I don't want to spoil the party

While we wait for Sue Gray's report - never was a report by a civil servant so eagerly anticipated! - I am pondering what constitutes a party? And what constitutes a "work event"? 

Obviously I've been to quite a few of both. What turns a group of people gathered in one place into a party? Frequently but not necessarily alcohol - I assume there is such a thing as teetotal party.  (Indeed I've just had it confirmed by a friend coincidentally mentioning one, full night club works just no alcohol or substances). I asked Mrs H what she thought signified a party and she said "music playing". It had occurred to me that the 10 Downing Street "parties" wouldn't have sounded much like most parties I've been at, presuming a lack of music and dancing in the corridors of power. But wait -  some of the leaving do's for Downing Street staffers had DJ SWW "in charge of music". SWW is Shelley Williams-Walker, whose title is  Special Adviser to the PM (Head of Operations). Anyway, presumably deaf people hold parties where there might not be a lot of point in music. 

I've decided it's not that easy to define what is and isn't a party, though I  think you know when you've been at one. 

 OK, so what about a work event? Soon after the company I worked for had been privatised and floated on the stock exchange (and a good few years before it ran out of money and sank) all the senior management group were invited to bring their partners to a dinner at the Dorchester. One colleague of mine asked our boss if it was really necessary to attend. "look who's name is on the invitation" was the reply. It was the Chairman. Attendance was clearly expected, pretty much a three line whip. There was alcohol, but no music. The atmosphere was a bit strange - probably because of a lot of other halves were rather tense. There was stilted conversation around the tables we shared with one of the main board directors. Precisely what the purpose of the occasion was I never fathomed. The food was poor but it was interesting to see inside the Dorchester: the large private room was impressively grand. Clearly a work event then, albeit not one that could have been held during covid restrictions. 

In my last company our annual get together for all employees was held at the Derby County football stadium. It was the only place nearby where we could get everyone together. The afternoon session usually comprised of a state of the nation briefing and some kind of interactive workshop on a theme we though important for the business, such as innovation, safety, growing sales, or saving costs. The formal session ended with coffee and cakes and employees were expected to stay for a bit to mingle. But we held these events in December and from 5pm the disco started and the bar opened. A work event obviously became a party and attendance for that was optional. Again not an event for which any part of it could have been held under covid restrictions.

But does it matter whether Sue Gray finds there were "parties" or "work events" at no 10 during the lockdowns? For me it does and it doesn't.

It doesn't because, though I haven't checked, I'm fairly sure the regulations didn't mention "parties". What they did say was that people could not meet up in groups, sometimes with different restrictions for indoors and outdoors. But people could go to work, with some restrictions which varied from prohibition for some activities in the first lockdown to guidance that work should be done at home if possible.

I assume it was decided that No 10 staff needed to be in the office and I don't have a problem with that. I have a bigger problem now with the civil service, government agencies and other bodies providing poor service because staff are not in the office enough than with the idea that there were large groups of staff inside No 10 in the lockdowns.

So I suspect that Sue Gray and the police will find that staff were working in No 10 within the rules. Social distancing should have been practised but I think there was a presumption of practicality built into the regulations. If they were within the rules inside the building then it seems blindingly logical that they were also inside the rules in the private garden of No 10 which I have no trouble with categorising as an extension of the work space. Anyway it would have been safer outdoors than in. On the other hand at some point you would say that a work event had turned into a party, much like our company December events did.

So where it gets murkier is when do people at work start to be not at work but socialising? Bringing the PM a birthday cake? Does it matter if it was in "working hours"? Probably not, that's a very flexible concept now. I think we can take it for granted that some staff would see that gathering as social but others would say they wouldn't have been there at all if it wasn't "work". I'd find it pretty strange if the occasion when I took a couple of cakes baked by Mrs H into the office for my birthday a few months after I'd started a new job and I stood eating and drinking coffee for ten minutes with people I only ever saw at work was deemed to be a "party".

So, while it wouldn't surprise me if Sue Gray finds some rules were breached, equally it wouldn't surprise me if she finds they weren't.

But the people who make the rules were socialising while the rest of us were missing births, marriages, deaths and funerals never mind having a party. Yes, but those aren't work....

But even if they were parties, is that the PM's fault? After all he isn't the line manager for the civil servants. Or actually most of the political folk. Would he have known about the leaving do's with music? Maybe not, though that seems a bit of a stretch of imagination.

None of which matters, of course, because it's all about perception. And setting an example. And leadership.

So I do have some problems with what we know so far, even before Sue Gray reports.

One of the reasons we had to hire the football stadium was for the size of the group. But even for a smaller group we couldn't have a party at the office. We were a railway technology business supplying Network Rail and other clients. A proportion of the work was officially safety critical. Alcohol was not allowed in the building. In principle drugs and alcohol testers could have arrived unannounced at any time and selected employees and contractors for random tests.

Should alcohol be allowed in No 10? Not practical when they host dinners and other events for visiting dignitaries there. And I'm not surprised that people in those jobs feel safer carrying their booze out from the off licence in a suitcase for consumption in the office. While most of them wouldn't be recognised, probably best not to gather in the pub round the corner at 5 on a Friday and risk having gossip overheard. After all, that sort of occasion is sometimes when exchanges of information produce a really good idea. And they weren't designing, building and testing railway signalling systems. So even the alcohol in suitcases doesn't necessarily bother me that much.

My main problem is that no-one (not just the PM) applied the common sense test - what would this look like to the person in the street if the knew what we were doing during lockdowns?

I remember being advised when I first had a senior management role in business to apply that kind of test if I wasn't sure whether something was right. What would it look like in the newspaper? If the answer was "not good" you had your answer. It made sure, for example, that I sacked an employee for viewing porn out of hours in the office despite being lobbied by my team to keep him. It was going to be very inconvenient as he would be difficult to replace. "What harm has he really done?" I was asked. "Stolen a bit of our electricity?" I didn't need to think for a millisecond to say something like well he's broken the law. And do you want to see a headline linked to our company in the local paper saying 'nuclear safety adviser watched a thousand hours of porn at his desk'? The fact that he went to work for a bigger company on the same site was irritating but never mind.

So even if the No 10 shenanigans didn't break the letter or even spirit of the law I'm not happy with what they were doing because they didn't ask themselves that obvious question. 

The PM or any number of other people could have stopped it. But they didn't. And so it doesn't actually matter what Sue Gray finds because most people have already made their mind up one way or the other.  

Whether it's a resignation issue I'm not convinced but that really does depend on exactly what Sue Gray finds.

I understand the argument, made strongly by Matthew Syed and others, that Johnson's conduct tarnishes our country's reputation and effectively does Putin and Xi's job of undermining our democracy for them. 

But it's not in  my hands. It's in the hands of the Tory MPs who will decide whether Johnson is still an electoral asset or liability. And, whatever they decide, in due course it's in the hands of the electorate and the court of public opinion.

So I don't agree with the Lib Dems resign cake:

at least for the so-called "birthday party" part of the story. Though I did find it funny - thanks go to Democracy Man for drawing it to my attention. The discos? By definition they 'sound' like parties to me. But maybe the PM didn't know about them and didn't hear them.

Deaf as well as tone deaf?

P.S. I liked the story that Tim Shipman recounted in the Sunday Times about the No 10 suitcase full of booze. A No 10 staffer told him that there was an alcohol culture there in Cameron's day. They used a suitcase because they didn't want the bottles clinking as they came back in the building. But as he put it "we used flight carry on case. This lot must have got a bigger suitcase".

The blog title is a fairly obscure Beatles song from the 1964 album Beatles For Sale which I chose because a lot of people seem to be making a huge issue about "parties" and I'm not sure yet how much of an issue it is for the PM, other than failing to ask people with titles like Head of Operations what they were playing at. We'll see. It's difficult to see it playing out well for the PM even if others take the rap for the drum n bass in the basement disco. Of course the person possibly most culpable - the PM's Rasputin, i.e. his wife Carrie - can only be 'sacked' by sacking Johnson...