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Sue Gray, Second Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office, having been asked by Boris Johnson to look into accusations of parties held at 10 Downing Street, in turn formally asked him about them. Newspaper reports about such gatherings continued day after day, and Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s former chief adviser, said that he had warned Johnson in advance about one for 40 people in the garden on 20 May 2020, telling him: ‘You’ve got to grip this madhouse.’ ‘Nobody warned me that it was against the rules,’ the PM said. The commentariat at large talked of Operation Save Big Dog, by which officials would take the blame to preserve the Prime Minister.
There was talk too about Operation Red Meat, by which backbenchers would be distracted from the Prime Minister by announcements of policies. Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, tweeted about the BBC: ‘This licence fee announcement will be the last.’ She announced later in the Commons that the fee would be frozen for two years. Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, said the Ministry of Defence had been commissioned as a ‘crucial operational partner to protect our Channel against illegal migration’. On one day, 197 migrants in small craft were intercepted and 95 stopped by the French. A Cumbrian man pleaded guilty to conspiring to facilitate travel of another with a view to exploitation, for his part in making a man work on farms for 40 years with nowhere to live but a dark, cold shed. Together Energy, part-owned by Warrington Borough Council, went bust, the 28th energy supplier to do so as wholesale gas prices rose. Inflation rose to 5.4 per cent. Unemployment fell to 4.1 per cent, and vacancies rose to a record 1.24
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