Boris Johnson leaving 10 Downing Street
(Picture: PA Wire)For weeks now Boris Johnson, his Ministers and Tory MPs have been imploring us to ‘wait for Gray’.
Shortly after 2pm on Monday the waiting came to an end as the Government finally published the senior civil servant Sue Gray’s report on lockdown busting parties in Downing Street and across Whitehall.
But due to the Metropolitan Police’s decision to open its own investigation last week, Ms Gray’s limited findings have raised far more questions than they answer.
Out of 16 different events identified by Ms Gray as being within the scope of her inquiry, 12 are now subject to the Met Police’s own investigation - meaning these have reached the threshold for criminal investigation.
At least three of those may have directly involved Mr Johnson himself including a party in the Downing Street garden on May 20, 2020 and a gathering in his Downing Street flat on 13 November.
It is certainly true that in restricting Ms Gray’s ability to publish a full factual account of what happened at each of the 16 parties, the Prime Minister has been given more breathing space as he attempts to reboot his Government.
However, the general conclusions she did draw will have still made grim reading for Mr Johnson and his supporters.
She said the gatherings represented a “serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of Government but also the standards expected of the entire British population”. She added: “There were “failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No 10 and the Cabinet Office” and criticised Downing Street’s drinking culture.
An hour after it was published the Prime Minister came to the House of Commons to apologise and to set out plans to overhaul his No 10 operation.
He insisted: “I get it and I will fix it.”
But the mood in Parliament quickly turned as Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer launched a withering attack on the Prime Minister, calling him a man without shame. He accused him of seeing the Met’s investigation as a welcome shield rather than a mark of shame.
Moments later Mr Johnson’s predecessor in No 10 Theresa May stood up to deliver her own icy blast, saying the Gray report showed either the PM didn’t know the rules or didn’t think they applied to him.
That was followed by other significant interventions from Mr Johnson’s own side as senior Tories including Andrew Mitchell who said he no longer supported the PM and Bernard Jenkin who warned him he would be judged on results over the next few months.
Aaron Bell, one of the so-called red wall MPs who first won his Newcastle-Under-Lyme seat thanks to Mr Johnson in his 80-seat General Election triumph in 2019, asked him if he had been a fool for observing the rules while attending his grandmother’s funeral during lockdown.
Others asked for reassurance that the Prime Minister would publish the Gray report in full once the Met had finished its inquiries - a commitment he repeatedly failed to give, souring the mood further.
Even while the Prime Minister was on his feet the situation seemed to darken for Mr Johnson as the Met announced it was now in possession of 500 pieces of paper and 300 pictures relating to the parties under investigation.
Mr Johnson might have hoped that today’s report would allow him to draw a line under the partygate affair and move on. But this is far from over and his immediate future may still hinge on whether enough Conservative MPs decide it is better to try and remove him from office now rather than wait for the outcome of the Met investigation.
