The Bitter Tears of Allegra von Stratton

A Christmas Morality Tale for Dystopian Times

In the years to come, historians charting the downfall of Boris Johnson and the wider moral collapse that he both embodied and accelerated may be forced to apologise to their readers for including discussions of cheese and wine parties, nibbles, and Secret Santas in their learned reflections on the post-Brexit years.  Such things are not, on the face of it, the great matters of state on which the fate of nations and politicians are decided.

Nor are they the stuff of historical tragedy. The UK’s ongoing descent into the vortex doesn’t lend itself to conventional tragic motifs. There is a surplus of hubris for sure, and delusions of grandeur. And as for the hero with the tragic flaw: Johnson is nothing but flaws, and the most tragic thing about him is that millions knew this and voted for him anyway.

But this week, the jawdropping implosion of the government-of-none-of-the-talents produced actual tears, and not the pretend ones that Matt Hancock once squeezed out on television while managing to smirk at the same time.

These were genuinely sad, repentant tears, which flowed in the full glare of the cameras. I’m referring to the tears that Allegra Stratton, Johnson’s former press spokeswoman, wept while she read out her resignation letter in front of her house, and told the nation that she would regret for the ‘rest of her days’ the words that she had spoken at a leaked video nearly twelve months ago.  

This video, as millions of viewers know, was a private recording, made in the newly refurbished ‘White House-style’ press £2.7 million press briefing room, in which Stratton and her colleagues rehearsed various questions that she might be asked at an actual press conference. 

One hypothetical question referred to  a Christmas party that had taken place at Downing Street, to which Stratton replies laughingly ‘I went home.’ Asked if the Prime Minister would condone such a party, she grins and asks ‘What’s the answer?’

One colleague answers ‘It was a cheese and wine’ party and Stratton and the gang laugh knowingly. More laughter ensues as they discuss whether the ‘party’ was a business meeting, and were there nibbles and whether or not it was socially-distanced. Good times, or so it seemed, even though this discussion took place at a time when millions of people could not meet in the same room, let alone attend a Christmas party of any kind.

What was amusing then, doesn’t seem quite so funny now, after two weeks in which the government Stratton and her colleagues were seeking to protect has been buffetted by rumours and allegations that it held a Christmas party last year in breach of the rules that it was asking everyone else to obey.

The Tears of a Clown

In her resignation statement, Stratton noted that her remarks last year ‘gave the impression’ that she had ‘made light of the rules…that people were doing everything to obey’. She apologised for this and insisted that she would regret these words for the ‘rest of my days.’

Both these statements are true, but they weren’t the whole truth.  There is no doubt that Stratton didn’t mean to mock the public to its face.  After all, the video that brought about her downfall was a private recording, which she and her colleagues didn’t expect anyone to see.

But it’s also clear that she and her colleagues knew that what they might be asked to justify was a mockery of the rules the public was expected to obey, and that their instinctive response to this was laughter.

In this respect her tears were the tears of a clown, because only clowns would have done such a thing knowing that they were being recorded and then not erased it. So no wonder she cried. And yet English journalism being what it is, a number of her former colleagues have fallen over themselves to hail her as some kind of moral paragon, who we might take inspiration from.  Thus Robert Peston calls her. 

Robert Peston @Peston

I've known @AllegraCOP26 for years. She was a brilliant colleague on the show. As I would expect, she has done the honourable thing, and swiftly resigned. Whatever you think of what she said in the clip obtained by @itvnews, she is a model for many in modern politics...

And Tom Newton-Dunn also joined in the regretful chorus.

Tom Newton Dunn @tnewtondunn

Sorry to see @AllegraCOP26 resign today, however difficult her position was. She is a great talent and a friend, and was a bright spark in a government not overflowing with them.

It’s worth pausing here to remember that Stratton and her colleagues were caught rehearsing how she might lie to the public about a party that everyone present knew was illegal, and which everyone else faced legal penalties for. So if there was a smile on her face, as Smokey Robinson might have sung, it really was there to fool the public – except that she never got the opportunity because the press conference she was preparing for never took place. 

And now it turns out that there was not just one Christmas party, but at least three, and Stratton has become the scapegoat for a government that cannot open its mouth except to lie and deceive, and which lies so often it is no longer capable of managing the lies it tells.

This is why Johnson himself praised the ‘outstanding’ spokesperson he had forced to fall on her plastic sword to disguise from his rampant dishonesty, chaos, and cowardice.

And Stratton isn’t the only government representative to have made light of the regulations that the public were observing last year.  None other than Jacob Rees-Mogg, the MP for West Crustacea, who normally pops up every Easter to announce ‘’Alleluiah! He is risen.’ also appeared last week in another leaked video recorded last December at a party held by the Institute of Economic Affairs. 

In it, Rees-Mogg jokes that the party he is attending is ‘not going to be investigated by police in a year’s time’.  This elicits great amusement from the IEA crowd, which grows even louder when Rees-Mogg mockingly observes that ‘you are all socially distanced’, when the video makes it clear they aren’t.

We might ask why Stratton has gone and Rees-Mogg hasn’t. But the Moggster and his libertarian pals were right in laughing at the prospect of a police investigation. They knew that such things only happen to the little people. 

And so far events have proven them right; Dame Dick and her legions have yet to raise a finger, despite a blizzard of utterly unconvincing and contradictory statements emanating from the ‘Prime Minister’, his spokespeople, and the usual cluster of sycophantic chancers who make up ‘the government’ to the effect that a)there was no party in the ‘Prime Minister’s house b)if there was a party the ‘Prime Minister’ did not know about it c) even though the ‘Prime Minister’ knew nothing about it, he was nevertheless satisfied that all covid protocols were observed.

In the absence of a police investigation, the government is investigating itself, under the direction of the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, who according to Kevin McGuire of the Daily Mirror may have been a guest at one of the parties he will be investigating which didn’t happen.

Kevin Maguire @Kevin_Maguire

No 10 refusing to say whether or not Cabinet Secretary Simon Case was at the party he’s now investigating. Another untenable Downing Street position. So did or didn’t he go? Because if Case went, he can’t head an inquiry though he could supply a guest list.

So this isn’t Shakespearian tragedy, unless you can imagine Macbeth performed by the Smurfs to the strains of Yaketty Sax.  It isn’t Twilight of the Gods, but a broken sewage pipe at the flea circus.  There is no tragic grandeur here, no failed attempt to be good, no predestination, no moral contradictions - just a bunch of tawdry chancers undone by their own moral incontinence and political idiocy.

And yet ‘Partygate’ is almost certainly another stake in Boris Johnson’s black heart, and for that we can only paraphrase Rees-Mogg and acclaim ‘Alleluiah! The bastard is nearly done.’

Of course we aren’t there yet, and the fact that these leaked videos came from Guido Fawkes may well be due to a wider attempt to undermine Johnson’s authority re. covid lockdowns, rather than usher a new world of moral probity. Nevertheless, whatever it takes, and sometimes beggars can’t be chosers. 

A botched response to the pandemic; tens of thousands of avoidable deaths; a corrupt procurement system; the disastrous mishandling of public money through the failed test and trace program; a government hellbent on changing laws to suit itself - none of this has seriously harmed the Old Teflonians.

The US government got Al Capone on his income tax returns, and if it takes cheese wine parties, nibbles and Secret Santas to bring down the King of Lies, then so be it, and the sooner the better. And to those who say, ‘look at who’s going to take his place’ and ‘be careful of what you wish for’, I know that there is noone any better waiting in the wings, but I also know there is no one worse.

For now, we need Johnson gone, and not just gone, but gone in utter disgrace. Then we can think about how a man like that got to be where he is, and how we might start to find our way out of the mess that he and his cronies led us into.