[Skybird]

Der Spiegel etches:

Maybe it's time to come to Boris Johnson's defense. Now that everyone is picking on him again, just because there were lavish parties at his place of work and residence during the strictest British lockdown. Because in the British government headquarters, people were drinking, puking and fighting, while in the next room, ministers were explaining to the 65 million other Britons why, unfortunately, they can no longer visit their terminally ill grandmother.

Unpalatable, all that. And, yes, also unlawful. But what can Johnson do about it?

He discussed it only on Wednesday again in the mother of all parliaments: that he was present with the one or other illegal sundowner, perhaps also emptied a glass of bubbly. But only briefly! And when all subordinates could still look halfway straight ahead.

Then he always left quickly. To govern. Or sleep. And didn't notice the rolling suitcases full of alcohol and the karaoke party a few meters away from his desk or bedside table.

How could he? He knows he doesn't know anything.

That's why he didn't lie when he affirmed over the past six months that Downing Street always "fully complied with all policies" or that there was "no party" or that there may have been a party after all, but that he himself certainly "didn't break any rules" or that he may have violated his own pandemic law, but still - if anything - only "because no one told me that was something that was against the rules."

That's the way it's always been with Johnson. He means well with us. And himself. But the others don't mean well enough with him. It started when he was a reporter, after all. If someone had told him back then that you can invent quotes as a novelist, but not as a journalist - what might he and the world have been spared?