If Johnson’s lies go unpunished, the public’s ability to feel a basic level of trust in their government will have been shattered
It’s come to something when there’s more accountability in a hereditary monarchy than in our elected government. Even in Buckingham Palace there are consequences for one’s actions, as Prince Andrew learned on Thursday, when he was stripped of his sort-of jobs. In the Palace of Westminster, not so much.
The contrast could hardly be sharper. On one side, a Queen so determined to show that she was not above the rules that she grieved alone as she buried the man she had loved for 73 years. On the other, a prime minister running Downing Street like a frat house, where bottles were reportedly brought in by the suitcase and they danced in the basement even on the eve of that austere royal funeral, even in the midst of a lockdown.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
