Boris, The Christmas Party, and the Omicron Dead Cat Strategy
Can we really trust a man who can’t keep his own house in order?
Boris Johnson is throwing new Omicron restrictions out into the wind with the aplomb of a toddler pissing into a tornado. It’s dead cat strategy time at Downing Street and Boris’ impression of a sensible and in-control leader is about as convincing as his marital vows.
Piffle, waff-waff, Peppa Pig, and big buckets of Omicron for everyone.
Johnson is insisting we focus entirely on what needs to be done to protect the public today! Waff! We mustn’t look at yesterday (pffah) and we most definitely shouldn’t look at what was happening around a year ago.
Whilst Britain was caught in the ‘rule of six’, on December 18th, 2020 it very much looks as though the Downing Street staff decided they’d have their own massive knees up. A Christmas party. A Christmas party with more than six people present.
Johnson has denied it. Johnson denies everything, except temptation.
I can see how it happened. The daughter of someone chinless and double-barrelled got a job at Downing Street because her Dad gave a hand-shandy to a privy councilor back in the 1960s. Felicity Bafflingly-Obtuse then convinced everyone else the rules definitely didn’t apply because rules which apply to poor people don’t apply to the rich.
Then under the guise of cheese and wine, they all got smashed. Totally hamstered. Completely gazeboed.
Johnson should’ve been the adult in the room. He should have nixed the idea straight away but he either turned a blind eye or showed up as a guest of honour. Felicity Bafflingly-Obtuse winked at him with her oh-so-lovely-cleavage and let him pat her on the bum. So instead he likely gave an inspiring speech about whatever candyfloss Latin classical allegorical nonsense he was pondering in that instant.
Aaaah, yes, it’s like… ummm, Sparta. We are Leonidas and, out there, is Persia… Covid Persia. We three hundred, we can stop it. With umm, duty and forbearance and ummm, twiglets! Party? Humph. Pfffah. Cheese and Wine!
And so a party happened on the downlow. A party which last week Johnson denied ever happened… but of course, definitely did happen. See… someone (and I’m not saying its Dominic Cummings but it’s definitely Dominic Cummings) sent a video to ITV earlier today and made Johnson look like an absolute ass.
In said video, Allegra Stratton, the Prime Minister’s previous press secretary jokes with Ed Oldfield, a fellow Downing Street advisor during a mock press briefing. Here it is for those who want to watch it. For those who prefer a transcription. There’s one below.
Ed Oldfield: I’ve just seen reports on Twitter that there was a Downing Street Christmas party on Friday night, do you recognise those reports?
Allegra Stratton: I went home [laughs], hold on hold on, erm, err …
Oldfield: Would the prime minister condone having a Christmas party?
Stratton [laughing]: What’s the answer?
Oldfield: I don’t know.
Unidentified Downing Street employee: It wasn’t a party … it was cheese and wine.
[Laughter throughout briefing room]
Stratton: Is cheese and wine alright? It was a business meeting.
[Laughter throughout briefing room]
Downing St employee: No, joking.
Stratton [laughing]: This is recorded. This fictional party was a business meeting [laughs] and it was not socially distanced.
Which begs the question why do practice responses about a party that definitely didn’t happen? The only reason you’d practice denying something is if it a) happened and b) you might need to deny it. I’m presuming denying things that didn’t happen isn’t standard protocol and that there aren’t thousands of hours spent answering questions about Care Bear invasions or the theft of the Isle of Wight.
Tory MPs are furious… not because Downing Street held a party, but because they went on film to joke about it.
Johnson has been caught with his pants down
And not in the normal way Boris is usually caught with his pants down… he went to parliament, emphatically told everyone there was no Christmas party and was blindsided by the emergence of this video. Now he’s doubled down, assured everyone he is furious and has ‘apologised unreservedly’ during PMQs.
They’ve had the video all along of course. They laid a trap which the bumbling cockwomble has wandered into with his usual Etonian enthusiasm. Boris couldn’t strategise his way out of a paper bag but he’s no longer an outsider lying about the establishment, he is the establishment.
If you’re caught ‘misleading parliament’ (or lying as it’s known in the rest of the country) there are usually calls for you to resign pretty sharpish. Those calls have begun in earnest.
It feels like there was one rule for Johnson and his cronies and one rule for everyone else. This Government is in full crisis mode and that’s why nobody is available for comment on national TV at the moment.
Not even Sajid Javid, and he’d comment on the opening of envelope if he had the chance. Javid is eyeing the top-spot. They all are. There’s no loyalty at the top. They’ve all attended the Michael ‘Macbeth’ Gove instructional seminar on staying at the top.
All this political pressure leaves Boris with only one option. Change the Covid advice and hope the news cycles off quickly into the Omicron strain. This is an integral part of his confusion strategy, the real-world manifestation of his entire Johnsonian method of Governance.
He’s going to try and ride this one out, but I’m not sure he can. Boris has dwindling support for his childish antics, no real support from his own side and a cabinet of power-hungry narcissists who’d love his job. I’m sure hubris is an excellent choice of cheese to pair well with a Pinot Noir.
Perhaps worse, he’s got legions of angry families ready with stories of how they dutifully followed the rules while their relatives died alone and isolated.
As more and more families come forward with heartbreaking stories of waving their relatives off then never seeing them again, you can expect the optics on this to go south very very fast. Oh and Dominic Cummings may still have a hard drive full of compromising videos yet unseen. Can Boris ride this out? He thinks so…
At least until a new video emerges of him, sans trousers, drinking champagne out of Felicity Bafflingly-Obtuse’s cleavage.
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