Boris Johnson can’t wriggle out of garden party scandal by sacking officials

“THE Slippery Pig” is in trouble this time.

There seems no way out of the trap Boris Johnson set for everyone in Britain except, it turns out, himself.

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Lockdown was arguably an abuse of power the moment this novel form of house arrest began.

It was justified by the threat to the NHS from a lethal pandemic unleashed, probably, from a laboratory in Communist China.

Indeed — before nearly dying of Covid — Boris planned to reject Sage advice and follow Sweden, trusting people to follow advice without penal sanctions.

Instead, he created emergency powers to shut Britain down and punish anyone who defied them.

Ministers and MPs, some in tears, warned he was shredding the hard-won liberties he had spent his life supporting so eloquently in print.

Who can forget the funeral parlour jobsworth separating a grieving widow from her sons?

Or the weeping elderly waving through glass at relatives they might never hug again?

The GP surgeries shut to patients with worrying symptoms, or the damage to the education of an entire generation?

Yet at the very moment Downing Street was issuing these commands, Boris was in the garden with Carrie and 30 staffers quaffing wine and sausage rolls in the sunshine.

Such contempt for ordinary people, once looked down on as The Great Unwashed, has brought down bigger historic figures than Alex­ander de Pfeffel Boris Johnson.

Nor is it the first time he has been caught short.

Boris can’t wriggle out of this by sacking officials.

He was there. It was his party. It was inexcusable.

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