davidjay wrote: ↑Thu Apr 14, 2022 5:00 pm
His main defence now is "Everybody was doing it". I say once again, in all seriousness, what the fuck will it take for him to have to resign?
His main problem there is, they weren’t. The only people who were were thoughtless, selfish shits like himself, people convicted by the plod’s often draconian application of the guidance, or desperate people breaking the law for their own or someone else’s benefit in terms of staying alive or staying sane. The former group probably already vote for him or don’t bother at all. The latter will be furious at his tiny fine and being lumped together with him.
Those who did stick to the rules though (and this was a cross-everything demographic) - whether it was just doing that, or doing that in harrowing circumstances, won’t forget it. And every time someone tells them to move on, draw a line under it or that it was ‘nothing’, it will make them more and more angry.
He could have drawn a line under it by offering a proper, sincere apology. Or by fessing up in advance. Or by not lying and saying none of it happened. But every time he chose instead to first bluster it out and second (when that failed) to try the exceptionalism clause. That he was a special case and that 9 minutes for him is fine and so on.
I really think this is what’s going to sink him, and I think he will fight it to the last and torch the Tories in the process because it stabs right to the heart of what he believes - that he is special. And there can be no greater insult to him, no bigger affront to what he believes, than to simply be held to the same rules as the rest of us.