Away from the noise and the spin, we’re left with one uncomfortable yet undeniable truth.
The prime minister thinks you are stupid.
Don’t take it personally.
He also holds his colleagues, his party and the whole country in contempt.
That’s the only plausible explanation for why he continues to lie to us to try to save his skin.
Boris Johnson is the first sitting prime minister in history to be found to have broken the law.
His Chancellor and his wife were also among those fined in the latest batch of fixed penalty notices that arrived on Tuesday.
In a video statement, the prime minister admitted he ‘’fell short’’ of observing his own rules and offered a ‘’full apology’’ to the country.
There’s always a ‘but’ though, isn’t there?
Narcissists can’t resist the urge to offer excuses to deflect from their bad behaviour.
So it wasn’t at all surprising to watch the prime minister undermine his own apology in real time.
Boris Johnson worked hard? Tell that to the nurses and cleaners
He claims that around the time he was holding daily press conferences to explain the rules to the country, he didn’t fully understand them himself.
His ludicrous deflections make a lot more sense when you remember that he thinks you are stupid.
It was for this reason Boris Johnson used his half-baked apology statement to go into great detail about the floorplan of No.10 Downing Street.
(It’s huge, in case you didn’t know! Loads of people work there! And Boris Johnson thought it was only right and proper that he did Jägerbombs with them all.)
'He lies for a living.'
This nurse takes aim at Boris Johnson, after the PM has been fined for breaking lockdown rules.@DavidLammy pic.twitter.com/7QV7uTiX0A
— LBC (@LBC) April 13, 2022
I’m so sick of hearing about how exceptional the prime minister and his colleagues are and how awfully hard they worked during the pandemic.
The days were long and the nights? Well, those were even longer, given they had to allow extra time for pre-drinking.
They sat at their desks for hours on end, risking severe backpain and ouchy eyes in the process. All for the good of the country.
And now everybody is annoyed that they consumed a few suitcases of wine to let off some steam?
Those nurses, doctors, shop-workers, bus-drivers (and the cleaners whose job it was to wipe up the vomit and clear away the empties) can’t possibly understand what lockdown was like for those brave souls in Whitehall.
Like I say: he thinks you are stupid.
Incompetence is no defence
What does it say about the state of our politics that the only defence a law-breaking prime minister has is that he is totally incompetent?
Members of the public were denied final moments with their dying loved ones when all this was going on.
But the prime minister wants us to believe he thought there was a loophole that would allow colleagues to gather together for no better reason than they fancied a bevvy.
If that were true it wouldn’t be a defence of his actions. It would be a glaring indictment of his unfitness for office.
Cabinet minister Grant Shapps told us this morning that "this is two years we're talking about, the world has moved on". Well, not for many people, it hasn't. https://t.co/9d6Fte8f40
— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) April 13, 2022
Of course, Boris Johnson has no intention of doing the right thing.
He won’t offer his resignation.
He insists this whole scandal has strengthened his resolve to continue in office and deliver on people’s priorities.
Which is exactly the kind of selfishness you would expect from a man who treated his wedding vows like a matrimonial world buffet.
Boris Johnson colleagues are fuelling public anger
Despite all this, his party colleagues are too spinless to remove him.
The ministers judged to have the lowest self-esteem have been sent on TV to defend their man.
Grant Shapps said the prime minster didn’t intend any ‘malice’ when he broke the law.
The rest have hid their cowardice behind a screen and tweeted to say it’s time to draw a line under the whole thing.
According to them, this is all a fuss about nothing and the public need to move on.
But the moral vacuum at the heart of our government makes that impossible.
For as long as they defend the indefensible, public anger will continue to simmer away in the background.
And when the next fines are dished out?
The Conservative Party now judge success not by what policies they implement or how they fare in improving the lives of ordinary people.
A good day for them involves nothing more significant than their own survival.
Self-interest is king and it is that which will determine what happens next.
So can their pre-scripted defences of law-breaking in No.10 hold as more fines are issued?
This was the prime minister’s first fine for lockdown breaches but it is unlikely to be his last.
I wonder if they’ve got the stomach for what their continued support of Boris Johnson will entail.
When the police judge that Boris Johnson has broken his own lockdown laws not once, but twice, three times, more – will they have the energy to defend him as vigorously as they have this week?
Surely they must realise that their excuses are pathetic. The public aren’t falling for this Tory attempt to re-write history.
So why do they persevere with it?
It’s because they think we are stupid.
