As you may have gathered despite the understated media coverage, Boris Johnson became the first serving Prime Minister to be found to have broken the law when he was issued a fixed penalty notice (FPN) by the Metropolitan Police for breaching Covid-related laws on gathering for non-work purposes.
There has been much written about this in the press, with distinguished commentators and historians declaring variously that it is a ‘constitutional crisis’, that ‘a law-breaker cannot be a law-maker’ and all shades of outrage between.
They may well be right that Boris Johnson’s position is untenable, politically speaking. But they are wrong to say this is a legal or constitutional crisis.
The crime itself is a legally trivial matter, comparable to littering (for which an FPN is the most common sanction). In Scotland, the Health Secretary Humza Yousaf has had an unbroken ministerial career despite being fined for accidentally driving without insurance while he was the Transport Minister.
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