Simon Case has trashed his own career and the office of cabinet secretary in one fell swoop

Since the serial discoveries of social events in Whitehall last Christmas have exposed an addiction to the office equivalent of pub quizzes at the centre of power, the hottest quiz question of them all seems to be: why on earth did Simon Case take on the job of investigating them in the first place?

Even if it hadn’t turned out that one of these gatherings occurred in his own private office – prompting his humiliating recusal on Friday from the official enquiry into what went on this time last year, it was clear that he was not the right man for the job.

For a start, any investigator with a modicum of independence would have surely wanted to ask the cabinet secretary whether, as head of the Home Civil Service, he himself knew about the gatherings across government, including the ones next door in Downing Street. And if not, why not?

And if he did know, then did he, as the prime minister’s most senior policy adviser, caution Boris Johnson against the persistent denials by the PM and other ministers that any rule-breaking parties had taken place? Since he could hardly interrogate himself, these crucial  questions would have presumably gone unasked.

And if he ended by exonerating the prime minister of possessing any such knowledge, he would inevitably be seen, as the Institute of Government’s Jill Rutter put it, to be elevating “his civil service duty to serve the government of the day above the public interest”. His credibility as an investigator, in other words, would have been shot.

Once it became public on Friday that one gathering, apparently announced in an invitation headed “Christmas Party!” had taken place in the cabinet secretary’s own private office, it was belatedly recognised even at the top of government that his enquiry had become a farce.

So why, since he certainly knew about that event, did he not advise against his own appointment to head the investigation when it was first mooted? Did he suggest, as he surely should have done, that an outsider should do the job? And if Johnson – perhaps believing that Case, being compromised himself, could be relied on to produce a patsy report – was applying pressure on him, why did he not stand up to it?

Instead, Case damaged not only his own reputation but public confidence in the job he holds, that of the country’s most senior civil servant. It’s hard to see how enquiries entrusted to a future cabinet secretary will avoid provoking hollow laughs.

Of course, this all starts with Johnson. He failed dismally to heed a mantra that should be emblazoned on every politician’s office wall since Watergate – “it’s the cover-up, stupid”. It’s just possible that an immediate and abject apology in the Commons as the party issue surfaced, laying out all the available facts (which could have been assembled in two days at most), respectfully recognising public disquiet and taking full responsibility for it, might have avoided the trouble he’s now in. Instead, he has repeatedly reacted not to the existence of uncomfortable facts, but only to their exposure in the media.

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Another feature is Johnson’s tendency to ensure than others suffer the consequences of his own malfeasance – whether Lord Geidt, his own adviser on standards, blindsided as to the whole truth of the refurbishment of No 10, or his former press secretary Allegra Stratton, one of the least culpable figures in the whole party saga, but also – so far – the only actual casualty, or now Case himself.

It remains to be seen whether Sue Gray, now taking over the enquiry, can avoid  being similarly sucked into the Johnson mire. Formidable a civil servant as she is said to be, she remains, as second permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office, an insider’s insider. If Johnson had  belatedly wanted  to apply sunlight and disinfectant to the toxic mess he has now created, he would surely have appointed an outsider.

Did he consider an alternative mentioned on Saturday by Chris Bryant, the Labour chairman of the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, in Jonathan Evans, the former head of MI5 who heads the Committee on Standards in Public Life?

However much he seeks to blames the media, the rout in North Shropshire shows that the great populist badly misjudged the public willingness to put up with the application – at a time when fines were being handed down for breaches of Covid regulations – of “one rule for them and another for the rest of us”. By keeping the enquiry in-house after the Case debacle, he is risking  condemnation for yet another misjudgement.