What is Boris’s partygate defence?

The presumption of many MPs — and maybe many of you — is that the Met is bound to issue a fixed penalty notice to the Prime Minister for attending parties in Downing Street, because the half dozen ‘events’ he attended look, swim and quack like a party, and therefore must have been a breach of Covid rules.

So what is Boris Johnson’s defence? He thinks he has one, so he is paying out of his own pocket for a lawyer — who is also being used by his wife Carrie Johnson. And the Met Police have sent the relevant questionnaires for the PM and Carrie direct to this lawyer.

As you know Boris Johnson’s consistent claim is that he thought and was advised that the events he attended were ‘work’, not illegal parties. But what would ‘prove’ that these were work, not parties?

I am told that the relevant test — or at least so his lawyers believe — is whether he went back to ‘proper’ work immediately after drinking a glass of wine in the Downing Street garden or being ambushed by birthday cake in the Cabinet Office, or saying goodbye to a colleague in a haze of prosecco or singing along to Abba in the study of his Downing Street flat.

If he can prove that he didn’t get drunk and incapacitated, and has proof that he resumed more conventional prime ministerial activities after the seeming parties, his legal advisors seem to think there is a chance he can prove said events were simply part of his working day. And