“Prime Minister, I fear the troops have become a little restive.”
“Yes, Humphrey, I had noticed. The question before us now is whether they will recognise that all great men have their peccadillos. I mean look at Lloyd George. Churchill never paid for his cigars and Kennedy was in cahoots with the mafia. They certainly can’t accuse me of that.”
“All true, Prime Minister, but don’t you think we should consider how to extract ourselves from the hole, if I may call it that, we ourselves have dug?”
“Well, you certainly got me out of a further investigation into the refurbishment of our Downing Street flat. Carrie was delighted. How did you get the Cabinet Secretary to stand aside so that you could exercise your charms with Kathryn Stone?”
“My relationship with the Parliamentary standards commissioner is purely professional. I simply reminded her that she’d found you guilty of misreporting your Christmas holiday in Mustique in 2019 and her conclusion was promptly overturned by her committee of MPs. I gently suggested that the same thing happening again would be a little unfortunate. No blandishments were required.”
“Good thinking, Humphrey. What do we do now?”
“I fear Sue Gray is more formidable mettle. As fine a civil servant as you will find; she is unalloyed.”
“Metal? Unalloyed? What are you talking about, Humphrey?”
“She understands that a good report should not be rushed. The substance of your excellent, if I may say so Prime Minister, statement to the House yesterday was that no one should rush to judgement. We should await Ms Gray’s report.”
“We appointed her on 17th December when my boss Simon Case recused himself from the parties investigation on the grounds that his department had been having some of their own. Then of course we were into the Christmas break and Ms Gray would have had to attend the gatherings that were all entirely legitimate this time around. So she could only start work this month.”
“Stop dithering, Humphrey. She’s only asking a few people whether they went to any parties they should not have attended. How long can that take? When can she publish?”
“Well, the draft will have to be reviewed by the Cabinet Office and then by our lawyers and you know how quick they are. And we may need to check it out with the European Court of Human Rights to ensure no one will be upset by her findings.”
“OK, so when?”
“Obviously this will have to be published at the beginning of a recess to ensure the MPs are on their hols. Easter is a good long break. Shall we target 31st March?”
“That’s excellent, Humphrey. With the local elections just coming up none of my backbenchers will be looking for trouble.”
“May I suggest, Prime Minister, that you spend a little time in the Commons’ tea room today? A few pats on the backs and intimations of promotion will work wonders.”
“What do you think of my argument that I thought the May 2020 gathering was a work meeting, not a party?”
“I don’t think it has had the credit it deserves. No one who knows you would believe you would stay only 25 minutes if you thought it was a party. Furthermore, staying as long as 25 minutes at a business meeting is both unusually long and shows dedication to duty.”
“Quite right, Humphrey, quite right.”
“But the real clincher is that the rosé came from Tesco. Standards have undoubtedly slipped, Prime Minister, since David Cameron’s time, but who could possibly believe that Tesco rosé, probably from some cheap cooperative favoured by M. Macron, could possibly be served at a Number 10 party.”
“You have to be right, Humphrey: that was no party; it was a business meeting.”