As imagined by Brian Beacom
I KNOW, I know. You can stop laughing.
When I took the job as ethics adviser to the Prime Minister one of my friends said to me: ‘Your name is Christopher Geidt – not Christopher Robin, you fool. Your life is in Downing Street, not the Hundred Acre Wood. Boris isn’t a nice-but-dim Pooh Bear, unless you consider the s*** he leaves behind that others have to clear up.”
Then, he added, all animated and bouncy like Tigger: ‘Ethics in Downing Street? You’re more likely to find a refugee volunteering for a free plane ride to Rwanda. You can’t be the keeper of someone’s conscience when they don’t have one!’
Well, I can’t say there weren’t clues to what lay ahead. My predecessor found that Priti Patel had bullied civil servants and Boris gave him ‘the rubber ear’, as you in Glasgow would say.
Yet, I felt I could make my mark. Having worked as the Queen’s private secretary and dealing with Charles and Andrew I was used to jumped-up toffs.
But no sooner was I in the job than you lot were giving me an ear bashing over the flat refurb story.
Yes, I admit Boris managed to convince me the detail of how the £40k donor who had bankrolled the Louis 14th wallpaper was simply ‘a missing exchange’.
And although I lifted a suspecting Roger Moore of an eyebrow at the time, to be honest, this implicit admission of gross stupidity was one I didn’t find too difficult to accept.
But then came Partygate. Yes, on the record I said that the PM’s explanation could have been fuller. However, the truth is it was a Twiggy of an excuse. Meanwhile, my patience, and perhaps my own credibility, was wearing thin.
The final straw, however, was the steel affair. Boris said he was determined to continue trade tariffs against China. Now, the details are more difficult to work out than the reason for Liz Truss’s cabinet appointment, but I believed this would certainly involve him breaking the ministerial code.
The question is this: why did he ask me for my consent, like a creepy, aged Victorian gentleman asking for an attractive young daughter’s hand in marriage? I really don’t know. Perhaps he wanted me inside the tent.
Yes, I’d talked about giving it another six months. But it’s a bit like hoping that verruca on your foot is going to get better on its own.
Then the likes of cheeky John McDonnell compared me to a ‘tin of whitewash’. As a former army man, I’m sure you’ll concur with the sentiment; ‘F*** this for a game of sojies.’
Will Boris get a new ethics advisor, someone who can set the moral principles to which he could adhere?
Well, he’ll have to find someone who can confuse the terms ‘work event’ and ‘s**t-faced party’.
Perhaps a nine-year-old, paid off with a bar of Toblerone and an X Box subscription, who thinks Pooh Bear Boris is rather cute.
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