Enough with the point-scoring – Brexit, Northern Ireland and the cost of living crisis need our undivided attention
Partygate should be declared over, done with, expiated, spent. All known “criminals” who consumed a can of beer or glass of prosecco at the wrong time or place should be amnestied. Yes, it was outrageous. It was hypocritical and sickening to millions. Sinners sinned on all sides. But as the pandemic passes into history, let history be its judge. There are critical issues now on the political agenda. Will Westminster never grow up?
To outsiders it is incredible that the fate of both Britain’s prime minister and its opposition leader should seriously be hanging in the balance, at the pleasure of scandalously dilatory local police forces. The relevant offences were not trivial, but they do border on it. Everyone knows enough of what happened with Boris Johnson’s parties and Keir Starmer’s curries. The former were clearly a more blatant breaking of the rules than the latter. But for the parties to be subject to six months of police inquiry and a top secret Whitehall investigation is absurd. As for Durham’s police, what might merit half an hour of questions and a slap on the wrist has become a colonial outpost of the Mail on Sunday.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
