“Obviously,” said Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, with a deep sigh, “I don’t speak for the former prime minister.” There are many former prime ministers, of course – record numbers, in fact – but when civil servants use that tone of voice, there’s only one that they’re talking about. 

Case was speaking to Parliament’s Public Administration Committee, in one of its periodic hearings where it tries to understand what the hell happened to the government while Boris Johnson was in charge. The short answer to that, of course, is “nothing good”. 

The cabinet secretary was, as ever, immaculately turned out: beard trimmed, light blue shirt, blue and red striped tie, navy suit. He spoke quietly at first, so that we strained to hear in the room. Perhaps that was a trick he picked up in his years at GCHQ – if you whisper, the Russians can’t hear you – or maybe it explains how he survived the Johnson years: he really was giving good advice, but he was doing it so softly that no one realised he’d said they should put the champagne away.

They were discussing the vexed question of Partygate investigator Sue Gray. Johnson has claimed that Gray’s decision to go and work for Keir Starmer shows that the whole thing was a fit-up. He never, of course, quite gets round to explaining how this worked: did she plant the empty bottles on him? Make him lie to parliament? Was she, perhaps, the orchestrator of the notorious Cake Ambush? No matter. Doubtless all will be explained in Nadine Dorries’s forthcoming book. 

Gray’s move also outraged Conservative MPs and ministers, and led to an oddly-worded statement from ministers that Gray had committed a “prima facie” breach of civil service rules. It was about this that Case was being questioned about on Wednesday morning. William Wragg, the Tory chair of the committee, didn’t appear altogether persuaded by his colleagues’ furious outbursts. Was there, he asked Case, any sign that Gray had been a Labour sleeper agent? 

“We found no evidence that whilst employed as a civil servant, Sue’s advice was coloured by party political views,” Case whispered. “Sue has had a long and successful career as a civil servant.”

We realised we were watching an interesting manoeuvre take place

We realised we were watching an interesting manoeuvre take place, a reversal as screeching as a Friday night u-turn on the M1. Its widely believed that one of the reasons Gray left the civil service was because she’d clashed with Case. But now the cabinet secretary was defending her in public. Could it be that Case, a career courtier with an instinct for power, has realised that Gray will be returning to Number 10 should Labour win the election, and in a position to push him out? 

In fact, Case went on, they hadn’t reached a conclusion about whether Gray had broken the rules. Where, then, had the statement come from? “The minister for the Cabinet Office felt ‘prima facie’ was fair language to use,” he said. “The ‘prima facie’ language belongs to the minister.” You got that, Sue? I’m on your side! 

They turned to Johnson’s notorious honours list? Did Case have any involvement with that? “The short answer is No,” came the reply. “It’s a political process.” You’re not pinning this one on me, he didn’t actually say out loud. Next to Case was Darren Tierney, an Ulsterman who runs the “Propriety and Constitution Group” in the Cabinet Office. This used to be called “Propriety and Ethics”, but “ethics” hasn’t survived the last couple of years in Number 10. “There’s no role for us in the vetting process,” he assured MPs. 

What, Wragg asked, would Tierney do if, despite his best efforts, he became aware of a problem with a nominee. “I would liaise directly with the nominating prime minister,” Tierney replied. Who in this case would be Boris Johnson. We were, as ever, getting to the heart of the problem. 

Wragg turned to a recent episode of Channel 4’s Dispatches programme, which reported that civil servants had tried to get Buckingham Palace to block the peerage of Lord Lebedev. Case explained he hadn’t seen it. Presumably he’s still working his way through Season 2 of The White Lotus. In any case, it would have been wrong for officials to go to the Palace. “The prime minister is the sovereign’s principal adviser on all matters,” he said, with the tone of a man recalling unspeakable horrors, “including peerages and honours.” 

Labour’s John McDonnell was fascinated – not unreasonably, given everything that has happened in recent years – by the existence of Tierney. Had he given any advice on propriety to a prime minister? “There have been some examples,” the official replied, carefully. “I’m not going to go through what they were.” 

“How do we know you’re doing your job?” McDonnell asked. Tierney shut his mouth tight. You could have waterboarded him, and he wouldn’t have said a word. This is a man who advised Johnson’s Number 10 on ethics. He’s seen things. 

Speaking of which, Wragg asked what had happened to Johnson’s old telephone, turned off in 2021 on the advice of security services, and now stored in a government vault two aisles over from the Ark of the Covenant. “We’re still working on that with him,” Tierney said carefully.

McDonnell looked up. “Dragging the Thames?” he asked. They didn’t laugh.