The House Opinion Article | Recipes for disaster: Boris Johnson iced by a cake

19 June 2020: No 10 gathering to celebrate the PM’s birthday | Image by: Gavin Rodgers / Alamy

4 min read12 min

“Surprise!” A 52nd birthday is not one of the big ones, and I had been grateful for the books and DVDs that had greeted me that morning when I woke. I had not, heading downstairs in search of breakfast, been expecting my wife to jump out at me with a candle-laden cake.

So, I did experience a moment of sympathy for Boris Johnson, whose own birthday surprise, way back in the 2020 Covid lockdown, would ultimately see him fined by police. After all, as arch-Johnson loyalist Conor Burns would explain when the prime minister’s birthday had become a national scandal, “it was not a premeditated, organised party. He was, in a sense, ambushed with a cake”.

(Before we go any further, let’s note one clear political lesson immediately: if Conor Burns is running your media strategy, you’re in trouble. With allies supplying descriptions of your troubles this vivid, who needs enemies?)

For those struggling to remember exactly which illegal Downing Street party this was, on 19 June 2020 staff were invited into the cabinet room for lunchtime drinks and sandwiches to mark the prime minister’s 56th birthday. It was a surprise gathering for Johnson, who had been out visiting a school. Also ambushed were Rishi Sunak and senior civil servant Simon Case, who had turned up expecting to join a meeting about Covid. Adding a touch of sophistication was interior designer Lulu Lytle, who had been measuring up the Downing Street apartment for wallpaper, gold or otherwise. Performing the ambush was a union jack cake.

Photos of the event suggest “awkward workplace gathering” rather than “bacchanalian orgy”. And while it was a great deal more party than anyone else in Britain was allowed that month, it was pretty mild by Downing Street standards. The previous evening, we now know, had seen a pizza’n’prosecco event that ran until 3am, featuring karaoke, vomit and a “minor altercation”.

The ironic icing is that the originator of ‘cakeist’ political philosophy was undone partly by the having, and then eating, of an actual cake

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It’s understandable, then, that Johnson didn’t think the gathering was that big a deal. Indeed, one of the things that has always outraged him was that his birthday celebrations had been reported when they happened, without exciting any adverse comment. The brief, muted celebration had been a nice piece of colour in stories about the government’s battle against the killer disease. It wasn’t until January 2022 that the story came back to bite the prime minister, as an element of the Partygate scandal.

Which brings us, I considered as I nibbled my own delicious, moist, birthday cake, to the second lesson: context matters.

When Johnson’s birthday was first reported, it was part of a narrative: a stoic prime minister leading a national battle against a virus that had nearly killed him. Who could begrudge his team a moment of levity? The second time the cake ambush came up, it was part of a story of a chaotic administration that had imposed heartbreaking restrictions on the nation while its own members were indulging in drives to Barnard Castle, office affairs and an awful lot of parties.

The ironic icing is that the originator of “cakeist” political philosophy was undone partly by the having, and then eating, of an actual cake.

But for his fans, the tragedy of Johnson is that he was a Merrie England leader who was at his most popular at a moment of national misery.

For a few weeks in 2020, he looked like he might have proved his critics wrong: he really was the man to steer the ship through the storm. He had, in adversity, found his finest hour.

And then he was undone, ambushed by a cake.