Lies, damned lies, and the Tory Party

Benjamin Disraeli said that there were lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Well, fortunately statistics can sometimes expose a lie. The British Prime Minister, currently mired in scandal, has fallen back on a variety of defences. One is to point to one or two achievements of his government (there haven’t been many, after all).

One he particularly likes to point to is Britain’s anti-Covid vaccine rollout. It got going impressively fast. Faster than anyone else in Europe.

The trouble is, and this is very much this Prime Minister’s way, the claim isn’t wholly true. After all, getting a quick start in a race is only useful if you can build on it to get across the finishing line faster than anyone else. In other words, it isn’t the start of the race that matters, but the end.

Imagine that Britain was one of eight finalists in the middle-distance Olympic Covid-vaccination race. Here’s how those eight European nations fared:

Final positions in the Covid-vaccination race

Johnson may have got Britain off the blocks fastest. Finishing seventh, however, is hardly impressive.  But then, that’s typical of the man – spinning the truth, or downright lying, to make his inadequate performance look better.

He makes me think of another man in his party, from the time of my childhood.

Men behaving dishonourably: Profumo (left) and Johnson
One ended up doing the honourable thing
Guess which didn't

John Profumo had the ideal upbringing for a member of the British elite. He attended one of the most expensive schools and then Oxford University. There he was a member of the Bullingdon, the rich boys’ club that regards vandalism as a legitimate form of entertainment. They will, for instance, trash a restaurant, confident that the Daddy of one or other of the boys would come round the next day with his cheque book to cover the damage. Perfect training for people destined to believe that success is something to which they’re entitled, rather than something to work for. Also that rules are for the little people – the rest of us – and not for them, who only make them.

It's no accident that both David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2015, and Boris Johnson, Prime Minister from 2019 to, possibly, sometime quite soon, are also former members of the same club.

In the 1930s, Profumo had an affair with a German woman who, it was later established, had some kind of working relationship with the inteligence service of her home country. As we’ll see, that was a bit of a model for Profumo’s later life.

He had a distinguished career in the Second World War, at one point rising to the rank of Brigadier General (starting as a Second Lieutenant, so a spectacular rise). When he became a Member of Parliament, inevitably for the Conservative Party, he had a similarly rapid ascent, peaking at Secretary of State for War. There was already talk of him as a future leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister.

Then, unfortunately, he had an affair with the model Christine Keeler. Perhaps I should have put some quotes around ‘model’. 

That might have been something he could weather. But it turned out she’d been having a simultaneous affair with the military Attaché at the Soviet Embassy. That, too, Profumo might have survived, but then he denied the affair in Parliament. The lie was eventually unmasked and that was the end. It was unforgivable to lie to the House of Commons. Profumo had behaved dishonourably and he’d been caught. He retained enough residual honour to resign.

Now let’s compare that with our present Prime Minister and alumnus of the Bullingdon Club.

Parties held at 10 Downing Street and other government locations have been investigated for whether they breached Covid lockdown regulations. Johnson attended some of them and is accused of knowing about others. Some of the gatherings are now the subject of a police enquiry into potentially criminal behaviour.

There are two issues here. One is that a lot of people followed the regulations, often at great personal cost. I won’t describe the resentment Johnson’s behaviour therefore caused. That’s been done far more effectively ty the leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer, in what must be one of the most powerful speeches he has given. He told the House of Commons:

Over the last two years, the British public have been asked to make the most heart-wrenching sacrifices, a collective trauma, endured by all, enjoyed by none. Funerals have been missed, dying relatives unvisited, every family has been marked by what we’ve been through. And revelations about the Prime Minister’s behaviour have forced us all to rethink and relive those darkest moments. Many have been overcome by rage, by grief and even guilt. Guilt that because they stuck to the law, they did not see their parents one last time. Guilt that because they didn’t bend the rules, their children went months without seeing friends. Guilt that because they did as they were asked, they didn’t go and visit lonely relatives.

But people shouldn’t feel guilty. They should feel pride in themselves and their country, because by abiding by those rules, they’ve saved the lives of people they will probably never meet. They’ve shown the deep public spirit and the love and respect for others that has always characterised this nation at its best. Our national story about Covid is one of a people that stood up when they were tested. But that will be forever tainted by the behaviour of this Conservative Prime Minister. By routinely breaking the rules he set, the Prime Minister took us all for fools, he held people’s sacrifice in contempt, he showed himself unfit for office.

The second issue is how Johnson responded to the revelations. On three occasions, he categorically stated to the House of Commons that the gatherings either had not taken place or had not breached the lockdown regulations. For the record, that was at Prime Minister’s Questions, once on 1 December and twice on 8 December.

Profumo lied once to the House of Commons. When caught, he resigned. Has Johnson lied? It looks increasingly as though he deliberately misled the House, a resigning offence in the Ministerial code. In theory, he’s bound by that code, but then in theory he was also bound by the Covid regulations he’d made. 

Will he resign? I wouldn’t count on it. He’s likely to go full Bullingdon, living by the standards of a club that acts as finishing school for those who view themselves as entitled to grab what they want, and that rules apply to others, not to them. 

Profumo worked for the rest of his career for the charity Toynbee Hall, devoted to the elimination of poverty. He worked for it unpaid – he could because he had inherited wealth, but at least he chose to use that privilege in a way that helped others. Many feel that he rehabilitated himself by that behaviour.

Can you imagine Johnson ever doing anything as commendable or altruistic?