Perhaps the most striking thing about the current BoJo crisis – more so than whether coworkers singing Happy Birthday counts as a party or not – was the way a section of society grabbed onto the first suggestions, back in December, that there may have been a party in Downing Street during lockdown to declare “If Boris can break the law, so can I!”
Bear in mind, this wasn’t after several apparent breaches of lockdown rules had been revealed and the Prime Minister was known to have been, at least tangentially, involved with a couple. This was back when there was a vague, “something probably happened, we don’t know what exactly, we don’t know if any rules were breached, and we don’t know if the Prime Minister was even in the vicinity at the time, let alone involved.” So, not even the ‘maybe he did’ we have now.
But, that didn’t matter. Idiots see, idiots do – especially when they already wanted to do it in the first place…
So, we had one man on the BBC news demanding that his fine for hosting a law-breaking party should be quashed because of Boris. Does anyone imagine that’s how the law works? Not that Boris, if found guilty, ought to be fined, too?
Then, there was a woman interviewed at the London New Year celebrations by the BBC who explained that she had never attended them before but, inspired by Boris, had decided to break that habit and turn up during a pandemic, because… well, there didn’t seem to be any good reason… Naturally, neither she nor her fellow revellers were wearing masks or bothering to maintain a distance. But, who cares? Boris broke the law, so it’s all okay and COVID isn’t contagious anymore.
Now, there’s no doubt that Downing Street, whether guilty of breaking the actual law or not, showed a distinct hypocrisy towards the COVID rules. But, as galling as a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude can be, that doesn’t mean rushing out to ape bad decisions is a good idea. Unfortunately, it seems there are plenty of idiots who think that it is.
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