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There is now an embarrassment of riches to bring this entitled Tory party down | John Harris
From Sunak’s non-dom problem to Javid’s offshore trusts, will the staggering wealth gap between the government and ordinary Britons finally tell?
Nearly three years into Boris Johnson’s premiership, its defining theme may at last have arrived. For all his talk of “levelling up” and the supposed wonders of life outside the EU, his government has singularly failed to come up with any kind of coherent narrative, leaving events to tell their own story. And on that score, we now have an embarrassment of riches.
As much as the government would like people to view it as an irrelevance, Partygate grinds on. Johnson’s recent history is smattered not just with illicit social events, but tales of £840-a-roll wallpaper initially paid for by a Tory donor, gratis holiday accommodation in Mustique and Marbella, and suggestions that he simply cannot afford to live on his prime ministerial salary. Massively lucrative Covid contracts have been handed to companies with clear links to Conservatives. Now, the Tory backbencher David Warburton is accused of sexual assault and cocaine use, the failure to declare a loan of nearly £150,000 from a controversial Russian businessmanand lobbying the Financial Conduct Authority on the latter’s behalf: he has so far said only that he has “enormous amounts of defence”, but “can’t comment any further”.
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