What the Sue Gray report tells us about the ‘party elite’

Britain’s ‘party elite’ – perhaps better-termed ‘Covid elite’ – were hiding in plain sight throughout the pandemic. Even before the parties, trysts and suitcases of wine were exposed, we knew politicians and government officials were leading radically different lives to everyone else during last year’s extended lockdown.

Trips abroad for ministers when it was illegal for the rest of us to leave the country, protection from ‘ping-demic’, an ‘event research programme’ full of trial parties that happened to align with Whitehall’s favourite freebee events. It wasn’t hard to document because no one was trying to hide it. The laws were written to provide ministers with loopholes and get-out-of-isolation clauses, so they wouldn’t be subject to the same rules as everyone else. If politicians felt funny about this divide, very few choose to speak up. Instead, much of the government flaunted their perks and exemptions: all indication of deep-seeded entitlement, to which politicians and their staff so often seemed oblivious.