But today, Johnson finds himself under attack from all sides. Even ministerial aides expressed alarm at the apparent disregard for the alleged victims, as well as the “bonkers” response from No 10, where Johnson and his senior aides seemed determined to protect Pincher. They pointed to a meeting on Friday in which Guto Harri, Johnson’s director of communications, said colleagues should support Pincher because he had lost his career. This promptly leaked. Later, in a wider meeting of ministerial aides, Harri sought to clarify his comments.
He then compared Pincher to David Kelly, the weapons expert who killed himself after he was exposed as the source of a BBC report that the Blair government’s official dossier on weapons of mass destruction had been “sexed up”. The suggestion was that Pincher, like Kelly, was struggling to cope with the public scrutiny.
“It was unbelievable,” said one present. “You want to intervene and just say, ‘What the f*** are you thinking?’ But what’s the point?”