Christine Battle reflects on Partygate, and finds something to thank it for.

Personally, I’ve got nothing but the warmest of feelings for the Number 10 official who decided, in the middle of England’s lockdown in May 2020, to arrange a wine-and-cheese get-together in the garden of our Prime Minister’s home in Downing Street. And then to send a traceable email to 100 of his closest work colleagues to make sure they didn’t miss the fun. Thanks to that individual – and to all those who accepted his invitation to party on down after a hard day at the office – our Boris is now in such deep doo-doo that, in order to try and distract the media, the opposition, and of course the public, he’s announced the end of all Covid restrictions, with more or less immediate effect. Cue wild cheering, capering and joy from me – at last some semblance of normal life is coming back, and to hell with how it got here. By the way, is anyone still “following the science” at this point?

Frankly I couldn’t give a proverbial whether Boris thought he was attending “a work meeting with refreshments” or a totally illegal gathering for the purposes of fun. Or indeed several of these gatherings. Only the terminally sanctimonious among us can smugly claim we didn’t ‘bend’ those same rules at some point during these last two ghastly soul-sapping years.

However there is a more serious aspect to all this non-news; and that is the fact that Boris and his Government made it a criminal offence to meet more than one person, take more than one walk (for exercise only) per day, to hug family members, to sit on a park bench, to shop for non-essential items (eg Easter eggs)…. I could go on but it’s too depressing. These laws criminalised behaviour in a way which was – and is – iniquitous.

And, once we’ve danced our little jig, that’s the scandal that deserves our attention. It’s bad enough that these people flouted the rules that they themselves drafted, but worse still that these rules should never have been imposed. True to their abysmal form, though, our MSM and their libby-lefty adherents (who still haven’t forgiven Boris for his electoral triumph and the successful Brexit that ensued) have got their teeth into Boris’s trouser leg, and are determined to hang on until they‘ve given him a thorough savaging – preferably terminal. Their obsessive hatred of Boris seems to have blinded them, as so often, to the bigger picture.

Why am I not surprised?