As imagined by Brian Beacom

THE first thing you wish to know is if the Met have made Sue Gray’s report into alleged Covid illegalities so worthless the former pub landlady would have been better spending the last two weeks back in County Down, drinking Guinness?

Well, I have to say one can’t even assume Sue Gray likes Guinness. It’s a bit like saying you’d expect a female head of Britain’s largest police force to be empathetic with women. But if you recall my actions during the Clapham Common vigils, where protesters were hogged and tied and arrested on Covid legislation grounds, then you’ll know that one doesn’t always follow the other.

You also ask why the Met didn’t take action sooner in Whitehall, how could we have stood by and watched politicians and civil servants drag heavy suitcases full of booze into garden parties?

It’s simple. We didn’t have X-ray vision. For all the constables knew, those holiday cases could have been full of budgie smugglers and bikinis and Ambre Solaire, and copies of David Whyte’s new book How Corrupt Is Britain?

Or tins of soup and pineapple chunks, to be dropped off at the nearest Food Bank. It could have been that the same politicians who were getting tipsy, allegedly, were those who had introduced the cuts to Universal Credit – and may have been helping out those they’d reduced to workhouse levels of poverty.

Of course, many people feel that the belated Met investigation is as fake as the snow at the Beijing Games, given the massive police presence, CCTV everywhere, etc. Yet, our officers couldn’t have been sure that birthday cake was ever served up.

Yes, there was icing and marzipan on show, and a few candles involved. But we have yet to obtain hard evidence the Prime Minister indeed puffed them all out; it may well have been Jacob Rees-Mogg who puffed for him, as is so often the case.

And who’s to say that Carrie Antoinette and Lulu the wallpaper adviser weren’t there in a role relevant to the smooth running of the country?

This will now be investigated to the full, because the criteria for an investigation is now being met. And yes, you may well wonder why the criteria seems to have altered.

Well, there are many questions that will never be answered, such as how the Met got the Jean Charles de Menendez investigation so wrong, or the Wembley Euros fiasco. And indeed, why newspapers were denied a Freedom of Information request when enquiring of my two-year stint at the Foreign Office, described later by one as an ‘unspecified and rather shadowy security role.’

All we all need to know is that when at Oxford I was once a wicket keeper in the cricket club. And that Priti and Boris have come to believe I’m a pretty good person to have behind the stumps.

And if that means Sue Gray being locked in the pavilion sipping whatever isn’t that in the best interests of justice?