Johnson’s defence deteriorates

That Boris Johnson regards the Gray update as an opportunity to come up for air was very clear from his statement on the report in the Commons. The Prime Minister’s opening remarks struck what seemed to be a reasonable balance between apologising, offering some operational changes to No. 10 (to show he was taking the report’s recommendations for ‘learning’ seriously) and trying to buoy up Tory MPs with a reminder of what his government was achieving. Brexit, freeports and the comparatively early end to Covid restrictions all came up. He might have been pleased with himself as he commended his statement to the House, but things went downhill after that.

The first deterioration in the situation came as Sir Keir Starmer gave one of his best speeches in parliament to date. It helped that this was familiar territory: the Labour leader treated his response as being a closing address to a jury, talking largely about the moral case for Johnson’s premiership coming to an end and appealing to the better instincts of Conservative MPs.