So, while the Prime Minister takes a day trip to Blackpool in his private aircraft for a photo opportunity, four of his closest advisors and senior aides, including Munira Mirza, who has worked with him for over a decade, depart 10, Downing Street. Although a clear-out had been promised, it is worth reminding ourselves that these are not staff he inherited, but staff he himself hand-picked to run his Downing Street operation, summoning Martin Reynolds, a diplomat, back from Libya to work for him as his PPS. So although there is talk of ‘getting a grip’ and a reformed Downing Street operation, and much blaming of the civil service in private, the atmosphere of total chaos and dysfunctionality is recent and of this administration’s making: not so much about the structure and lines of command, as Sue Gray suggested, but about the people and how they have operated during the pandemic, no doubt an exceptionally stressful period, but it doesn’t look good if his closest allies have all walked the plank simultaneously, together with Munira Mirza’s carefully restrained, but still effective torpedo letter of resignation.

I feel more than a touch mournful that Rupert Thomas is stepping down from The World of Interiors after a mere 21 years. It seems so recent that he took on what seemed an impossible task – taking over from Min Hogg, the queen of the unknown country house, forgotten, but full of wonders. Rupert Thomas has been more eclectic – more interested in the modern, with a wider range of taste, but still perfectly capable of finding forgotten country house interiors, even if, as sometimes happens, he has to disguise their identity. He will in turn be a hard act to follow, so I can only wish his successor, Hamish Bowles, well in whatever minor modifications he makes, preferably as few as possible.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/style/world-of-interiors.html

We were given an Amaryllis for Christmas and over the last month, it has given me the utmost pleasure watching it flower:-

And yesterday:-

As the Sue Gray report sinks in, it is perhaps more striking for what it doesn’t say than what it does. The fault was apparently a failure of leadership: not, note, a failure of management or of the team itself. It was the leadership. Well, who, one then asks, provides the leadership in 10, Downing Street ? It must surely be the leader himself, the man who has always wanted to be king and who Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks is President. It was the fault of the leader. She does not say so, but presumably that is what she thinks needs to be changed.

I have now read Sue Gray’s report (https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21193251/investigation_into_alleged_gatherings_on_government_premises_during_covid_restrictions_-_update.pdf)

What to make of it ? It seems to be the ultimately dry civil service report, doing what was required of it in as limited a way as possible, very severely constrained by the fact of the police investigation which does not allow her to comment in any detail on the gatherings which may or may not have been legal, which is a matter for Scotland Yard. She makes it clear that 10, Downing Street was pandemonium during the pandemic with no clear lines of responsibility and no leadership, but it is not clear whose responsibility this should have been, not apparently either the Prime Minister or the Cabinet Secretary, neither of whom are mentioned.

So, is everyone let off the hook ? Not exactly, because it is now up to the police to decide whether or not some of the gatherings were criminal.

Besides, it surely avoids the key issue. The key issue is whether or not the Prime Minister lied to the House of Commons when he said that there were no parties, when it now transpires there were at least sixteen, several of which he attended.

And did he lie to the House of Commons when he said that he was as shocked as they were when he discovered that parties had been held, when it now transpires that he had attended several of them ?

If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then, of course, he should resign for having knowingly misled the House. But he is obviously not going to, so it is the duty of MPs to remove him.

Will they ?

It will presumably depend on a calculation as to whether or not his apparently shameless dishonesty will influence the next election and whether or not they can hold up their heads in front of the electorate for having allowed a liar to remain in office.

Reading today’s papers, it looks as if the Prime Minister may after all survive.   It is not because people have suddenly decided to believe his lies on all fronts:  lies about the wallpaper, where he said to Lord Geidt that he was not in contact with Lulu Lytle before February 2021, when she attended his birthday party in June 2020; his lies about the evacuation of dogs from Afghanistan, where emails now demonstrate that he did intervene, a view he has described as ‘total rhubarb’;  and his endless lies and obfuscation about parties in Downing Street.   It just seems that at some point boredom sets in.  And proceduralism.   And clever political game-playing.  Helped by the absence of a credible alternative who enjoys enough support.  So MPs are paralysed.  It’s depressing.

I’m looking forward to talking to John Wonnacott on February 16th. having written a book about him during lockdown, so was unable to go and see him and talk to him in person. I know from experience that he talks very well about his paintings and, as has been correctly pointed out, the best bit of the book are his emails where he describes his early life and the experience of being taught at the Slade by Frank Auerbach and Michael Andrews:-

https://www.royaldrawingschool.org/lectures-events/john-wonnacott-in-conversation-charles-saumarez-smith/

I was in Lower Marsh this morning, pleased to discover that it is full of odd independent stores, including the excellent Coleman Coffee Roasters which has an unexpected back yard so close to the centre of town:-

I am finding the defence of the Prime Minister’s behaviour nearly as interesting – and revealing – as the behaviour itself.

Nadine Dorries says in a tweet that his behaviour – presumably any behaviour – was justified by the fact that ‘100s of staff were running Covid war room offices’. I guessed that this view might lie behind the behaviour – that anything is justified by being on a war footing. Maybe this is allowed by the emergency legislation, which is always possible, but I would have thought it should have emerged sooner as a justification. Also, the pictures suggest everyone lolling about having a drink in the garden, getting plastered, which doesn’t exactly suggest them being on a war footing.

And then Jacob Rees-Mogg, who can usually be relied to reveal the reality of the situation, reminds Tory MPs that the office of Prime Minister is now more like that of a President, not a Prime Minister, which is an interesting development which would certainly help to explain some of the recent behaviour, roaring back and forth to Chequers with a police escort, when it was forbidden to everyone else. But, again, I don’t remember voting for Johnson as President. Maybe, again, it was contained in the emergency legislation.

Both help to explain why 10, Downing Street has been constructed as a parallel universe, not subject to the laws of the land.

I am recording the word kunlangeta only because I had never heard it used before until this afternoon. According to an article in the New Yorker, ‘The Yupik Eskimos use the term kunlangeta to describe a man who repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, and takes sexual advantage of women, according to a 1976 study by Jane M. Murphy, an anthropologist then at Harvard University. She asked an Eskimo [Inuit] what the group would typically do with a kunlangeta, and he replied, “Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking.”’. It is said to be coming in useful in Whitehall at the moment.