Boris Johnson – Life in the fast lane

By David Scane

The moment Northern Ireland Secretary, Brandon Lewis, went on breakfast television this morning to cheerily compare a fine for breeching lockdown rules to receiving a parking ticket, was the moment that something in the Prime Minister’s past was bound to come back to haunt him. 

So, it transpires that in his 2007 book “Life In The Fast Lane” (Harper Perennial 2007) the future Prime Minister wrote about how he used to let parking tickets “pile in drifts against the windscreen until…the fines just disintegrated in the rain)." The book, which is described as a series of ‘hilarious dispatches from life in the fast lane’, goes on to ponder such philosophical questions as “What does it feel like to be overtaken by a female driver when you’re behind the wheel of an Alfa Romeo?”. 

No doubt the PM would put these musings down to the indiscretions of youth (being barely in his early-40s at the time of writing) and highlight that he is today, a much more responsible public figure. He would surely point out that instead of letting his Covid-fines pile up, he pays them in full and not one has ‘disintegrated in the rain’. 

He is also a man who owns up to his mistakes. On what was now his third Covid-related mea-culpa in the Commons, the Prime Minister this afternoon offered a ‘full throated’ apology for breaking Covid-rules. It was so effective that he may struggle to top it with future apologies that could follow other potential breaches of lockdown law. 

Like any effective apology, the message was simple – he understands the pain, he recognises the hurt, and recommends you now move on and put this all into perspective. 

The Conservative benches lapped it up, the Labour benches howled in derision, and Boris Johnson lives to fight another day. 

The Labour Party has now tabled a motion for a Parliamentary debate on Thursday to call for a privileges committee inquiry into claims the Prime Minister deliberately misled Parliament about partygate. However, with an 80-seat majority and a strong Conservative whipping operation effectively treating this as a vote of confidence, the motion is surely doomed to fail. 

Johnson will continue to survive so long as there is no immediate successor with an obvious appetite to succeed him. He has proven that he does not operate on either the same political, or even moral framework that is reserved for other public figures and very little can touch him. 

Some commentators have suggested that the local elections will see him off, or the publication of the long-awaited Sue Gray report, or even that further revelations of Covid rule breaking will be the final nail in his coffin. 

Yet, they would be wrong. The lack of consequences from Covid rule-breaking and the subsequent indifference displayed by Conservative MPs will keep him in post as long as he wants, or until the public gets the opportunity to vote him out.