Boris Johnson dressing up in police clothes and the party that never was…

BORIS Johnson likes dressing up as other people and cannot glimpse a hi-vis jacket without pulling it on over his ill-fitting shirt and skew-whiff tie.

When football was fleetingly his thing, he wrestled himself into an England shirt, yanked on over the indecorous shirt and that askew tie.

A couple of days ago, he took his dressing-up habit a stage further by pretending to be a copper (Johnson of the Lard, perhaps). It was hardly fetching, matching an over-sized jacket with body protection and a woolly hat branded with the world ‘Police’.

For continuity’s sake, that tie poked out of the jacket. His eyes peeped above a face mask, looking out for hardened criminals or possibly a passing headline.

The reason for this ludicrous charade was that Johnson had joined police in Liverpool on a morning drugs raid. According to later police comments, no arrests were made.

Why was the prime minister doing another fancy-dress turn? The official reason was to launch the government’s new drugs policy. Well, I say new, but it was hard to spot the difference from previous drug policies. More money was promised (keep an eye on that, officer) and Johnson was going to be tough on drugs and the causes of drugs. The BBC news obediently led with what seemed to be a bit of government spin.

The unofficial reason was surely to deflect all those hostile headlines about the party that might or might not have been taken place at Downing Street last Christmas.

You know the one, the party that wasn’t held but if it was it broke no rules, but anyway it categorically wasn’t held, unless it was.

Johnson burbled out his slippery explanation as usual, and then last night ITV News obtained a video of a mock briefing showing Downing Street staff joking while talking about a gathering where cheese and wine were served.

The prime minister’s former press secretary, Allegra Stratton, is shown laughing on many of the front pages, with the Times among other accusing Boris Johnson of “lying” – which is a bit like saying a leopard suffers from spotty pigmentation.

This story has traction because the alleged Tory knees-up happened at a time when everyone else had been ordered to stay indoors to comply with Covid rules, and when other rule-breaking partygoers were getting themselves arrested. And, much more seriously, it happened when people were prevented from visiting ill or dying relatives thanks to the lockdown.

This is how a small story becomes a much bigger story; how a little spot becomes a festering boil, and so on.

Plenty of us saw Johnson as a conniving scoundrel from the start, an unserious show-off who pretends to be an amiable clown. Lovable toff or hateful, chaotic incompetent – oh sometimes it’s hard to spot the difference.

After trying to bend the parliamentary rules to save his pal, Owen Paterson, and after the great northern railway let-down, Johnson needed some good news. Instead, he is haunted by the ghost of last Christmas, and a growing sense that rules only apply to the little people and not to himself or those within his queasy orbit.

Anyway, fun was had on Twitter with that police picture. The best response was from Jed Mercurio, the writer of Line Of Duty…

 

“Totally bent” – yup, that raised a weary smile.

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