The Debatable Land #9: Ambushed with a cake

If you can't run Downing Street, you can't run the country

Welcome to a special mid-week edition of my newsletter, The Debatable Land! As always, if you cared to share this - on Twitter, Facebook, by email, however and wherever you like - that would be appreciated greatly. Now: on to cake…

He who lives by cake may die by cake

For some of us January 25th will henceforth be celebrated as Conor Burns Night; an evening of whisky and cake and hilarity. The MP for Bournemouth West told Channel 4 News that, really, all this has become a fuss about nothing very much. Cake! It is only cake!

Absurd and desperateas this may be, it is not entirely without a point: the prime minister’s defenders have every reason to downplay the seriousness of the claims made against Boris Johnson. If it is just about a slice of birthday cake, how could any reasonable person conclude the prime minister should resign? Swaddle the scandal in nonsense and you diminish its seriousness. In other words, you bring it down to the prime minister’s level.

But of course it is not actu…