WELL, it could only happen to our PM, Boris Johnson.

I mean his immaculate attendance at events. Perhaps that halo of entitlement meant he wasn’t really there. Or possibly he was just an omnipresence, meaning he couldn’t be fined? How prescient of David Cameron to call the PM a “greased albino piglet”! One up on “Teflon Tony”?

We have a recognised timeline that runs from May 2020 starting with the BYOB in Downing Street gardens to April 2021 and that leaving do on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral. That timeline identifies a total of eight Downing Street gatherings, resulting in the Met Police issuing 126 fixed penalty notices. Since I wasn’t at any of those events, I wasn’t asked to fill in a questionnaire by the Met, so I’ve no idea what questions were asked then. But the questions haven’t gone away: they keep coming.

Sue Gray’s report was put in abeyance the moment the Met finally stepped in, so can we expect it soon, in full, and not redacted? Hang about: we know now that Sue Gray met with the PM once, or at least once, so are we assured that the report hasn’t been compromised? Then, that impromptu birthday party which gathered fines for husband-and-wife team Boris and Carrie. What of Rishi Sunak? Was he peeved at not being in time for the birthday bash, merely accidentally rolling up, minus a pressi, too early for the planned meeting but getting a fine all the same? Big-shot cabinet secretary Simon Case was at a party, so why didn’t he get fined? There’s quite a contradiction between the levels of involvement and fining of these two men, two events, fined and not fined, don’t you think? Is consistency not a thing with the Met Police?

In turn, we hear that there’s a high percentage of junior civil servants on the naughty step at Downing Street, peering at their fine notices. Pity them? “Invited” to events and knowing the departmental boss and the PM – ultimate bossman – will be there, so which is it? Attend, network a bit, see and be seen, or go home to wash your hair?

And finally, there’s the public. You know, us. Sitting on the grass, resting on benches, chatting to a friend, or more likely an unknown somebody as we were so desperate for some engagement, some conviviality in the open hours of lockdown. Why were we moved on, or worse, reported on? Or fined for that carry-oot that firstly gathered a few friends before being quashed by a financial fine? Or the students thrown off uni courses following investigations into their parties? I honestly can’t believe they trundled off to an off-licence with their granny’s shopping trolly, can you? Naw, you’d need to be further up the greasy pole, the do-as-we-say and not-as-we-do pole to come up with a wheeze like that! Yes, mugs, taken for mugs, the lot of us.

And now in times of emergency, a war on mainland Europe, too major to go unnoticed, too close to be dismissed like some inter-tribal, internecine Middle East splat: food shortages; a new pox slithering into the West as opposed to staying put in some distant hot country; fuel and food supplies threatened, and that “piglet” remains in charge? If his backbenchers won’t do the needful, what will the voters decide at the two upcoming by-elections in England?

And in the meantime, Is the “piglet” our fate, our future? Is this the best we can expect, Scotland?
Selma Rahman
Edinburgh