During Boris Johnson’s days in Downing Street, Friday evenings were tightly protected – for work, of a sort.

As The Mirror infamously reported in 2022, “’wine-time Fridays’ were scheduled into the electronic calendars of around 50 No 10 staff between 4pm and 7pm every week”, even at the height of the Covid pandemic. The story was later confirmed by the Cabinet Office report into Partygate, including an event on the eve of Prince Philip’s socially restricted funeral, at which the late Queen sat alone.

Three years and two prime ministerial defenestrations after that funeral, Partygate has already been well litigated in the public square. The Government’s apologists argue that “wine-time” involved staff who were already required to mingle in the office; that in-house drinks long predated the pandemic as a motivational tool; that they didn’t always devolve into the “excessive drinking”, vomiting and “multiple examples of a lack of respect and poor treatment of security and cleaning staff” found in the Cabinet Office report.

They would point out that the civil servant who oversaw this report, Sue Gray, now works for Keir Starmer – which doesn’t change the fact that her findings were backed up by photos and electronic messages. They would also point out that the Tory party is now led by a........

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