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From Partygate to Trussomics, the death of the Monarch, and the humiliation of Vladimir Putin, OttoEnglish’s review of the year takes us on a roller coaster of major fails and meteoric falls
On December 31st 2021, in what feels like another time, another place and another era, Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivered an optimistic and upbeat New Year’s Eve message to the people of the United Kingdom via his social media channels.
With the country having been able to celebrate its first Christmas in two years and with the vaccine roll-out contributing to fewer hospitalisations and deaths than in December 2020, the fight against Covid 19 seemed to be turning in humanity’s favour.
Dressed in his trademark ‘slept in’ grey suit and his signature ‘dragged through a hedge’ hair Johnson seemed to positively radiate with the thought of better days ahead:
“Whatever the challenges that fate continues to throw in our way and whatever the anxieties we may have about the weeks and months ahead particularly about omicron…. we can say one thing with certainty. Our position this December the 31st is incomparably better than last year.”
Johnson claimed that the country had the ‘fastest growth in the G7’ and that wonderful thing would be coming our way in the days and weeks and months ahead. It was his third New Year’s message to the people and was to be his last. As usual the bluster and bullshit was just that. 12 months later, on December 8th the OECD, would predict UK growth of –0.4% for 2023, the lowest of any country in the G7 and the nation would be mired in economic doldrums, strikes, chaos, spiralling inflation and interest rates and a cost-of-living crisis.
The twelve months in between would see extraordinary events. A European war, the death of a Queen, four Chancellors come and go and the fall and rise and rise and fall of three Prime Ministers. So let me take you by the hand and lead you through the days in between.
January: Mob Rule, Partygate and Prince Andrew
January 1st was the hottest on record with 16.2 Celsius being recorded in St. James’s Park, beating the previous record of 15.6 C recorded at Bude in Cornwall in 1916. The year would see environmentalists and scientists continue to warn of the greatest threat facing our planet and there were a string of high-profile protests by groups including Climate Emergency, Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. Later in the year, as Rishi Sunak headed to COP 27, the Guardian reported that more than 30 activists were behind bars as a result of trying to draw attention to the scale of the crisis.
On January 5th, Rhian Graham, 30, Milo Ponsford, 26, Jake Skuse, 33 and Sage Willoughby, 22, known as the ‘Colston 4’ who had all been accused of criminal damage when they toppled the statue of slave trader Edward Colston and threw it in Bristol harbour seven months earlier were found not of criminal damage.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps was one of many voices on the Conservative right to express their displeasure saying: “We can’t have mob rule as the way forward.”
But in a very real sense a mob was already in power, and the Johnson government itself was wobbling the plinth as they refused to take the Partygate accusations seriously. On January 10th ITV released an email from the PM’s Principle Private Secretary, Martin Reynolds, sent on May 20th the previous year during the first national Covid 19 lockdown, which invited staff:
“To make the most of the lovely weather and have some socially distanced drinks in the No 10 garden this evening….bring your own booze!”
Subsequent reports suggested that upwards of 30 people including Johnson and his wife Carrie had attended the event, held while millions of Britons were unable to visit dying loved ones, hold weddings, or parties of their own.
The following day the Metropolitan Police reported that it was investigating a string of events held at Downing Street during the various lockdowns and Boris Johnson began casting around for someone else to blame.
As the government rolled from crisis to crisis, things were not much better up the road. On January 12th Prince Andrew failed in his bid to dismiss a civil case brought against him in New York, by Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, accusing him of: “sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.” The following month his lawyers would reach an out-of-court settlement with her but in the meantime, all his official royal patronages and military affiliations were revoked.
As news of more Downing Street parties emerged and as inflation hit 5.4%, a 20-year high, Plan B ended, and it was no longer a requirement to wear face masks or carry Covid passes. On January 29th Storm Malik hit the west coast of Britain, causing tens of thousands of power outages, many of which would not be resolved for weeks. A 9-year-old boy and a 60-year-old woman were both killed by falling trees.
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Winter: Putin Invades Ukraine
February dawned with storms of a different kind. Coronavirus was causing the largest number of daily deaths (534) since January 2021 and the political and personal consequences of partygate were rumbling on. On February 3rd, Munira Mirza, head of the Number 10 Policy Unit and Boris Johnson’s most trusted lieutenant since the days of his mayoralty, resigned. Jack Doyle, his communications director, left the same day. More staff, including his chief of staff Dan Rosenfield, followed. The rats were leaping from the ship as it lurched towards the looming Sue Gray report sized iceberg.
On the 10th, Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss visited Moscow and met with her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, amidst growing concerns over what looked like a planned invasion of Ukraine.
In an official despatch, the Foreign Office reported that:
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said that the aggressive build-up of Russian forces on Ukraine’s border threatened Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. She made clear that Russia needed to live up to the international commitments it had entered into.
Lavrov treated her and the world’s concerns with barely concealed contempt. Twelve days later Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine and actor-turned-President Volodymyr Zelenskyy entered global consciousness, stage left, as the hero of the year. The ensuing months would see Zelenskyy defy his critics, to deliver a masterclass in leadership and bear witness to the remarkable struggle of the people of Ukraine as they defied the imperial ambitions of Russia’s autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s many British apologists, unforgivably, went to work as soon as the invasion began. George Galloway, who a month earlier had tweeted:
Y’all said #Russia was about to invade #Ukraine. I told you it wasn’t. You were wrong. I was right. Again. Show some bloody humility. Especially if they’re not even paying you to act like an idiot.
Was particularly busy. All the while RT – the Russian State propaganda unit – continued to broadcast lies and disinformation into British homes. On the 28th of February, OFCOM belatedly launched an investigation into the broadcaster and on 3 March the channel was removed from the air.
On March 16th there was good news as Iran released dual national Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe of wrongful imprisonment in the country and after almost six years she arrived back home in the United Kingdom. Five days later Nazanin held a press conference in which she celebrated her ‘glorious’ freedom but, rightly, refused to show any gratitude to the British government which had consistently failed her during her years of imprisonment:
“I have seen five foreign secretaries change over the course of six years” she said, “How many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home?”
A torrent of abuse followed with twitter users, commentators and politicians dubbing her ‘ungrateful’ and worse.
Susan Hall, Tory leader of the GLA tweeted:
“Errr what you really mean is that Iranians should not have unlawfully kept you as prisoner for 6 years. Now it appears that it’s Britain’s fault … in your eyes. I hope I am wrong but that’s what it feels like you are implying.”
Downing Street was forced to distance itself from its defenders.
It had been a bad month for Johnson and his government with one bad story following another. Interest rates were up again and there was more terrible news for ordinary people as P and O ferries sacked 800 workers on 17 March in order to guarantee its ‘future viability’.
Spring: Rising Bills, Johnson Sanctioned for Breaking the Law.
As April dawned the cost of household energy bills rose 54% and it was announced that they would rise by a further 80% in October. The bogeyman Putin was blamed, but the announcement had first come on February 2nd, weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. The Bank of England responded by predicting a gloomy outlook for the UK economy over the coming two years. The sunlit uplands were ever more out of reach.
On April 12th Prime Minister Boris Johnson received the distinction of becoming the first sitting PM in history to be sanctioned for breaking the law, when he and his wife Carrie received fixed penalties, along with their neighbour Rishi Sunak, for breaching Covid restrictions that Johnson and his administration had put in place.
April was the cruellest month, breeding poison out of the paved streets of Whitehall. On April 14, the government signed a deal with Rwanda that would see tens of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers sent to the African country. The Former Home Office Permanent Secretary Sir David Normington told BBC’s Newsnight that the plan was: “inhumane, it’s morally reprehensible, it’s probably unlawful and it may well be unworkable.”
Nigel Fa