Why didn't the whistle blow sooner on the No 10 party?

It's easy, when confronted with such overwhelming evidence of entitlement and hubris as presented by the latest revelations over lockdown revelling in the backyard of 10 Downing Street, to assume that everyone who surrounds Boris Johnson is on the take.

- HANNAH FEARN

It's one rule for them and another for us, we crow. As often, the truth is less simple or as easily condemned. For although 100 people were invited to that particular illegal rave in the summer gardens of the PM's residence, reports suggest only 30 turned up. What happened to the rest?

Among the remaining 70 invitees were, no doubt, many who were appalled by what they saw in that email, the breezy references to enjoying the sunshine and rewards for hard work. There would be relatives of nurses working exhausting and emotionally difficult shifts on Covid wards. There would be those who had parents isolated in care homes, their minds unthreading like a spool during the interminable weeks they were unable to connect with their families.

There would be men (I think we can be fairly sure the recipients were mostly men) whose partners were sending endless desperate messages from home as they struggled to hold their own careers down with no nursery or school open or a grandparent to help. There would be others who had family members furloughed and by now deeply anxious about their future earning potential. And inevitably, somewhere in that list, there would be the bereaved.

So why didn't any one of them blow the whistle and leak that email at the time? You might be tempted to argue that the failure betrays a moral insufficiency at the heart of the civil service, because even those who weren't moved to partake in croquet on the lawn with Boris - either out of a sensible regard for their own physical safety, or because of the gargantuan exercise in cognitive dissonance it would require – didn't do the right thing and stop it right then.

Even more so when the public had clearly demonstrated its dissatisfaction with Dominic Cummings when he thought he could reinterpret the rules around self-isolation to suit his own family circumstances. But I don't think so. There's something more insidious going on.