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When is a Christmas party not a Christmas party? The man to ask is Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Commons defense committee.
As The Mail revealed yesterday, Ellwood went to a meeting at London’s Guards and Cavalry Club on Tuesday, where 26 other people attended. He insists it was a “business meeting”, without a Christmas cookie in sight.
However, the organizers, the Iraq Britain Business Council, very explicitly advertised it as a “Christmas party”, which would mean that the Bournemouth MP was in flagrant violation of Covid guidelines.
So what was it? I don’t know about you, but if you were to invite me to a Christmas party and I came and met people discussing security issues and international foreign policy, as Mr. Ellwood claims, I would take the first train home.
The irony is that just a few days earlier, Mr. Ellwood was lecturing us on how to follow the rules. The day before he went to the party sorry business meeting, he tweeted warning people not to ‘lower their guard’ during Christmas, which could be ‘very dangerous’.
To his credit, Ellwood was quick to apologize. But the whole thing hasn’t done your party any good.
Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Commons defense committee, speaks at an event organized by the Iraq Britain Business Council, which he described as a ‘business meeting’ and was billed as a ‘Christmas party’.
He is not the first deputy, of course, to break the regulations. In April Robert Jenrick, the Housing Secretary, visited his parents in Shropshire, despite explicitly telling the public to “stay home for all less important activities.”
In a much more egregious episode in October, the SNP’s Margaret Ferrier lost her party whip after falling ill with Covid symptoms, traveled to London to attend a Covid debate, tested positive for the virus, and then took the train back. to Scotland anyway.
Even Holiness’s own high priest, Jeremy Corbyn, was photographed at a dinner for nine, in flagrant violation of the “rule of six.”
The usual defense is that it can be difficult to follow the guidelines because they keep changing.
Still, it’s remarkable how often the people at the top have been caught.
In April, Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer Catherine Calderwood broke lockdown restrictions twice to visit her second home. But at least he had the decency to resign immediately.
A month later, the government adviser, Professor Neil Ferguson, whose projections had been crucial in getting us locked up, was caught repeatedly meeting with his married lover. He also resigned. But once again, what was he thinking?
To be fair, some major media figures have also been less than perfect. Having spent months questioning our politicians about the finer details of lockdown rules and berating them for the slightest slip, what were Sky’s Kay Burley and Beth Rigby doing at a birthday party earlier this month?
Ellwood was quick to apologize but said the business meeting was ‘fully Covid compliant’
But one example is bigger than any other: the saga of Dominic Cummings’ trip to Durham after he and his wife tested positive for Covid. And then the infamous trip to Barnard Castle, to “test your eyesight.”
Now it turns out, by the way, that Cummings had just pocketed a pay raise of nearly 50 per cent, bringing his pay to more than £ 140,000 – and this in a year in which most industry wages were frozen. public.
Even his fellow special advisers were shocked by it. “This is sheer hypocrisy,” one told The Times. “Dom used to be resolutely opposed to anyone being paid more than £ 100,000.” Of course, none of us are perfect. Can I honestly say, with my hand on my heart, that I have religiously adhered to all the guidelines, without a single gap, no matter how small now? You better not answer that.
But our politicians are different, whether they like it or not. To quote the late Julius Caesar, “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.”
The event Ellwood attended was listed by the organizers as a ‘Christmas Party’
Some argue that they are human and deserve exactly the same latitude as their constituents. You could buy that if they weren’t on the public payroll, with nice benefits and pensions to go along with their responsibilities. They set the tone for public life, they have a duty to do better.
As Mr. Ellwood pointed out, “perceptions count.” There’s no point haggling over details, as Cummings did after his expedition to Barnard Castle. If it looks bad, then it is bad. End of story.
All of this revives the specter of the defining scandal of recent times: the disclosures of MPs’ spending. Who can forget the duck house, the moat cleaning, or the £ 100 bill to change a light bulb?
All of that was 11 years ago, but it left a lasting legacy. The image of a careless, greedy and disconnected elite has been one of the biggest drivers of the new politics of anti-government populism, fueling insurgencies from Nigel Farage’s Ukip to Corbyn’s far-left cult.
The danger, then, is not simply that these latest violations undermine confidence in Covid’s guidelines, making it that much more difficult to combat the pandemic at a desperately dangerous time.
The biggest problem is that, in the long run, they undermine the foundation of democratic politics itself: the idea of a bond of solidarity between leaders and those of the leadership, representatives and voters, the elite and the rest of us.
It is worth remembering that one day this will end. But how will we get out into the new post-Covid world? United, harmonious, determined to rebuild our shared society? Or fighting, rebellious and divided, with one rule for them and one for us?
To put it another way, when this gruesome year ends, will we remember Mr. Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle and Mr. Ellwood’s’ business meeting ‘as mere footnotes to a larger story?
Or will we see them as symptoms of a much broader disease, the widening gulf between ordinary families who tried to follow the rules and the Westminster elite who set and broke them?
