Confronted last November with allegations of illegal, lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street, Boris Johnson told MPs in the House of Commons that throughout the pandemic “all guidance was followed completely in No 10”. On Tuesday, having investigated evidence relating to 12 separate Downing Street events in 2020 and 2021, the Metropolitan police announced a first tranche of 20 fixed penalties for breaking lockdown rules at the very heart of government. More will follow, and the prime minister himself may be among those referred to the criminal records office for ignoring the laws he set and expected the rest of the country to follow.
Two months ago, when Mr Johnson was feeling the heat from Partygate and knew his premiership was under threat, this shaming development would have prompted the prime minister to resort to practised combinations of faux-contrition, self-exculpatory claims and sophistry: he didn’t know there were parties; he wasn’t at that party; he was at the party but didn’t realise it was a party; he was very sorry.
But that was then. At Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions, Mr Johnson exuded a blithe ebullience while brazenly ignoring the substance of Sir Keir Starmer’s interrogation on why he originally misled MPs. On Tuesday evening, hosting a “team-building” dinner for ministers and Conservative MPs, he even risked a wisecrack at the expense of Tory MPs who had sent letters of no confidence in him to the 1922 Committee. Mr Johnson’s audience laughed along as he described the rebels, a few of whom were present, as “some of the greatest epistolatory letter-writers since St Paul”. Such general joviality would have been inconceivable only a few weeks ago. But the gravity of the Ukraine crisis, Downing Street clearly judges, has led the public and the Conservative party to move on. The prime minister seems to believe he is almost out of the woods.
Thankfully, given the egregious and unforgivable breach of public trust that the Partygate scandal represents, there are grounds for thinking such confidence is misplaced. As more fines are issued by the Met, pressure will rightly mount for names, particularly senior ones, to be made public. The release of the full Sue Gray report into lockdown parties – postponed until the Met investigation is completed – will provide the damning detail behind her interim finding of “failures of leadership and judgment” in No 10. A rotten culture, presided over by the prime minister, will be properly exposed to the light. If Mr Johnson is issued with a fixed-penalty notice by the Met, a symbolic threshold will have been crossed; Conservative MPs’ inboxes will once again be inundated with angry instructions from Tory-voting constituents. The intensity of January – when the prime minister teetered on the brink – will surely return.
Mr Johnson may prove capable of brazening out even this denouement: bold shamelessness is his political modus operandi, and it has served him well. But the Tory party should reflect on the fact that if he does survive to fight the next election, he will go into it as badly damaged goods. Pollsters report that on the doorstep the Partygate verdict is in: the prime minister betrayed the public’s trust during a national emergency, treated the Covid rules he set as optional for his own gilded circle, and then lied about what happened. This will be Labour’s relentless line of attack; it will resonate in the context of a looming economic crisis that a privately wealthy chancellor will do little to alleviate.
One way or another, whether he remains in office or is prematurely forced to step down, a weakened Mr Johnson and a rudderless government will eventually pay a high price for Partygate.
