For Boris, the hard bit is just beginning

Boris Johnson has been plunged back into the mire of partygate. The publication of a photograph of Johnson raising a glass to his departing communications chief Lee Cain in November 2020 and the long-awaited report by Sue Gray into lockdown breaches in Whitehall means that once again there are Tory MPs publicly calling for him to resign. Some of those who had gone quiet on the basis that the war in Ukraine meant it was not the right time for a leadership election have renewed their calls for the Prime Minister to go.

No. 10’s hope is that apologies and an emphasis on how the new Department of the Prime Minister is meant to professionalise Downing Street will be enough to persuade backbenchers to stay their hands. Johnson’s loyalists will make much of Gray’s statement that some of her recommendations on how to better organise Downing Street are already being acted upon. But the worry for Johnson is that the Gray report, which was less bad for Downing Street than many had expected, is still not the end of the matter – there is the investigation by the privileges committee to follow. As one senior backbencher laments: ‘It is just very hard to see how this ends.’

Johnson’s closest allies have been most worried about the parliamentary inquiry into whether the Prime Minister misled parliament or not. The very fact that the inquiry is happening reveals how dangerous it is for him. The government had hoped to defer the decision on whether to have the investigation until after the police and Gray had reported, but Tory MPs would have refused to vote for that. They might not be prepared to oust the Prime Minister, but they also want to indicate that they do not support what went on. The MPs on the privileges committee will have to vote on a report into whether Johnson did or did not mislead parliament, and on whether, if he did so, it was deliberate or not.