Words: Harry Shukman
When the ancient Babylonians saw in the new year, they promised the gods they would pay their debts, return anything they had borrowed, and reaffirm their loyalty to the reigning king. Historians say this is one of the earliest forms of new year’s resolution – the first known instance when humans looked back and pondered how to be more considerate in the months to come. Were the Babylonians knocking around today they would no doubt beg the passholders of the Houses of Commons to get back to their pagan roots and make amends for this terrible year. 2021 has been so ridden by scandal and disgrace that the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah would have baulked. And so in honour of those Babylonian traditions, and in the vain hope that 2022 might deliver a smidge more virtue, let’s recap the biggest scandals of this woe-begotten year.
Wherefore art thou, health secretary?
The plays of Shakespeare are famously malleable when it comes to staging, but even the most ambitious director would think twice before reimagining Matt Hancock as the male lead in Romeo and Juliet. Hancock’s affair with his assistant, Gina Coladangelo, must have been 2021’s cringest scandal. Security camera footage of their snog was leaked to the press, and it showed an unfavourable angle of Hancock’s receding hairline, his sneaky glance out the door to check the coast was clear, and his career-ending squeeze of his colleague’s bum. Both Hancock and Coladangelo were married, and have decided to make a go of it. Casanova, eat your heart out.
Eat, drink, and lie about it on telly
Traditions can be difficult to explain to outsiders, because your most cherished customs can start to seem pointless and naff. The British office Christmas party must be one of our weirdest rituals and yet every year we rub our hands together at the thought of cold mince pieces and sugary prosecco and watching a colleague call your boss a wanker before barfing into the recycling bin. When these parties were cancelled in Christmas 2020 because of the pandemic rules but Downing Street and various other ministries held them anyway, all hell broke loose.
As Brits made do with Zoom call get-togethers – and later that month, tearful Christmas Days alone – Westminster’s finest donned their yuletide sweaters and novelty suspenders for office bashes. Number Ten denied that any parties happened, which made it embarrassing when their spokeswoman, Allegra Stratton, was seen on leaked footage joking about how to cover them up. It was even worse when pictures emerged of Johnson leading a Christmas quiz. And worst when Simon Case, the senior civil servant tasked with investigating these parties, turned out to have hosted one of his own. The details – wine and cheese, exclamatory calendar invites, Secret Santa – were gripping in their banality. House of Cards, this ain’t.
One strange tip for heating your castle
Prince Charles leaks have historically been pretty spicy – in a phone call he made to Camilla not long after his separation from Diana, he hornily moaned about wanting to be reincarnated as one of his lover’s tampons. Nobody is getting their rocks off in the fiasco he was implicated in this year, although by future-king standards it is still outrageous. Charles is accused of giving a CBE to a Saudi billionaire who shelled out huge sums of money to spruce up the Prince’s Scottish homes.
His aides have stepped down after a chain of humiliating emails was uncovered in which they discussed how to get Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz to cough up in exchange for a royal gong. Charles denies knowledge of this deal – although photos of him hosting the Saudi tycoon at Buckingham Palace on the day of the awards ceremony, and the thank-you letter and gift he sent do not scream “nothing to see here!” One day this man will be King Charles III.
DIY SOS
The American President has the White House, the French premier has the Élysée Palace, Brazil’s ruler has a giant modernist lair worthy of a Bond villain. Our prime minister has a flat next to a busy junction kitted out with John Lewis furniture. This wasn’t good enough for Johnson and his wife Carrie so he embarked on a shadily complicated scheme to pay for some chic new upholstery. Two nicknames for Carrie began to circulate: Carrie Antoinette, and Princess Nut Nut. The Electoral Commission launched an eight-month probe into the purchase of some swanky Lulu Lytle furnishings, and fined Tory members £17,800. Weren’t the high street pieces of John Lewis acceptable for an Old Etonian and Bullingdon chopper? To put to bed stories about his expensive tastes, Johnson had to act. With all the lapidary directness of his idol Winston Churchill, he told an interviewer: “I love John Lewis.” Sorted.
When you have to vote in the Commons at two but enter a limbo contest at three
When the constituents of Torridge and West Devon elected Geoffrey Cox in 2005, they presumably hoped that once in Westminster he would dedicate his career to fighting in their corner. How Cox was meant to do that from a tropical idyll on the British Virgin Islands was presumably something only known to experienced lawmakers. The second jobs scandal may have been ignited by Owen Paterson, who was found to have breached lobbying rules after earning more than £100,000 shilling for two businesses, but it was Cox’s Caribbean payday that summed up this row. Cox earned £900,000 last year while moonlighting as a barrister, and was in the British Virgin Islands to advise its government on a corruption inquiry. How nice.
Two pints of lager and a multimillion pound procurement deal
If you were the health secretary and had a once-in-a-generation crisis to tackle, who would you turn to? Veteran medical experts? Cutting edge biotech firms? Or your favourite pub landlord? Matt Hancock enlisted Alex Bourne, who used to run his local pub in Suffolk and now has a packaging company, to make PPE during the pandemic. It was a multimillion pound contract – although Bourne denies wrongdoing and claims not to have profited from the deal. Still, this incident came to typify how inexperienced entrepreneurs grew fat on Covid contracts. Happy new year!
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