
ously I found my attention wandering
from this abject creature — there was
something flat, something empty about
him — and on to the colleagues around
him. Here sat his potential executioners.
They were largely silent, frozen. One or
two cabinet colleagues tried to nod as
he spoke, but most just stared, fixedly
and expressionlessly, ahead: a common
human response to being confronted
with shockingly bad news. A friend
texts his verdict. “Shut”. Then texts a
correction, with a different vowel in
place of the u. But not the one I’d
choose. I’d say “shot”.daniel finkelstein
Here is what happened: Sir Keir
Starmer asked all the right questions
and Boris Johnson gave the only poss-
ible answers. The questions were devas-
tating and the answers were ridiculous.
There were only three possible
responses the prime minister could
give. First there was: “I did attend the
party, and I’m sorry”. But this would
have meant admitting he lied to the
Commons when he said he didn’t know
about parties and was furious to hear
about them. So this answer was out.
The second was: “I’m not saying
whether I was there. We must wait for
Sue Gray.” This refusal to say if he knew
he was in his own garden was simply
unsustainable. Tory MPs and everyone
else would have found it unacceptable.
So he was left with: “I was there, I
thought it was a work event, let’s wait
for Sue Gray to rule on its nature.”
While the only possible line of
argument, it is plainly absurd. At a
political level it is laughable (nobody
will believe it) and at a technical level it
is vulnerable (evidence may emerge
that shows he knew exactly what it was,
or Gray’s report will show clearly that
he should have). There wasn’t a good
answer, but he picked the least bad of
the options. His tone was all right, if
tone was the issue. But tone is not the
issue. His only hope was that Starmer
would blow it. He did not blow it.rachel sylvester
The Tory party is not merciful with
leaders it decides are losers and the
prime minister’s position is now perilous.
By batting away Sir Keir Starmer’s
demands for his resignation, insistingNews
did anything wrong, say Tories
fate, complained about Johnson’s
“drinking and laughing”. If the
attack fell short it was perhaps
because Blackford himself, minutes
before this juddering piety, had been
openly laughing with his mates.
Jeremy Hunt hovered discreetly at
the far end near the serjeant at
arms.
Another discarded cabinet
minister, Caroline Nokes, rubbed
together the tips of her thumbs.
Upstairs four Labour spin doctors
held their mobile telephones in front
of their chests, like hymn books.
The gale was now dwindling.
Suzanne Webb (C, Stourbridge)
spoke of jobs growth — 420,
more in work now than before thepandemic, agreed a grateful
Johnson. Joy Morrissey (C,
Beaconsfield) mentioned a park in
her constituency and that
terrifying creature Alicia Kearns
(C, Rutland & Melton) boomed
about archaeological discoveries in
her constituency. Skeletons of her
past rivals, perhaps.
Lips curled at these attempts to
change the subject but then
Alberto Costa (C, South Leics)
asked a question about washing
machines and the chamber could
not help itself. Widespread
laughter. Costa was furious!
That only made everyone honk all
the more. Alberto, old son, you
should have told them to stop
being silly suds.
A few last rumbles. Hull East’s
Karl Turner won growls of accord
from Labour colleagues by alleging
that Johnson was only sorry
because he had been caught.
Johnson had “debased” this office,
said Toby Perkins (Lab,
Chesterfield). But by the time the
SNP’s Philippa Whitford ticked
him off for his al fresco drinking,
the barbs had lost their sting.
Whitford is a doctor. Maybe we
have heard enough from medics
for a while.
As it ended, Truss squeezed
Johnson’s arm — checking his
pulse? — and Jacob Rees-Mogg
bent down to offer encouragement.
And I saw Hunt chatting up the
backbencher from Bolsover, one
of the red wall Tories. Time’s
carousel turns.the roulette ball is still bouncing and
the gambler seems likely to be
hauled away to the examining
magistrate at any moment. Johnson’s
head lolled and beside him Liz Truss
blinked behind her mask as she
developed a sudden fascination with
a section of the table in front of her.
Rishi Sunak? Absent. The chancellor
had found pressing business in
distant Devon. Social distancing as
performance art.
While Starmer was drilling at him,
hyena eyes flashing, Johnson was in
clear peril. The drama’s intensity
started to abate only when the SNP’s
Ian Blackford entered the fray with
his butcher’s swagger. Blackford,
wailing and wagging a forefinger atThere was panic
in his watery eyes
he had to wait for the outcome of the
inquiry into Downing Street parties, he
put enormous power in the hands of
Sue Gray, the punctilious civil servant
leading that investigation. If she finds
that Johnson broke a law that his own
government had introduced, it is hard
to see how he can survive. All the
contrition in the world does not change
the reality that he broke the rules.
Law-breakers cannot be law-makers,
especially on an issue of national
importance like this. The Tories who
have called for Johnson to quit if he was
at the party will find it hard to withdraw
that demand now. This was not a one-
off lapse of judgment, it is a personality
trait. One of the prime minister’s closest
allies was going around at about the
same time as the Downing Street party
suggesting that “rules are for little
people” and Johnson has always
believed that the normal moral, polit-
ical and social constraints do not apply
to him.iain martin
Several times the prime minister told
MPs at PMQs that he regretted how
things had turned out. Putting on his
best apology face, which will be familiar
to assorted women scattered across the
capital, he said: “I wish things had been
done differently that evening.” Indeed,
there’s a phrase for the ages. This time
the Johnsonian excuses and the
attempt at humility simply didn’t work.
Sir Keir Starmer asked incisive
questions and a host of other MPs on
the opposition benches followed up
with cold-filtered fury. An abject prime
minister looked broken by the end of it.
Having apologised he was left referring
weirdly, desperately, to the party in
question as being a “work event”, as
though such an event, a social gather-
ing with drinks, was a recognised con-
cept in May 2020 or a plausible defence
in a magistrates’ court. The country was
locked up. Yet he was at a party. Thou-
sands were fined for breaking those
rules that he forced on the rest of us.alice thomson
If this had been Game of Thrones,
Angela Rayner, auburn hair flying,
would have ridden into the Commons
on a white charger and eviscerated
Boris Johnson at PMQs. With Sir Keir
Starmer it was always going to be a
more lawyerly affair but he did manage
to sound passionate as well as princi-
pled. The prime minister knew he
needed to look statesmanlike too, his
shirt had been ironed by someone, he
wore a navy tie, he had washed his hair
and remembered not to smirk. But he
appeared more like the sixth-form
member of Eton’s Pop trying to pretend
to his head master that he hadn’t
smashed the glasses at the pub while
the rest of the school was at a funeral.
He brazened it out and blamed
everyone else for assuming the worst of
him. He had thought it was a work
event, he said, mistakes were made (but
not really by me), the garden was an
extension of the office. Headmaster
Starmer’s questioning made Johnson
sound evasive but he couldn’t expel him
without firm proof. Only his own bully
boys or the prefects in the cabinet could
have done for Johnson yesterday and
none has stood up to rat on him yet. But
they will turn on him in the end.HOUSE OF COMMONS/PA;Times political writers
give their damning
verdicts on the prime
minister’s performance
at the dispatch box
Sir Keir Starmer spoke of the “pathetic spectacle of a man who’s run out of
road”, dismissed Johnson’s apology and mocked his attempts to turn the tables