Peter Rhodes on a blond buffoon, fake respect for a duke and why cops looked the other way

The first question the Met has to ask in its investigation into Partygate is one for the cops themselves. They were aware of “gatherings” in Downing Street from May 2020 but did nothing about them. Why?

I suspect it's because they didn't recognise that any crime was being committed. This, after all, was Downing Street, the nerve centre of the fight against Covid. It was a workplace and the people inside were working together, and possibly relaxing after work together. It would take some remarkably brave – or stupid – police officers to force their way in and start handing out fixed-penalty tickets. Imagine the chorus of rage and derision if they had done so – or the headlines: “Bungling cops nick Covid heroes.” It would have been the equivalent of a Downing Street cop in 1940 arresting Churchill for lighting a cigar in the blackout.

While Boris's political enemies chorus that “the laws must apply to everyone,” that's not how the cops operate. If it was, you'd never see a police car speeding. Police are trained to use their discretion. They might have seen a world of difference between a socially distanced wind-down after work in the Downing Street garden for people fighting Covid, and a Facebook-organised kickabout in your local park by a bunch of non-spacing lads.

I am no great fan of Boris Johnson. I warned years ago that it would be a grave mistake for the Tories to elect him as leader. I actually reduced the choice to: “Gove good, Johnson bad.” Yet the blond buffoon has become the most potent election-winning Tory leader since Margaret Thatcher.

Johnson has delivered Brexit and given the Tories a huge majority in the Commons. Labour, Remainers, the Lib-Dems and Boris's sworn enemies in the media know they cannot defeat him democratically. The Partygate nonsense is part of a campaign to scupper him by other means. This is not about principles. It is all about power.

And it reached its most revolting depths in the pantomime of fake horror over an alleged party the day before the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh. How many of the politicians and hacks complaining about disrespect to the Duke are hard-core republicans who hate the monarchy and regularly denounced the Duke? And suddenly they want him respected? In the immortal words of Private Eye, pass the sick bag, Alice.