They broke the social contract, they lied about it, but the Downing Street partygoers did something far more serious than that, and there seems to be a complete absence of anger about it. Why?

There are two main things that people are angry about in regard to the Downing Street parties. But there is a third that doesn’t seem to get mentioned by pundits, politicians and commentators.

Firstly, people are angry that the PM allowed Downing St staff and officials to bend and break the lockdown rules that the vast majority of the rest of the country were dutifully following. A social contract has been broken and it feels like a slap round the face. We’re all angry about that, they’ve treated us like mugs.

Secondly, people are angry at Boris Johnson specifically, for trying to cover up what was going on. He knew what had happened, but lied about it on TV, on the radio, and in Parliament. We don’t feel let down by a serial liar, lying, but we’re still angry about it and angry at those who continue to defend a liar to keep him in his role as PM.

The third reason to be angry seems to be lost in all the above. It surprises me that it doesn’t get more of an airing. I’ve barely heard anyone expressing their anger about the tangible consequences of flouting the lockdown rules.

Lockdown rules weren’t arbitrarily drawn up so that we would all have a set of rules to follow that we would then unify around in a ‘Blitz spirit’ type way. They did, of course, have that effect (until now), there was a lot of solidarity, the nation ‘pulled together’, but that wasn’t the purpose of the rules.

The rules were set because COVID-19 was and is incredibly infectious, and in numerous cases life threatening – especially in the time before a vaccine has been developed. If you do not follow COVID regulations you are endangering people’s lives. And, at the heights of the first and second waves of the pandemic we got very angry with people in our communities who were breaking the rules because – in their selfishness – they were endangering lives.

At that time, we weren’t getting angry with them for breaking the social contract when we were sticking to it, or for lying and covering up the fact that they’d broken the rules. We were angry with them because their actions had consequences. Vulnerable people who they might never meet, but might be our parent or grandparent, were dying horrible lonely deaths – because the disease was spreading.

At the start of the pandemic, cases of COVID-19 were sky high in Westminster, and in Downing St. The PM himself was hospitalised, Dominic Cummings’ eyes stopped working. Call me captain hindsight, but it is now pretty obvious why cases were so high there – they were not keeping their social distance from each other – why aren’t the commentators making this basic connection and pointing it out?

In Downing Street, staff and officials were endangering their own lives, the lives of their colleagues, the lives of their families, and the lives of many others along the chain (who, thanks to a diabolical track and trace system, we’ll never be able to name).

This is what I’m most angry about. I’m angry that in their arrogance and heightened sense of self importance they allowed COVID to spread and put people’s lives at risk – vulnerable people, down the chain that they would never meet. It’s despicable and I hope Sue Gray’s report reminds us all that in its opening paragraph.

Before we get into the emotion of social contracts being broken and PM’s lying to Parliament, let’s remember that first and foremost what they did at those parties is put people’s lives at risk. Why aren’t more people angry about this?