The latest partygate video shows such a toe-curlingly bad effort at having a good time it’s enough to put you off for life
So, you’re working for Shaun Bailey, in the middle of a pandemic, the nation’s in lockdown, and you’re in a strip-lit office watching a guy in a Christmas jumper crash into a table like a concussed bull, while epic self-love surges across his face and you can see him thinking: “My dancing is on fire; maybe it’s time to take this to competition level.” Across from him, there is a young man in red braces, his eyes beseeching the room to join him in joyful halloo at how hilarious he is. At what point do you think: “I really need a video of this solid-gold moment”? I’m glad I’ve seen it, because it is so fascinatingly terrible, yet at the same time, I wish I hadn’t, because you get too close to Tories doing a thing, and it immediately puts you off the thing. They haven’t just made themselves look bad, they’ve made parties look awful.
Boris Johnson ruined cake. It wasn’t a single act, but an accumulation: he deployed it first as aphorism – a “having cake and eating it” person; then as excuse – he wasn’t having a party, he was merely eating cake; then, I believe, as an attempt to humanise himself – he was given cake, because it was his birthday. One way or another, cake is now associated so tightly with that wreck of a man that the last thing you’d want to do is eat it.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
