What the whistleblower saw shames No 10

Staff so drunk they slept under their desks and not a mask in sight unless the media were near: the pantomime picture painted by a No 10 insider exclusively to The Independent is very much worse than the one portrayed in the privileges committee report

(Dave Brown)

Boris Johnson and his dwindling band of allies like to claim that the former prime minister has been traduced because he had little inkling of what was going on in Downing Street and, therefore, he could not have been untruthful in his numerous assertions in the Commons that the rules were followed “at all times”. Presumably, the same goes for the as-yet unexamined gatherings at Chequers. To the extent the Covid public health precautions weren’t observed (and even Mr Johnson acknowledges there were breaches) no one told him any different – so he says. The impression is given that Downing Street was busy and observing the rules as the norm, and that the various misdemeanours were very much the exception.

Yet the whistleblower who has bravely given their account of working at No 10 exclusively to The Independent tells us that this impression was pure PR, if not fiction. So far from the “hands, face, space” advice being meticulously followed, the reality was more “business as usual”.