Why No. 10 fears Boris’s banishment

Even now, months after he was forced to resign, Boris Johnson has a potency that no other British politician can match. Everything he says still catches the attention of Westminster and the media. Like Donald Trump, he enrages his enemies so much that they can seem obsessed. And rumours of a Boris restoration will not go away. ‘If he was six feet under in a coffin,’ says one minister, ‘he’d still have ambitions of a comeback.’ Some MPs do want to see his return to Downing Street, of course. ‘They may be noisy,’ says a member of government. ‘But they’re also small in number.’

Some of Johnson’s critics believe he will only stop being a threat to the government once he is out of parliament. Thanks to the investigation by the House of Commons Privileges Committee, their wish could come true.

By now the whole country knows that during lockdown 10 Downing Street staff were having the sort of social gatherings that had been outlawed for everyone else.