Partygate has “debased almost every part of the British establishment”, says Bagehot in The Economist. Take the civil service: it might think of itself as a “Rolls-Royce institution”, but its behaviour has been more “Morris Minor”. Martin Reynolds, Boris Johnson’s principal private secretary, is supposed to be a “cunning bureaucrat”, but he managed to email 100 people about a “booze-up” during a national lockdown. Sue Gray, the official investigating the parties, is “a backroom fixer notorious among transparency campaigners for blocking freedom-of-information requests”. The Metropolitan Police, whose enforcement of Covid rules has always been “erratic”, trampled over yesterday’s report by saying that publishing the full details would hinder its own investigation into the events.

Republicans always howl about intolerant left-wing “snowflakes” and “cancel culture”, says Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. But the right is also guilty of censoring free speech. Last week, McMinn County in Tennessee banned Maus, Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its classrooms. The book, which portrays Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, contains swear words, nudity and vivid depictions of violence – all of which offended the conservative local school board.