After the extraordinary revelation that party-going staff took a suitcase full of booze into Downing Street on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral, the Prime Minister’s spokesman faced an excruciating question on Friday.
“What sort of suitcase are we talking about?” he was asked. “Was it a carry-on or the kind a family of four would take on a holiday to Tenerife?”
Despite the ridicule, the spokesman issued a stock response that he couldn’t pre-empt the Cabinet Office investigation into all the “partygate” claims.
The case (pun intended) for the defence of Boris Johnson’s tenure in No 10 was certainly looking thinner than ever with yet more evidence of the ‘Hands, Face, Party-At-My-Place’ culture under his reign.
The spokesman did however say that No 10 had apologised to the Palace for the leaving dos that took place during a time of national mourning.
More telling perhaps was the implication that Johnson himself had not yet personally contacted the Queen to express his regret for the incident.
The suggestion that the PM was present but not involved in some of the rule-breaking parties is looking less tenable by the day, and his week-long self-isolation in Downing Street (following a family member catching Covid) seems like the perfect metaphor for his wider disengagement with the public.
Johnson used to be famed not for his absence but for his presence, his unique ability to fill a room and the airwaves. In the spring of 2020, when he was ill with Covid himself in St Thomas’s Hospital, colleagues in government felt rudderless without his energy and talismanic leadership.
Nearly two years later, some ministers are in many ways grateful he is off the TV screens because the real absence that has been exposed in recent weeks is the lack of moral authority, political nous and governing grip vital for a functioning premier. Instead, there’s just a void.
But the wider problem is the lack of a detailed domestic policy programme too. This week, on the day Johnson uttered his sorry-not-sorry mea culpa for the “Bring Your Own Booze” party, the House of Commons adjourned at 3.30pm.
That wasn’t a one-off. MPs literally have little to do in Parliament, given the dearth of Government business and legislation. Bills are stuck in the Lords or have been kicked into the long grass, with several big policy items delayed until the next Queen’s Speech expected in May.
Apart from the coronavirus regulations which are due to expire on 26 January, there are few big votes expected for the next few months. All of which makes the weekly PMQs the only real event worth turning up for, only to see the PM get hammered on a regular basis.
With little else on their hands, Tory backbenchers have plenty of time to discuss Johnson’s latest errors or to plot his possible replacement.
Although some optimists around the PM hope he can somehow survive the Sue Gray inquiry into “partygate” and then reset the government with the long-awaited plan for “Levelling Up”, the plan itself may need legislation that may not arrive for many more months.
The huge impact of the pandemic can’t totally explain the lack of detailed policy progress since 2019. Apart from Brexit, its points-based immigration system and some tougher crime sentences, there has been little delivery on promises made and the thinness of last year’s Queen’s Speech may be repeated this year too.
The list of delayed policy is stacking up like a sink full of unfinished washing up: planning reform, “a million” new homes, an NHS recovery plan or workforce strategy, an Energy Bill to secure climate change jobs, skills, social care, childcare, workers’ rights are all in a holding pattern.
That’s all apart from whether “Levelling Up” will get the cash it needs or will amount to more than a lick of paint for high streets or a few more mayors. The lack of a detailed strategy to boost economic growth is just as worrying for some MPs too.
Anger over Johnson’s habit of “getting away with it” on sleaze is damaging enough, but broken promises of “getting the job done” on policy is the broader risk for the Tories as a whole. Plans for “40 new hospitals” may be exposed as spin, and even by 2023 police and nurse numbers may not get back to where they were in 2010.
And for all his promises to “build back better” from the pandemic, unless his party gets motoring fast it will run out of road to prove it has done that before the next general election.
That sense of urgency, plus the recognition that the government will need as much time as possible to deliver real change voters can feel, is why many ministers think 2024 is when the election will take place.
It’s also why some are urging Rishi Sunak to strike as quickly as possible after the verdict by inquiry chief Sue Gray later this month. Under one plan, after a 90 minute pause to digest its contents, the Chancellor could launch the bombshell news of his resignation, a move that would spark an avalanche of letters triggering a vote of confidence in the PM.
“The longer it goes on, the more ministers look like they are condoning Johnson and the more it damages them. His problem will be their problem, unless they act soon,” one government insider tells me.
The PM’s literal and political disappearing act will end when he re-emerges from isolation for PMQs next week. Yet once the verdict is in on the No 10 parties, his party may want him to take an indefinite leave of absence.
Johnson’s allies are hoping he can survive until the next Queen’s Speech legislative programme expected in late May. Disastrous results in the local elections earlier that month (one Tory tells me flagship borough Wandsworth in London is “a goner” and even Westminster may fall) may mean he never gets that far. Her Majesty may by then have accepted not just an apology from Johnson, but his resignation.
