Is it over?

Throughout his political career, Boris Johnson has defied all odds. He has been defeated, written off, mocked. At one stage, he left the House of Commons completely. Yet no matter how down-and-out he has looked, how bleak his prospects have appeared, he has always managed to recover. His party chose him as leader partly for this ability to pull off the seemingly impossible. Yet now he faces the gravest peril of his premiership. For the first time, his fate is out of his hands.

His excuse for attending a drinks party in the garden of No. 10 after passing such restrictive lockdown laws is that he ‘believed implicitly that this was a work event’ — even though his private secretary had convened the event via a mass email asking staff to ‘bring your own booze’. The No. 10 garden, Johnson said, is an extension of the office, so it was all work.