HELEN BACH COLUMN: Loss of trust in PM could now hold back the UK

Some issues rise above party politics; they include trust, honesty, integrity and reputation, writes Helen Bach.
Helen Back believes any trust in the Prime Minister has vanishedHelen Back believes any trust in the Prime Minister has vanished
Helen Back believes any trust in the Prime Minister has vanished

It’s vital, and in the public interest, that Sue Gray’s report is released in full as soon as possible so we can read exactly what happened and when and who was involved.

To date, only 12 pages have been published, yet we’re told there are 500 pages of evidence and 300 photos with the Metropolitan Police.

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Of the 16 events that fell within the remit of her report, 12 are being investigated further, including three not previously reported in the media.

Key phrases from the Gray summary include:

“Some of the behaviour surrounding these gatherings is difficult to justify”;

“A serious failure to observe the high standards expected of those working at the heart of government, but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time”;

“There were failures of leadership and judgement by different parts of No 10 and the Cabinet Office”;

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“Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place...”

We put our collective trust in Boris Johnson’s Government in a time of crisis.

We followed rules that during normal times would have seemed preposterous.

While we were making huge personal sacrifices, those who made those draconian regulations were allegedly making a mockery of them.

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They will perhaps try to justify their actions by saying they work in a high pressure environment and this was stress relief.

Perhaps they’d like to talk about stress to those who work on the NHS frontline, who had to watch people die without their family present because of the restrictions they created?

While the Government is mired in the fallout from the shenanigans of ‘Party-gate’, we have a cost of living crisis, long NHS waiting lists, children still missing out on huge chunks of their education because of Covid sweeping through schools, and the tensions in Ukraine, to name but a few.

For these reasons, some argue that we need to move on.

But the problem is that trust has been damaged, perhaps irreparably, and while this fiasco continues, arguably so has our country’s reputation on the world stage.