Government Reports from Sir John Chilcot to Sue Gray
The report of Sue Gray into parties at 10 Downing St during the various lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 is awaited daily but has not appeared. Sections of the media and some MPs appear obsessed by it, apparently oblivious to the history of such things.
No doubt Ms Gray will report in due course, but these things are not hurried and are invariably finessed. The aim of this is not to avoid exposing wrong doing or pointing to those responsible but to place this in a framework that makes it unlikely that anything will actually happen as a result.
We have a recent example
Gordon Brown set up the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War which held hearings between 2009 and 2011. Sir John Chilcot (who died in October 2021) did not report until 2016 when the then PM Dave Cameron decided it was all in the past and nothing needed to be done.
The Guardian’s view of Chilcot was that it ‘could hardly have been more damning of Tony Blair’ but Blair himself claimed he had acted in ‘good faith’. The fact that the original war was illegal and its impact continues to cause significant global issues today remains unacted on.
The point being that Blair should have faced a Court after Chilcot (The Inquiry itself didn’t have the status of a Court of Law) either in the UK or at the Hague and if he had done the issue of him being appointed a Knight of the Garter would probably have never arisen.
If there was illegality at Downing St it is a matter for the police who are reported to be investigating. Any offences attract summary fines (in my view lockdown offences should never have been a criminal matter. Numbers were prosecuted and fined at the time, but not of course anyone at Downing St although there is a police presence there 24-7). What the political fall out is may depend on how long it takes Ms Gray to report and that is largely a matter for her, although she is not fully independent of Government, as Chilcott was. Even that did not prevent the late Sir John from presenting a report from which no practical conclusions followed.
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