The dangerous hypocrisy of Downing Street's party scandal - The Yorkshire Post says

We are talking about families who missed out on special memories – birthdays, weddings, anniversaries – or were unable to say their final goodbyes appropriately in hospitals or during near-empty funeral services.

Collective sacrifice that contrasts utterly with the arrogance apparent in Mr Johnson’s aide Martin Reynolds’ leaked email, in which it looks as though he invited more than 100 people to a No 10 garden party on May 20, 2020 – a gathering of about 40 people it has been claimed the Prime Minister and his wife Carrie attended – at a time when rules permitted meeting just one person outside of the household while outdoors.

“Bring your own booze”, says the alleged email, which reads as if penned before the pandemic took hold.

The date of the party was around two months after Mr Johnson had told the nation it could “turn the tide” of coronavirus in 12 weeks – suggesting a total lack of foresight about a disease that has gone on to kill more than 150,000 in the UK and indeed one that in the intervening April put him in intensive care as he expected the imminent arrival of his son Wilfred.

What is so dangerous about this hypocrisy –that those who made the rules seemed to have had shockingly little regard for the deadly disease which necessitated them – is that, quite apart from the obvious possibility of spreading coronavirus at a time before vaccinations, it also completely undermines the grave messaging of the Government itself and the health experts around it.

And that, in turn, presents a potentially fatal ambiguity – the suggestion that coronavirus is not as serious as we have been told – leaving the door ajar for conjecture, speculation and, worse, the outright lies of conspiracist Covid deniers.

Two appearances on the morning media rounds yesterday were illuminating.

The first was health minister Ed Argar telling Sky News that he would not “pre-judge” an inquiry into parties by Cabinet Office official Sue Gray – a line elsewhere trotted out by Mr Johnson. The inquiry process, though, should not shield them, at this moment, from telling the truth about what happened.

An esteemed and long-serving senior civil servant, Ms Gray should be spared the ignominy of muckraking when it would be so easy for Ministers to show grace and maturity by coming clean.

Secondly, when former Labour leader and Doncaster North MP Ed Miliband said he could not have imagined David Cameron doing what Mr Johnson has repeatedly been accused of, he was not casting admiring glances at the former Prime Minister but urging people to judge the incumbent’s actions and character, regardless of their politics.

That is something Mr Johnson is now having to contend with more than ever before.

Combined with this London Government’s multiple failings and empty promises in the recent past – making claims of levelling up while stripping back rail plans which would have transformed the North, or repeatedly talking about a social care green paper without any follow-up action to ease the pain of families suffering across the country – it would be understandable if people in Yorkshire and the surrounding regions do not trust a word he says - ever again.