Second Tory minister ambushed by cake

Partygate is back in the news after a month of headlines about Ukraine. The Met Police has begun interviewing key witnesses, with more than 100 questionnaires distributed to unlucky staff in Whitehall and No. 10. Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and even the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case have been told to submit evidence for the Met’s investigation: if they are found to have broken the law, they could be issued with a fixed penalty notice.

Good luck using that ‘soft on crime’ line on Sir Keir at the next election. Steerpike wonders how each unlucky recipient will justify their shenanigans on their police form. Hopefully, they’ll do better than the defence mustered by Tory loyalist Conor Burns. He shot to internet stardom in January after defending Johnson over an alleged surprise birthday get-together in June 2020. Burns claimed that, rather than being a pre-planned party, the PM was ‘ambushed with a cake’ – a line that spawned a thousand memes.