Even for Boris Johnson, someone who for most of his adult life has set honesty at a pretty low standard, the taking of an oath must have given him some pause for reflection.
As he swore , live and streamed, on the bible to speak the truth and nothing but the truth before his l parliamentary inquisitors, one got a sense that the stage was set for a reckoning. Johnson may have made a habit as a journalist and prime minister with playing fast and loose with the facts, but the subsequent grilling he got from the parliamentary committee over more than three hours, had him struggling to justify the unjustifiable.
However much he tried to convey himself passionately and with hand on heart, as a man of integrity and public duty, a trust worthy guy, his argument that he never knowingly broke Covid rules , ergo he had not recklessly misled parliament, seemed to become weaker the more committee members, led by his own Tory colleagues, showed beyond reasonable doubt that the gatherings at Number 10 during lock down could not be excused as a necessary act of staff morale boosting in challenging times.
Bullish and defiant was his performance, but humble ,compassionate, contrite, it wasn’t. As PM at the time, and one that had himself experienced a high risk as an emergency Covid patient, he surely knew of the challenges and the rules faced beyond the building and garden of Number 10, by the rest of the population not least NHS staff, teachers, school children, parents, pensioners, businesses and charities who at no point had the privilege of group encounters and socialising that Johnson and his staff seemed to have engaged in.
But then Johnson is someone culturally defined by his exceptionalism, or rather his sense of entitlement to behaving in a way that puts his own ego before the common good.
One of the most telling moments in yesterday’s session was when it exposed Johnson reliance on political and media advisers rather than government law officers or senior civil servants defining what was or not within the Covid rules at number 10 , as if the truth could be a matter of political spin and Number 10 the nation’s Camelot or Ivory Tower. And yet what he told parliament when he was first questioned over the Partygate revelations , was his responsibility and no one else’s and for that he now faces judgement by MP’s.
Yesterday questions from the committee were more extended and forensic that anything Johnson has experienced in media briefings or parliamentary q & a’s and yet for all the sense of occasion, it was not definitive.
We will now have to wait until later this spring or early summer to know the committee’s conclusion , and what if any will be the sanctions he faces, and how far MP’s will vote to support Johnson, or bury him.
But even setting aside Johnson’s less that edifying or convincing performance yesterday, perhaps the most telling sign that his political career may be irrecoverable was in him being on the losing side by a significant margin of yesterday’s vote on Sunak and the EU’s post-Brexit deal on Northern Ireland.
Boris allies voting against came down to 22 Tories and Democratic Unionists. Hard core Eurosceptics but hardly a massive rebellion . Much as Johnson might relish the prospect of being exonerated and redeemed, the direction of travel of British politics looks to be firmly against him.
