We’re not going to be able to ‘move on’ from Partygate – here’s why

Boris Johnson said of the lockdown parties that he’d ‘do it again’. Even Nero didn’t suggest fiddling twice as Rome burned around him

So it’s time “move on”. We’re hearing that a lot as part of the Tories’ flailing attempts to prop up the shambolic incompetent that more than 200 of them somehow still managed to back as their leader in yesterday’s confidence vote.

Remember Donald Trump’s boast about being able to walk up to someone in Manhattan and shoot them and still not lose votes during the 2016 Republican presidential primary? There are clearly some Tory MPs who would back Boris Johnson if he did the same thing on Oxford Street, and they’re the ones you’ll hear imploring us to “move on” as part of a seemingly endless round of broadcast interviews.

Oh come on, don’t be so ridiculous! Playing the role of MC at boozy lockdown parties isn’t the same as shooting someone. And you lot, you’ve all been pissed at some point. Hell, teachers and nurses were probably swigging fizz in the staff room while Boris and his pals were boogieing, so move on.

Yes, they’ve actually said that, or something like it. We’ve repeatedly heard variations on the theme from the flies still buzzing around the walking corpse of Johnson’s premiership. The sheer callousness of it beggars belief. But they’ve apologised for those foot in mouth moments, and for Partygate. Sort of. So just move on.

The debate over the PM’s pandemic rule breaking has been framed as being about booze and parties for a reason. Shabby, crass and unprofessional, sure, but get with the programme! Can’t you see there’s a war on? A bit of boozing? Pretty poor show, sure, but small beer when set against the country’s real problems. Move on!

Except that it’s not just about the booze. It’s about holding the equivalent of an American frat house kegger on multiple occasions while people were actually dying, while medical staff were putting their own lives at risk trying to care for them, while teachers were doing the same looking after our children, while checkout workers flinched at every cough so they we could all get fed.

As Labour’s Anglela Rayner, who has a habit of getting to the nub of these issues, noted: more than 180,000 Britons died from Covid. The actual number is probably much larger than that. The PM was playing the Downing Street bon vivant while his countrymen and women were forcing their final strangled breaths out of fatally scarred lungs, as their families looked on via an iPad screen – if they were lucky. Many victims of other terminal illnesses were put in the same, sad situation.

A question for the MPs telling us to “move on”: how do you look at the surviving relatives amongst your constituents? Do you even try?

They might not. There’s been a shameful attempt to airbrush these people out of the conversation. Occasionally, one of the Covid victims groups gets called up for a quote. But they’re not exactly prominent in the national debate, which instead zeroes in on Johnson terminally banging on about “delivering for the British people” while his acolytes shout “vaccines, vaccines, vaccines”.

Except that was Kate Bingham’s work. The same Kate Bingham whose Tory MP husband Jesse Norman finally snapped on the day of the confidence vote. He made clear he had voted in favour of holding one alongside a withering condemnation of the prime minister’s conduct.

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Listen, there is no “moving on” for the people who lost loved ones. It is a savagely offensive thing to say to the victims of trauma. Take it from someone who’s been there. Trauma turns you into a scrunched up piece of paper. It can be smoothed out so that it is flat again and you can write on it, but is never the same. You can heal somewhat, but the healing leaves scars. Most learn to more or less live with them, but they never disappear. The trauma is always there, awaiting its chance to roar back, usually at precisely the wrong moment.

Covid was both a personal trauma for hundreds of thousands of Britons and a national trauma as well. Boris Johnson, with his conduct, gave the nation experiencing it the finger, just as he reportedly gave diners the finger when he was booed at the restaurant where one of his sons works. He said of the parties that he’d “do it again”. Even Nero didn’t suggest fiddling twice as Rome burned around him.

There’s no moving on when you have someone who behaved that disgracefully clinging, limpet-like, to the highest office in the land. It is only possible to envisage healing when the country has been allowed to move on from Johnson. The fact that we face maybe months more of his misrule is like digging a finger into an open wound. This needs to end.