I gave birth alone while Downing Street partied – like all who suffered in lockdown, I’m furious

I’m angry. Not because I was asked to do the right thing, but that those who ask so much of us, we now know, expect so very little of themselves

Six weeks before the prime minister’s spokesperson, Allegra Stratton, smirked her way through a mock press conference over an illegal Downing Street Christmas party with “no social distancing”, I was admitted to hospital.

Back in October 2020 – when coronavirus case rates were rising fast and tiered restrictions were first being established – I was coming to the end of a complicated pregnancy. I had gestational diabetes and it was agreed that the baby should make an appearance earthside before my expected due date. So I packed up my bags, was settled into the ward by my husband, and was then left to commence induction of labour – alone.

For the first 10 hours, until what we might call the business end, I faced the rock and roll of chemically-induced contractions by myself, with only a Tens (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) machine and a Twitter timeline for company. Three years earlier I’d struggled through a long and difficult labour which left both my elder daughter and me very unwell, with my baby taken to neonatal intensive care for five days. To say I was anxious is an understatement. And yet I settled down on the bed uncomplaining. For every woman on the ward, and for all our babies, this was best. We were in the middle of a global pandemic. There were, as yet, no vaccines available to protect us. It was miserable, but it couldn’t be helped.

Luckily, after a quick and easy labour, my story ended happily, but I’m still angry. No, I’m furious. Not because I was asked to do the right thing, but that those who ask so much of us, we now know, expect so very little of themselves.

By December 2020 case rates were peaking, and we were close to entering the longest lockdown period the country has endured. If anyone knew the precarity of the situation it was those closest to the data, those seeking counsel from the nation’s leading virologists – that is, those inside Downing Street. And yet, in this febrile period, the prime minister’s staffers saw fit not only to break the law by holding a Christmas “cheese and wine” party, but to then, like teenagers caught with cigarettes in school, to laugh about it while preparing for the inevitable eventuality that they’d be found out.

It’s not just the one office, either. Former education secretary Gavin Williamson also held a Christmas gathering for staff in December, a decision he now believes was wrong (pull the other one Gav, you must have known that at the time). And there’s footage of Jacob Rees-Mogg, too, chuckling contemptuously about the idea that illegal parties held by those inside the Westminster bubble may be exposed and investigated a year later.

They were laughing. Laughing that they’ve had fun while the rest of us experienced some of the most lonely and painful periods of our lives. Laughing while families watched death take place via Zoom call. They laughed while funerals were held under social distancing rules, children unable to hold their mourning parents because they wanted to do the right thing.

How many more of these video exposés will there be? A decade ago, the back-and-forth over whether cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell called a member of the security team at the gates of Downing Street a “pleb” dominated headlines for weeks. His party wrestled hard to demonstrate that, no, they do not look down on the electorate with contempt. Why did they bother, when now it’s come to this?

Each one of us has a personal Covid story that triggers fury and pain at this duplicity, and, with 146,000 dead, there are so many more painful than mine. Though I hope to never experience anything as physically and emotionally tough as labouring alone again, others have faced the great chasm of bereavement and grief, of estrangement at a time of crisis, sometimes multiple times over.

We not only have our personal stories, but we have a national one too. In April 2021 – after she had been vaccinated against Covid-19, remember – our head of state sat stoically, alone in a church pew, and publicly mourned the death of her husband and consort of more than 70 years. True to her values of public service, the Queen followed the expectations of all those she reigns over and adhered to Covid guidelines, keeping herself, her family and her staff safe. Her anger, like ours, must be infinite today.

Where this ends for Boris Johnson we won’t know until the next election. His 44 new “blue wall” seats in the north and Midlands have been hit with a higher coronavirus mortality rate than elsewhere in the country. Will the pain and anger those new voters feel this week dissipate by the time they next cast a ballot?

Long before then the prime minister should be made to account for the actions of his staff and his cabinet. An invitation to the palace for a personal conversation with the Queen seems a fitting start. One hopes that missive has already been sent.