Boris Johnson, the prime minister who can’t say no

THERE HAVE been many implausible elements of Boris Johnson’s accounts of the “bring your own booze” gathering hosted in the garden of 10 Downing Street in May 2020, when Britain was under strict lockdown. Among them are his insistence that he “believed implicitly” it was a lawful work event, and his reliance on the excuse that “nobody told me” it would trample the restrictions his own government had imposed. Least credible, however, was his statement to the House of Commons that “with hindsight, I should have sent everyone back inside.”