Partygate is a foolish distraction from Ukraine and the cost of living

OK, hands up who remembers something called Partygate.

Here’s a clue. It involved Boris Johnson, a garden and bottles of prosecco.

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It was the last crisis this Government faced. It’s kinda been dwarfed by a more recent crisis, I think it’s fair to say.

Partygate was all the allegations — most of them true and admitted as such — that while we had all been obeying lockdown, the Government had not.

Instead they’d been enjoying loads of parties. Bring a bird and a bottle. Inside No 10, outside No 10.

It sometimes seemed as if they’d spent the entirety of lockdown getting rat-a***d on fizzy wine and not being terribly mindful of social distancing. (Come on, come on. Get with the programme. Surely you remember social distancing?)

Anyway, it was a big crisis and Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner said Johnson should resign. So did the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey (but I don’t think anyone heard).

At first, the Metropolitan Police said it wasn’t interested in investigating all this stuff. Despite the fact it’d been handing out fines to ordinary folks who flouted lockdown.

Then, as a mysterious woman called Sue Gray prepared a report on the business, the Met said it WOULD launch a criminal investigation. Thus scuppering Sue’s report.

That was on January 25 this year. Eight officers assigned to this whole business, with more joining.

Two months later, the Met still hasn’t produced its findings. In fact, it has only just got around to interviewing what it says are “key witnesses”.

How difficult is it to find out if someone was at a party or not? Why does it take eight officers plus loads of reinforcements more than two months before they even get around to talking to people? What the hell were they doing?

This is in essence what’s wrong with our country. Yes, we’re a democracy and everything has to be done properly. But it also means things just don’t get done.

Truth is, if the report came out tomorrow, nobody would give a monkey’s. The gap between Labour and the Tories in the polls has halved.

Nobody would now argue that the PM having a glass of prosecco with some boring, pencil-necked nerd from the civil service is the most pressing issue facing our country.

Bored stiff

Can you imagine if this had happened in Russia?

“Comrade Putin, the invasion of Ukraine is going well. We have terrified the West with our nuclear threats.

“However, it has been revealed that the Christmas before last, you knowingly ate a piece of cake and drank a vodka cocktail with several colleagues from the KGB when you should have been in lockdown.

“Also, you weren’t wearing your special anti-Covid Stalin mask. As a consequence, I would ask you to clear your desk and vacate the Kremlin so a new hard-faced megalomaniac fascist despot can take over.

“Thank you for your service, Comrade Putin. And dos vedanya.”

Wouldn’t happen, would it? Or anywhere else. I thought, and still think, the Prime Minister’s behaviour during lockdown was arrogant and complacent.

It grated with me and an awful lot of people in the country. But when viewed against the invasion of Ukraine and talk of World War Three, it is of minuscule importance, no?

Just as Covid seems rather less important today than it did before those tanks rolled across the border.

The best thing that can happen now is for the coppers to announce they’re bored stiff with asking people if they’d attended a party or not and want to get on with more pressing duties, such as stabbing offences and burglaries.

We have a war in our backyard and a cost-of-living crisis. This other stuff is just a foolish distraction which nobody cares about any more.

Khan’t he leave the roads as they are?

LONDON Mayor Sadiq Khan’s anti-history brigade are on the march again. They want to rename a street in South London because it mentions Nelson.

The Black Lives Matter lunatics think Nelson’s Row, in Clapham, should be called something else. Don’t know what.

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Idi Amin Street? Milton Obote Terrace?

Nobody actually can say for sure if Nelson’s Row was named after Lord Nelson. It might have been named after him.

But then it might have been named after someone time has forgotten: Bob Nelson, a much-loved 16th-century pox doctor.

Who knows?

They are also thinking of renaming Tulse Hill. That’s because the 17th-century Lord Mayor Henry Tulse may have profited from slavery.

Listen, Khan, you dwarfish dingbat. Spend a bit more time making the trains and buses run properly, stop young people stabbing each other to death every day — and a bit less time on your pointless grandstanding.

Lia is pools apart

I MIGHT have to move to Florida.

The governor there seems to be getting everything right. Also, it’s warm.

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There was a big college swimming race for women in the neighbouring state of Georgia.

It was won by Lia Thomas. Not a huge surprise, as Lia is actually a bloke who has “transitioned” into being a woman.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis refused to recognise Thomas’s victory. He signed a proclamation saying the runner-up — Florida’s Emma Weyant — was the proper winner . . . seeing as the race was for women and Emma definitely is one.

More and more often, transgender competitors are winning in women’s sports tournaments.

Women competitors are often too scared to complain. We need a few strong-minded politicians who will turn back this tide. And who aren’t scared of being called a ’phobe by the shrill minority.

Hanna has no class

DID you see the photos of Wills and Kate during their visit to Jamaica?

In a couple of pictures Kate was snubbed by the Jamaican politician — and former Miss World — Lisa Hanna. What a rude, sullen cow the woman appears to be.

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You can object to the existence of the monarchy, sure. But remaining courteous takes a degree of dignity you simply don’t have, Hanna.

Some Jamaicans are saying we should apologise for slavery and pay them reparations.

Since Jamaica’s independence in 1962 we’ve poured millions and millions of pounds into the country.

There’s your reparations. You’ve already spent them.

No sense Sunak

I WAS still hoping Rishi Sunak would see a bit of sense — right up until about lunchtime yesterday.

Then all hope evaporated with an audible “ppphhhht”, like the noise a cat makes when it’s breaking wind.

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There wasn’t enough help in the Chancellor’s package for the very poorest of us.

But it is those in the middle — the “just coping”, as we used to call them — who will be most seriously hit.

We are facing the worst drop in our standard of living in two generations, maybe more. The planned 1p cut in basic income tax will hardly touch the sides, welcome though it is.

The Tories will see the effect of this mini-Budget in the May local elections. They should be prepared for a bloodbath.

Put end to Vlad terror

A MONTH into the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Russkies have only taken one major city, Kherson.

They’ve lost at least 10,000 men. Maybe 15,000, if you believe the Ukrainians.

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That’s almost as many as they lost during ten years occupying Afghanistan.

Somehow we have to get the message to the Russian people that this act of aggression was not just a crime but also a terrible miscalculation by Vladimir Putin.

Slowly but surely, Russian journalists are protesting, with many resigning their positions.

Russian performers — especially rock groups — have been voicing their opposition to the war. The more dissent there is inside Russia, the harder it is for Vladimir Putin to continue behaving like a war criminal.

Some people are now arguing we mustn’t “back the Russian leader into a corner” because then he might get really dangerous.

Listen, he already is really dangerous.

He was dangerous when he annexed Crimea eight years ago  . . . and we did nothing. He was dangerous when he supported the so-called independent (pro-Russian) breakaway republics in Ukraine . . . and we did nothing.

He seemed pretty dangerous to me when he invaded Ukraine . . . and militarily, we did nothing.

We can only do nothing for so long.

Backing Putin into a corner is the best option for us, the best option for Ukraine and, in the long run, the best option for the Russian people.