Our mad politics now feels like the weirdest dream

A few years ago I had shingles and the co-codamol I was prescribed knocked me for six. Leading politicians and random people from Twitter flitted in and out of my subconscious, doing things that didn’t make sense and were wildly out of character.

But that’s what real-life politics is like these days. There is no consistency. Scandals don’t develop and conclude in the way they should and politicians stick to a position only for as long as it is beneficial to them.

Nowhere is this topsy-turvy nightmare we are living in more clear than in partygate. I won’t repeat all the demonstrable lies that came before the facts were dripped out across the newspapers. You know them all. To use that awful phrase, this story “cut through” with the public.

Most people know only too well how the Prime Minister initially responded with horror and performative disappointment when he first “learned” of the allegations of lockdown partying across Whitehall. It was what came after that was so discombobulating.

In real time, we watched politicians and pundits reframe reality to suit their own agenda. Now, it wasn’t a matter of whether any rules were broken, it was about whether it was enough to warrant Boris Johnson facing any consequences.

Quickly, it was decided that it wasn’t. There were a few notable Tory backbenchers who were willing to deviate from the party line but for the most part the party’s MPs showed they were willing to disfigure their own reputations in defence of the liar Prime Minister.

Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross boxed himself in by saying that if it was found that Johnson had known about any of the parties, he would have to resign.

READ MORE: Can we repeat the success of the 1990s campaign against the poll tax?

Shortly after those words left Ross’s lips, we discovered that not only had the Prime Minister known about parties, he’d actually attended quite a few of them himself.

With nowhere else to go, Douglas Ross then became the most senior Conservative to call on the prime minister to resign. He won praise from the pundits and pelters from his own side for his stance. But the buzz wore off. Thanks to the Metropolitan Police and its incompetent handling of this whole sorry mess, partygate stalled and slipped off the front pages.

And now, Douglas Ross disagrees with himself.

Remember his first position on partygate because this is important. His first instinct (or political calculation) was that Johnson should resign if he was even AWARE of any illegal gatherings taking place. He’s travelled some distance from that reasonable test of prime ministerial competence and accountability.

Now, as the measly £50 fines have started being issued, Ross says that the Prime Minister should stay on even if he is found to have broken the law.

Back when politics didn’t feel like a hallucinogenic trip, this rewriting of values in real time would be enough to have some questioning Ross’s own suitability for leadership.

Ross says his sudden change of heart is all to do with the war in Ukraine. It’s the same piss-poor justification we’ve had from other Tories: namely that holding our own Prime Minister to account would be an act of weakness against Vladimir Putin’s barbarism.

On the BBC’s Sunday Show yesterday, Tory MSP Graham Simpson tried repeating his boss’s line but you got the sense his heart wasn’t really in it. He said it was “completely the wrong time to be calling on Boris Johnson to go” citing an as-yet undefined “message” this would send to Vladimir Putin.

It was left to Anas Sarwar to point out the obvious. “We are talking about Ukraine and the defence of democracy. It doesn’t mean we forget to do democracy here at home. Boris Johnson is a liar, he is incompetent, he is corrupt – and the sooner he leaves office the better it is for the United Kingdom” the Scottish Labour leader said.

Given the Met’s mishandling of this agonisingly drawn-out investigation so far, it’s hard to know what to expect from it or when to expect it. But what happens when or if the Prime Minister is issued with a fine for breaking the lockdown laws that he wrote?

In a normal country, in normal times, he would resign or immediately be forced out. Douglas Ross has shown in recent weeks that we can’t rely on Tory MPs to do the right thing.

He and his colleagues have shown they are willing to risk their own reputations to defend the Prime Minister. They are not worried about looking stupid, or immoral, or inconsistent.

At a minimum, politicians are usually kept in check by the natural instinct of self-preservation. This lot have strapped themselves to the Boris crazy train and they’ve no clue where it is headed.

We’re stuck in their bad dream and it doesn’t look like they’re going to wake up any time soon.