‘Partygate’ is Boris’s biggest crisis yet

In politics some rows gain potency from blowing up at a bad time. Some because of their symbolic power. Some because of a single memorable televised gaffe that can be constantly replayed. And some because they involve very serious lapses.

It is rare for a single story to encompass all of these damaging dimensions but that is the case with the furore over the Christmas Party at Downing Street last year.

Veteran Tory Sir Roger Gale was probably not trying to be helpful when he told the BBC this morning that the matter had the ‘potential to become another Barnard Castle’. Yet if that is all it becomes then people around the Prime Minister will surely breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Because Barnard Castle, or ‘Domgate’, involved one official bending the rules to protect his family. It resulted in a drop in the Tory poll lead that was very short-lived. And it registered far more intensely among the political and media class and middle class Remainer types who already hated the Government than it did across wider society.

Partygate, by contrast, involves a whole collection of Downing Street officials just wanting to have fun behind the backs of the voters at the same time as they were cancelling the Christmas plans of the entire nation.