Lockdown Blues

Wine on the wallpaper, vomit, a fight
Group karaoke that lasted all night
Pretending a piss-up’s a meeting with wine
Go out the back door, everything’s fine

Deny all the details to Sky’s Sophy Ridge
The suitcase, the bubbly, the cake, and the fridge
Christmas is cancelled? Pass the decanter,
The banter, the hamper (who’s your Secret Santa?)

Mocking security trying to be keen
Laughing at underlings trying to clean
An end-of-year party with wine and with cheese
Rules don’t apply to such heroes as these

Roll out the barrel, Lee Cain’s gonna leave!
Dance in the dark while the rest of us grieve.

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Yesterday, Sue Gray’s report came out, detailing the extraordinary way that Boris Johnson and No 10’s staff flouted the lockdown rules they imposed on everyone else. It revealed far more vividly than before that this was not a matter of meetings drifting into the garden with a glass of wine, but long, substantial parties, at which Boris often appeared. It showed that the staff knew they were breaking the rules and treated doing so as a comms issue, not a moral issue. It also mentioned that the very lowest-paid, the cleaners and custodians, were mocked when they objected to what was happening. And yesterday, at the dispatch box, Boris Johnson claimed he took full responsibility, a phrase that is hollowed out to meaninglessness when he adds that No 10 and the Cabinet Office is too big for him to monitor, that he is appalled by everyone’s behaviour, and that turning up to these things was a function of good leadership.

This poem, with half an eye on Betjeman’s ‘Varsity Rag’, is a glimpse of that filtered through my disgust.