Why Boris Johnson and the government can’t just ‘move on’ from Partygate

The patience of Conservative MPs and Tory activists is being severely tested, writes Sean O’Grady

It is a deep flaw in the British system of government that so much of the old prerogatives of the crown are now vested in the prime minister personally (PA)

When you hear the phrases “draw a line”, “nothing more to add” and “move on”, it is usually a sign that the opposite will happen: there are going to be more questions, people don’t wish to move on, and a scandal has plenty of life left in it yet.

So, it would seem with Partygate, which has now continued for as long as some of the original Covid-19 lockdowns. As with most scandals, the detail is actually more gruesome than anything the public are being told at any given point, and this also seems to be a characteristic feature of Partygate.

At first, when the video of Allegra Stratton talking about bogus “work events” emerged, the official line was that this was all an enormous shock to the prime minister, he was as angry as anyone, and that he was looking into it. Then the country was assured that no rules were broken, and there were no unlawful parties. Then there was an event in the cabinet secretary's private office. Then events the prime minister attended. The chancellor was at one. The investigations geared up, the police become involved. There were answers given by the No 10 press office to journalists and by the prime minister to the Commons that now look wide of the mark.

The letters calling for votes of no confidence stalled for a while, as everyone waited and waited for the Sue Gray report, then for the Metropolitan Police investigation, and then for another Sue Gray report. Now we must wait for the Commons privileges committee, though some Tory MPs have had enough and have called for the PM to quit. And now we find there were potentially parties as yet uninvestigated or known about before. Perhaps they too will be investigated afresh. And more MPs will denounce the prime minister.

The agony of Partygate will not go away because the process of getting to the crux of events, and whether the prime minister knowingly lied or misled the Commons, has to continue. It may bore some, and be inconvenient to ministers, but it matters to the public and to anyone who cares about standards in public life.

The patience of Tory MPs and Tory activists is being severely tested. Yet there is no doubt that things would be looking far healthier for the government and Johnson if inflation was at 2 per cent, energy bills weren’t being hiked, and the economy was growing steadily. It is not, of course, and Partygate has become emblematic of a prime minister who just doesn’t want to get a grip, and has no one around him who will make him do so.

It is a deep flaw in the British system of government that so much of the old prerogatives of the crown are now vested in the prime minister personally, and the conventions and rules of the constitution are so open to abuse by a determined and reckless individual in No 10. There are checks and balances, and there are sanctions, but if the prime minister is judge and jury on his own standards (and can change the rules at will as he just has) and he has a pliant parliamentary party happy to acquiesce in this process, then there’s not much else that can done.

The government is presently “getting on with the job” of banning peaceful protest, curtailing judicial review and weakening the House of Lords. Behind all the partying and clowning around, there is thus a rather sinister game afoot in Downing Street. That’s why they want everyone to draw a line under it, stop asking questions and move on.