Following his excellent Channel 4 interview quote that the PM hadn’t been celebrating his birthday during the first lockdown, he’d been ambushed by cake, Conor Burns has made cake headlines anew via Chopper’s podcast. The MP and close Boris confidant now claims the PM has personally denied there ever being a cake in the first place. 

As ITV’s Paul Brand says, Downing Street never denied when pressed for comment on the original story…

This latest claim, whilst again Thick-Of-It-esque, is a sideshow compared to the real issue – the story wasn’t remotely a new revelation when published by ITV on Monday evening. It’s now been pointed out the story was first reported like-for-like in The Times way back in June 2020. At the actual height of the pandemic…

Bizarrely, after the ITV story emerged on Monday, the Times – with Oliver Wright again as the by-line – re-wrote the story claiming the broadcaster was the one to have revealed it…

At the time no one blinked an eye. The Times didn’t think of it remotely as a scandal, merely throwing it in a long read as some passing colour. Yet this week the Lobby, the opposition and certain agitated government backbenchers have been hyping it up as the final nail in the coffin of the Prime Minister. If Boris survives this circus, Guido’s sure Tory MPs – if not most of Westminster as a whole – will reflect that perhaps things all got rather absurd…