Why did Boris prioritise Lebedev’s peerage during the pandemic?

Like me, you probably remember the third week of March 2020 as though it were yesterday. Covid-19 was on these shores in scale. Hospitals were filling up with acutely sick people. On 16 March 2020, we’d been told by the Prime Minister to isolate at home for 14 days if we had Covid symptoms, to work from home where possible and to avoid unnecessary contact with anyone. On 23 March, Boris Johnson would announce full lockdown. It felt like the worst crisis since the second world war. It was the worst crisis since the second world war. 

So perhaps the most interesting revelation in today’s Sunday Times story about the peerage given to Evgeny Lebedev, the Russian proprietor of the Evening Standard, is how much time the Prime Minister spent in the middle of this disaster trying to reverse a recommendation by the security services that it would be inappropriate to make Lebedev a lord.