The truth will out
Media leaders
Will the reporting of Tory Christmas partying during the coronavirus restrictions last year be Johnson’s Watergate moment, asks Raymond Snoddy.
Nearly 50 years ago, two young Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward brought down Richard Nixon, President of the United States over Watergate.
Other media outlets, and many other players did their bit, but it is the names Bernstein and Woodward that have echoed down the years in film and legend.
It is not clear whether the names Pippa Crerar of the Daily Mirror and ITV’s Paul Brand will ever resonate so widely.
But make no mistake, the work of these two journalists could lead to the decline and eventual fall of the fellow journalist who is our current Prime Minister – Boris Johnson.
The combination of Crerar’s exposure of parties in Downing Street when the rest of the UK was in lockdown, and Brand’s exclusive video on Allegra Stratton’s mock press conference on how to cover-up such parties, have created a toxic wind that could sweep Johnson from power.
The parties and the mock press conference, combined with accelerating Covid infections, back bench opposition to Johnson’s attempt to deal with the surge and the North Shropshire by-election, add up to what the Sunday Express called Make or Break Week for the PM.
Many have scratched their heads in surprise that after a multitude of lies, u-turns, misjudgements, the highest Covid death toll in Europe, the most new cases in the world and the economic fallout from Brexit, it is Downing Street parties and a mock press conference that could bring Johnson down.
Until now, Johnson has batted off criticism and breaches of the rules that would have upended more conventional politicians by ignoring them, peremptorily declaring matters closed when they weren’t and the liberal use of his dressing-up box.
Journalists have failed to land a knockout blow.
Until now.
Crerar and Brand have proven that in Downing Street and at the Tories’ Westminster HQ, they were partying and mocking while others were unable to spend final time with dying partners and relatives.
The stories have provided the ultimate emotional cut-through in a way that Johnson’s lies over who paid for his Downing Street flat refurbishment never could.
Interestingly, the two journalists needed each other. Brand has admitted that ITV either had, or had access to the Stratton footage for weeks but didn’t feel they could use it without evidence that there actually had been parties in breach of the rules.
Crerar provided that evidence although perhaps her strongest story came later in this week’s Sunday Mirror.
There was the picture of Johnson the quiz-master with two aides and a sub-head that read: “Tinsel, Santa hats as Boris hosted this Covid rule-breaking No 10 Christmas quiz.”
The main headline then explained in a few words why the story is so poisonous for Johnson. Yes he was Taking Us For Fools (Again.)
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With the press there are always sub-plots usually aligned to a newspaper’s political affiliation.
The Mail on Sunday splashed a Johnson attack on the BBC for being “shamelessly frivolous, vengeful and partisan” over its coverage of the No 10 “partygate” row.
Had it already forgotten it was the Daily Mirror and ITV that had broken the most damaging stories and the BBC was merely reporting the news?
It may be a total co-incidence, but interesting that such an embarrassingly twisted distraction story came after the return of Paul Dacre and the rise to power of his acolytes.
By Monday, The Times was reporting that the investigation into Downing Street parties would also include quiz night and warning in a leader that if the Tories were to lose this week’s by-election it would send “a powerful signal that the public is losing patience with a Prime Minister who appears unwilling or unable to do his job.”
In an opinion piece, Clare Foges, who used to write Johnson’s speeches when he was Mayor of London, went much further.
Foges first fired a broadside at those Conservatives who sent Johnson to Downing Street knowing full well he was “wholly unsuited to the job” on the lazy grounds that he was a winner.
If those responsible want to repair the damage they have done, Foges argued, they must move sooner rather than later to replace the Prime Minister.
“Each further month of lying and chaos damages public trust and demeans the country. Britain deserves better. And who knows? It might even come as a relief to Johnson when the party is over,” Foges concluded powerfully.
Yes but will Johnson’s latest Get Out of Jail Card- the great booster jab for every adult by the end of the month- actually work?
So far it looks like a successful distraction manoeuvre, partly because it is absolutely the right thing to.
Suddenly that’s the story, even if the target is impossible to meet and no doctor was warned in advance of the pre-recorded announcement.
Now it’s on to the uplifting coverage of recruiting volunteer armies of vaccinators.
Johnson will survive 99 back-bench rebellions for now and will only lose North Shropshire if enough Labour supporters are prepared to hold their noses and vote Lib Dem just this once.
Then it’s off for the nice long Christmas recess and maybe people will forget again.
There are a number of remaining problems for Johnson even if the sky doesn’t fall in North Shropshire.
One is Dominic Cummings who is out for revenge, knows where the bodies are buried and seems to be deploying his inside information tactically when the moment is right.
Another person out for revenge is Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May who may not wield the dagger personally but knows those who will on her behalf.
The ranks of those gunning for Johnson are showing exponential growth.
The greatest threat to Johnson could come once again from Crerar and Brand – that they continue to produce more evidence of cynical partying just in time for Christmas.
And as every amateur student of Watergate knows, and Boris Johnson might be about to find out, it wasn’t necessarily the initial deed that sunk Nixon but the botched cover-up.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for Mediatel News on Wednesdays.
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