Boris Johnson’s future is now in the hands of the police

The power of Sue Gray’s ‘update’ of her investigation into parties at 10 Downing Street and the Cabinet Office is as much in what it doesn’t say, as what it does. She identifies a staggering 12 gatherings – alleged rule-breaking parties – that took place over 11 months between May 2020 and April 2021 that may have breached the criminal law, the Covid regulations in force at the time.

The resonant point about these gatherings is Sue Gray feels she cannot tell us anything about them, because they are being investigated by the Met police. She does not want to prejudice their inquiries. But the sheer number of potential criminal events will be seen by many as evidence of systematic abuse and flouting of Covid rules by senior members of the government who wrote those very rules. It reinforces the impression of rot in an institution supposed to be beyond reproach.

One of these gatherings took place in the Prime Minister’s own home, the Downing Street flat, on 13 November 2020.