It seemed at first publication of Gray’s report would be delayed by the police involvement. Downing Street we’re suggesting it would yesterday morning, but Cressida Dick, the head of the Met, appeared to quash the idea of any delay by saying they had no objection to the report coming out as planned. The ‘crimes’ that may have been committed are not likely to go before a jury - well not of twelve people anyway - so no potential prejudice is involved.
Johnson is going to face other sorts of jury. The 1922 committee, the Tory parliamentary party and perhaps the nation.
I see several MPs are relying on people thinking this is just a matter about eating cake. Danny Finkelstein, the Tory peer, on Newsnight said it was about a far more important principle. It’s about whether or not the government and prime minister are subject to the same laws as everybody else. He might also have added that it’s also about whether the PM can deliberately mislead parliament or not.
It’s about many things, honesty and integrity among them, but cake isn’t one.
Johnson still seems to think he can carry on. In the commons he ‘welcomed’ the report. This must have been in the way you might welcome a red hot poker being driven into….well, we won’t go into that, you know what I mean.
In The New Statesman, there are claims the Johnsons spent last weekend 'brooding' at Chequers with both Boris and Carrie Johnson not believing they have done anything wrong and presumably sympathising with each other. They apparently “consider gatherings among those who worked at Downing Street during the pandemic to have been part of a ‘household bubble.” It is delusional.
One MP is quoted saying that Johnson’s government, “just didn’t understand the consequences of paralysing the nation with fear. It’s a national post-traumatic stress disorder, and that rage [among many people] is focused on the fact that while they suffered, good times were being had in No 10. I entirely understand that sense of grief and anger.”
Johnson thinks we are his ‘subjects’ and should simply accept he’s above us and should be able to do as he pleases. He even thinks the Queen is beneath him.
Harry Lambert, the TNE journalist who wrote the piece also said:
"As Westminster waits for Sue Gray’s potentially imminent report, I am also told that the relationship between the party and Johnson is now completely broken', and that the whips’ operation 'is the worst anyone can remember'."
The relationship between the prime minister and the Tory party is described as "completely broken." Think about it. How can he possibly continue?
You might also like to read this from Ryan Heath, now a senior editor at Politico who was once employed as a civil servant in the cabinet office under Sue Gray. He says he liked her and he liked working for her and he thinks she liked him. But she still sacked him.
It seems fears that Gray might go easy on Johnson are unfounded. She has probably concluded the mountain of evidence against him won't go easily under a carpet and therefore he has to go. There is no alternative. We are surely watching his last days.
Johnson gets support from Truss
No, the PM hasn't got a hernia, the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, has offered her support this morning telling us she takes Johnson at his word when he says he hasn't broken any rules. Well, she would say that wouldn't she?
However, I want to remark on her curious interview on Radio 4s Today programme this morning with Martha Carney. Apart from the fact she came over as an incredible lightweight - Putin or Sergey Lavrov would blow her over in a second - she has had some sort of voice training and is trying desperately to sound important by doing what appears to be Louis Armstrong impressions as her tone gets lower and lower. And there are increasingly long gaps between sentences and sometimes inside sentences - to the point where the whole interview sounded like something Steve Coogan might produce.
Her campaign to replace Johnson has clearly already started as many Tory MPs will have noticed. They will not have been impressed.
