When it arrived at 2.20pm, all 12 pages of it, two deliberately blank and one a title page, Sue Gray did not initially appear to amount to much.
But, by thunder, she packs a punch.
The Prime Minister had said there were no parties, but here was a list of at least 16, in black and white, which Sue Gray had uncovered (with the help of the press).
The Prime Minister had said no rules were broken, but the police are investigating 12 of these rule-breaking events, two of which the Prime Minister was present at, and one in his own flat in Downing Street.
In restrained tones Gray talked about “serious” failures of leadership at the top, about behaviour that was “difficult to justify”.
“Excessive consumption of alcohol is not appropriate in a professional workplace at any time,” she said.
Translation - they had piss-ups in Downing Street during lockdown.
Jaw-dropping as it might be to think of the police knocking at the door of the Prime Minister’s flat to investigate breaches of lockdown, we must remember - this is not the actual Sue Gray report.
She has photos, whatsapp messages, testimony from eyewitnesses, masses of material which cannot be released until the police inquiry is complete.
It is a sign of just how chaotic Johnson’s rule is that it took the fury of Tory backbenchers to extract a late evening Downing Street clarification that the full report will be published, one day.
If the Prime Minister’s situation was bad before he came to the Commons his double-down strategy just made things worse.
Keir Starmer didn’t so much charge to the moral high ground as stride there with a casual dignity that looked down on the Prime Minister, “a man without shame” hiding behind a police inquiry into his own wrongdoing.
Ian Blackford has been keen to be thrown out of the Commons ever since the last time he was thrown out, his anger proving that telling the truth can land you in more trouble than telling a lie.
But SNP fury was as nothing to the venom of Theresa May and others on the Tory benches as they listened to the Prime Minister’s empty apologies and promises to change, a routine betrayed wives and husbands are familiar with.
Until the entrails of the report arrive politics will have to poke about in the grievous wound Sue Gray has inflicted, while Tory MPs watch the polls and sharpen their blades.
One final twist of the knife yesterday came from Vladimir Putin, cancelling a phone call with Boris Johnson and with it the PM’s futile attempt to leap free in one bound onto the international stage.
Putin, like Dominic Cummings, was probably watching and laughing at the Commons session.
But the best laugh of the day came from the semi-detached Scottish Conservatives who wanted to show that sometimes the gags write themselves.
Oblivious to irony, they put out a press release entitled: “Pandemic sees rise in criminals getting away with crime”.
Perhaps Sue Gray should use that as the title for her full report.
