Why Boris may well survive

When the original Sue Gray report was published at the end of January it seemed indisputable that Boris Johnson would be toast if he received a fixed penalty fine as a result of the partygate furore.

Back then the PM was hanging on to majority support on the Tory benches in Parliament by his fingertips. He put on a disastrous, flailing-around show in the Commons chamber involving various failed attempts at distraction, such as his notorious ‘Jimmy Savile’ attack on Keir Starmer.

The media clamour around alleged breaches of Covid laws by Johnson and his circle was running white hot and had garnered plenty of traction among the British public. A hitherto durable Tory poll lead evaporated in a matter of days.

Yet this afternoon we have learned that Johnson is indeed to be issued with a fixed penalty notice by the Metropolitan police, involving a fine of £50, and it seems as though he might well survive.

I say ‘might’ because the converse is still true – he might not – and anyone who claims to be sure that partygate can now be securely dealt with by a stifled yawn and a sweep of the hand is either bluffing or terminally stupid.

Were he to tamely accept the police verdict, rather than trying to fight it through the courts, the Prime Minister would in effect be accepting a breach took place of the very lockdown laws he spent so long appealing to the British public to obey.

He will also face accusations of lying to Parliament – by convention a resignation matter – by giving MPs assurances that all lockdown rules had been followed, or at least that he had been assured that they had been and saw no reason to doubt it.

And yet context matters too and in this regard the PM is a lucky general. For a start, the fact that Rishi Sunak has also been told to expect a fine serves as a reminder that Johnson’s putative successor has also been severely damaged in recent weeks. Tory MPs who might have thought the party had a ‘spare’ who could be relied upon to beat Labour no longer have that psychological crutch as they contemplate submitting or resubmitting no confidence letters to Sir Graham Brady.

Secondly, the Commons is in recess for another week and millions of people are on holiday, making it much harder for anti-Johnsonites within the Tory party and outside it to replicate the intense clamour of late winter. Thirdly, through the process of endless repetition, the story has lost much of its shock value. Fourthly, the wider political agenda is much changed, with Johnson’s clear-sighted handling of the Ukraine crisis making the case for him that this would be a ludicrous time for a Tory leadership contest.

Finally, the local elections being only three weeks away gives Johnson’s entourage another staging post to point Tory MPs towards. ‘Let’s see how much the punters actually care and how these elections go,’ they will argue while using the time between now and polling day to try and steer the story back into the reeds.

Given that Johnson and Sunak have received notice of fines simultaneously, it seems likely that the event involved is the impromptu birthday celebration arranged for the PM by Carrie Johnson in the Cabinet room. And it has emerged that she also is in line for a fine.

The details of that event will leave many fair-minded people thinking the PM and Chancellor have been rather hard done by – ambushed by a cake and all that.

And yet there must now be every chance that the PM, his wife and others will also receive fixed penalty notices in respect of the ‘Abba party’ held in his own flat to mark the expulsion of Dominic Cummings from No. 10.

Whether partygate does for Johnson in due course will depend in large measure on how Starmer handles it from here on in. Certainly he will want to pile on the pain for the PM. But equally there is a strong case for the Labour leader – and the left in general – giving the British public space to make the decision.

During previous phases of this crisis it has often seemed that the sheer hysteria of the Guardianista fraternity is one of the factors that has helped Johnson keep his head above water.

Rather than obsessing about parties, Starmer would be well-advised to incorporate the affair into a wider narrative about Tory incompetence and entitlement at a time of falling living standards and use that as a springboard to win big on May 5.

Using the ballot box rather than legal processes to come out on top does not seem to come naturally to him. But it’s all up for grabs now.

Listen to Fraser Nelson, Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman on the latest episode of Coffee House Shots: