As we await the known unknowns of Omicron, No 10 does more to undermine public trust than all the conspiracy theorists on YouTube
For the rapidly unravelling winter caretaker of Downing Street, it has been another paranoia-inducing few days. What with leaked pictures and leaked videos and leaked accounts of various gatherings, we have to ask: is there any party this lot weren’t at? I’m just peering at a 1921 photo of the Overlook Hotel’s July 4th Ball and … why yes. Will you look at that. There’s Boris Johnson, right in the middle, with half a wheel of brie jammed in his mouth. And there’s Dominic Cummings behind a palm, tucking away another vat of wine while considering himself better than all this.
As with the final image of The Shining, the picture of the “business meeting” in the Downing Street garden during lockdown last year does rather make you question everything that has gone before. Ordinary people’s own stories of that time, so many of them shared on social media, are frequently utterly heartbreaking. Set against the mother who buried her 14-year-old boy at a tiny graveside funeral, with no wake, there is something viscerally repulsive about cabinet ministers characterising this cheese-and-wine garden social as perfectly understandable given that Downing Street staff work in “gruelling conditions”.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist