There are two types of people in this world: Those who hate the self-indulgence of birthdays — the attention, planning and pressure to make the day stand out from any other. And then there are the birthday-lovers, those who stretch out the celebrations for as long as possible, turning a birthday into a birthweek each year. 

I am in the latter camp. I love birthdays and always have. It’s a chance to celebrate being alive and an excuse to see all your favourite people and do your favourite things.

Cake and cards aside it is also a chance to reflect on the past year. With every birthday you become a year older and wiser, or so I thought. 

For Boris Johnson, his 56th birthday in June 2020 seemingly brought no more wisdom than the very little he already possessed. Whilst the country was in lockdown, hospitality shut, jobs furloughed and social life effectively criminalised, the Prime Minister celebrated his birthday with cake and singing with 30 staff (including his interior designer), led by his wife.

Even for the most ardent birthday-lover, there is no excuse for Johnson’s breaking of the rules to squeeze in a quick bash. Every single person in the UK will have lost at least one birthday to the pandemic. It was, as the government never missed an opportunity to remind us, a small sacrifice to make.

Culture secretary Nadine Dorries jumped to defend the PM on Twitter, arguing that buying a cake and stopping for ten minutes to sing happy birthday hardly constitutes a party. This might have been true a few years ago, but since singing was banned for choirs, football fans and musicians, and you’d be moved on for sitting down on a park bench for five minutes, this was anything but normal times.

Television presenter Charlene White also celebrated her birthday at work in June 2020. But, as she tweeted, “my boss gave me a card and a bottle of fizz at the end of my shift to take home… because anything else was against the rules.” 

The difference between a ten-minute rendition of happy birthday and a bottle of fizz to take home might sound arbitrary, but it shows just how much fearmongering was at play. Normal people abided by the rules with no room for exception, even on birthdays, because the government warned us not doing so would cost lives. 

At the heart of “partygate” is the fact that a very silly man who once said “voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts” and whose entire career previously relied on being considered bashful and fun was unequipped to take charge of our country during a very serious time. For as long as he remains Prime Minister, these stories will keep on coming. 

And whilst the Prime Minister’s need to celebrate his birthday is far from his biggest misstep during the pandemic, after weeks of stories of the government breaking the rules, it is the icing on the (alleged) Colin the Caterpillar cake.

When he blew out his candles, I wonder if the Prime Minister stopped to think about the seven-year-old girl who wrote him a letter in March 2020 saying, “I think mummy and daddy might have to cancel my party but I don’t mind because I want everybody to be ok.” 

Boris Johnson tweeted his handwritten response; “We have all got to do our bit to protect the NHS and save lives, and that is exactly what you are doing, so well done! You are setting a great example.”

I wonder if now 9-year-old Josephine would be so forgiving of having to cancel her birthday party now?