
‘He’s corroding the Conservative party like battery acid’
Police are contemplating over dossier of 300 Party-gate photos with Carrie Johnson’s ‘party’ under examination
Scotland Yard is examining eight dates on which 12 events are said to have taken place, with detectives gathering 500 pages of details
Boris Johnson is acknowledged to have attended no less than four gatherings being investigated by the Met Police officers
Top civil servant Sue Gray has delivered report into claims of rule breaches, notwithstanding made clear watered down
Boris Johnson is still fearfully attempting to quell Tory Party-gate fury today as MPs warn the outrageous wrongdoing is like ‘battery acid’ and he should be ‘very worried’ concerning a coup.
The PM is leaving the pressure cooker of Westminster on a diplomatic mission to Ukraine following a stripped back version of the Sue Gray report was published yesterday – nonetheless still revealed that he is being probed by police over four breaches of lock-down law.
Mr Johnson suffered a mauling from a slew of Conservatives in the Commons, with Theresa May requesting to know if he thought the rules ‘didn’t apply’ to him, and erstwhile Cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell saying the premier had lost his support.
Mr Mitchell stepped up his attack this morning warning that the row was ‘like battery acid corroding the party’ and condemning Mr Johnson’s leadership style.
‘I think this is a crisis that is not going to go away and is doing very great damage to the party. It is more corrosive in my judgement than the expenses scandal was and it will break the coalition that is the Conservative party,’
he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Unexpectedly normally-loyal MPs admitted that the PM’s response in the chamber was a ‘car crash’, even though Mr Johnson seemed to buy himself some time with a more appeasing performance at a private meeting with his rank and file last night.
Writing in the Times, Lord Hague criticized Mr Johnson for getting the tone wrong, saying he should have
‘acknowledged that the buck stops with him’ and ought to be ‘very worried about the number of his own MPs who asked unhelpful questions’.
‘Instead of reinforcing the momentum in his favour, he quite possibly stalled it. If I were him, I would be very worried about the number of his own MPs who asked unhelpful questions at the end of his statement.’
The looming verdict from Scotland Yard – which is sifting through more than 300 photos of Whitehall bashes and could interview both Mr Johnson and wife Carrie within days – could provide a moment of truth for the premier, but he has also been forced to agree that a full, underacted version of Ms Gray’s report after the criminal process concludes.
On another turbulent day as Mr Johnson struggles to cling on:
Deputy PM Dominic Raab insisted Mr Johnson is ‘getting on with the job’ but dodged giving a full-hearted defense of his swipe at Keir Starmer for failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile. ‘I can’t substantiate that claim,’ Mr Raab told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme;
Mr Johnson has pledged to take regular ‘strategic advice’ from election guru Lynton Crosby as he tried to appease angry MPs;
The premier has been ridiculed by Russia after he was forced to postpone a crucial call with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine so he could be grilled on Downing Street parties;
The premier attacked former No10 chief Dominic Cummings comparing him to Shakespearean villain Iago while he is good-natured Othello;
A snap poll has found two-third of the public do not accept Mr Johnson’s grudging apology over Party-gate.

Boris Johnson (pictured out for his morning run) is leaving the pressure cooker of Westminster on a diplomatic mission to Ukraine after a stripped back version of the Sue Gray report was published yesterday

Detectives are poring over a dossier of 300 Partygate photos with an alleged Abba bash in the No11 flat now one of 12 under investigation. Pictured: Mr Johnson and Carrie at the Eden Project in June 2021

Former Cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell (left) said in the Commons last night that the premier had lost his support. Keir Starmer said it was now clear Mr Johnson himself is under criminal investigation, branding him a ‘man with no shame’ for not quitting

Mr Johnson apologized for the way the Party-gate probe had been handled and said he would make changed to the way No10 is run

Sue Gray (left) has finally delivered her findings on Party-gate to the PM – but made clear she wants to release more information after the police probe completes. Last week the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick (right) announced officers have launched a criminal inquiry after assessing a dossier of evidence compiled by Ms Gray
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, the Labour leader said the idea that Mr Johnson could not speak about whether he attended alleged parties in Downing Street until the police conclude their investigation is ‘nonsense’.
He said: ‘What happened was the Metropolitan Police asked that the full report not be published at the moment, but the idea that that prevents the Prime Minister from saying whether he was at a party on a particular day is absolute nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
‘I think the spectacle of the Prime Minister standing at the dispatch box being asked ‘Were you at this party on the 13th of November in your own flat?’ And he says ‘I can’t answer that because of the investigation’…
‘He knows very well whether he was in the flat – and he’s taking us for fools.
‘I think one of the features of this particular set of circumstances is not only did the Prime Minister and others break the rules, but they’ve taken the country for fools by insulting our intelligence in the cover-up that’s gone on since.’
The former director of public prosecutions dismissed the ‘ridiculous slur’ from the PM that he had failed to bring Savile to justice.
The return of Sir Lynton, who masterminded Mr Johnson’s City Hall campaigns as well as election victory for David Cameron in 2015 – was revealed by Mr Johnson last night.
Mr Raab told LBC News that voters, MPs and the Prime Minister wanted the party to ‘get back to doing the job that people elected us to do’.
‘Lynton Crosby is an important element of that,’
Mr Raab said.
‘He has got a good strategic nose and a good sense of the direction of public opinion and a good place – not to formulate, that’s not what we do – but to test the work that we are doing to make sure we are nailing the priorities of the people.’
Mr Raab said it was ‘not clear’ whether Sue Gray would have ‘anything more’ to add beyond further conclusions in an updated report.
‘Anything she gives the Prime Minister he will publish but ultimately that’s a question for Sue Gray and the timing will depend on the police investigation,’
the Deputy Prime Minister told LBC Radio.
But anger on the Tory benches is still close to boiling point, with Mr Mitchell telling the BBC:
‘I think this is a crisis that is not going to go away and is doing very great damage to the party.
‘It is more corrosive in my judgement than the expenses scandal was and it will break the coalition that is the Conservative Party.’
Mr Mitchell said an
‘awful lot’ is going on ‘beneath the surface’.
He went on: ‘I think the problem is that Boris is running a modern government like a medieval court, you need to rule and govern through the structures, through Whitehall, through the cabinet for National Security Council.
‘Many of us thought he would govern in the way he did when he was Mayor Of London, through being a chairman of a board, running a very good team – that is not what has happened here.’
Lord Hague said Mr Johnson had benefited from ‘good luck and well-organised supporters’ in the way the Party-gate crisis had developed. But he wasted an opportunity to get on the ‘front foot’ by ‘ensuring integrity in government’.
‘For some reason, this very intuitive politician decided to do the minimum in responding to the report rather than go further in his apology and his proposals,’
the former Cabinet minister wrote.
Lord Hague said ‘Tories who are ready to act to remove him will be calculating the timing of their next move, conscious that they have only one shot at it in a 12-month period’.
Mr Johnson was lashed by his own MPs as he delivered a half-apology to the Commons after the Sue Gray report condemned ‘failures of leadership and judgment’ in Downing Street.
The senior civil servant handed a dossier of 300 Party-gate photographs and 500 pages of written evidence to Scotland Yard, as detectives probe lock-down-breaching parties in Whitehall.
Scotland Yard is now examining eight dates on which 12 events are said to have taken place. The Prime Minister is understood to have attended at least four gatherings being probed by the police, including a ‘bring your own booze’ garden party and a birthday party where he was ‘ambushed by cake’. Two of the events the Met is investigating had not been reported on.
The report prompted criticism from across the House, with former PM Mrs May saying Mr Johnson either ‘didn’t read the rules’ or thought they ‘didn’t apply’ to No10. ‘Which is it?’ she demanded.
By the time Mr Johnson met with parliamentarians in a rare gathering of the whole Conservative party later, a U-turn and vow to publish the eventual report in full appeared to have cooled the situation.
Mr Johnson told his troops he ‘nearly died’ from Covid as a sign he took it seriously, as well as launching jibes at Mr Cummings and announcing he was drafting in Sir Lynton.
But the threat of a vote of no confidence has not yet been killed off by Mr Johnson as he still faces hostility from his own MPs.
Tory MP Angela Richardson revealed she had quit as a ministerial aide to Michael Gove, sharing her ‘deep disappointment’ at the handling of the Party-gate row.
Writing on the grass-roots Conservative Home website today, Red Wall MP Ric Holden warned that Mr Johnson needs to ‘lead differently’.
‘I believe that he is sorry for both ‘the way that the matter has been handled’ and for the ‘things that we simply did not get right.’ But this means he got to lead differently now,’
he said.
‘I worked for Boris Johnson when he was campaigning to be the Leader of the Conservative Party and our Prime Minister. He is an upbeat, optimistic campaigner.
‘He really does want to do what he says about leveling up. He knows he owes the voters in seats like mine the stonking majority that got him his own mandate.’
He had to develop the hide of a rhino to get though Brexit without going wobbly, as he removed the whip from over 20 MPs, battled with the EU in negotiations and forced the hand of both the Opposition Parties in his push for a general election. But the Conservative Party in Parliament and in the country is not his enemy. We want him to succeed. We want him to win.
But that means he’s got to listen to those MPs in Parliament and our members and voters in the country, and then use his judgement. No blinkers to drive hard through the Brexit quagmire now. This is a moment of reflection that must evolve into actions that drive us through to the next general election.
Leader of the Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg said the ‘mood was positive’ among Conservatives following an evening meeting on the Parliamentary estate.
He added:
‘So many people voted personally for Boris Johnson rather than voting for political parties.
‘Politicians have to accept that our bosses are the British people, and they voted for that, they put him in office.’
The Met confirmed they are investigating events on eight different dates at Downing Street and the Cabinet Office.
The first is May 20 2020, the day of the ‘bring your own booze’ party held after Number 10 official Martin Reynolds, emailed 100 members of staff inviting them to a drinks event.
Next is June 18 when there was a gathering at the Cabinet office on the departure of a No 10 private secretary; and June 19 when there was a get-together in the Cabinet room in No 10 Downing Street on the Prime Minister’s 56th birthday.
Also under the spotlight are events on November 13, the night of the departure of Dominic Cummings, the day when there was one gathering in the Downing Street flat and another in No 10 Downing Street.
Police are investigating dates which have been linked to Christmas parties in the Cabinet Office on December 17 and Downing Street on December 18, and leaving drinks for the former head of the Government’s Covid Task-force Kate Josephs.
They are also looking at dates when drinks were held at Number 10 on January 14 on the departure of two private secretaries; and leaving events for James Slack, Mr Johnson’s former director of communications, and one of the Prime Minister’s personal photographers in Downing Street on April 16 2021, the day before the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral.
Mr Johnson is said to have been at his own birthday celebration, BYOB gathering, and two leaving dos for senior aides where he gave speeches.
Rishi Sunak could also be involved, as he is understood to have briefly attended the birthday ‘party’ – although it was breaking up as he entered the room to attend a Covid strategy meeting.
The Mail on Sunday revealed details of the alleged ‘victory party’ held by friends of Carrie on the night of November 13, 2020, after Dominic Cummings had left with his belongings in a box.
He had allegedly lost a power struggle with the then Ms Symonds and other advisers.
‘There was the sound of lots of banging and dancing and drinking, and a number of Abba tracks – including a triumphalist Winner Takes It All,’ a source said.
A spokesman for Mrs Johnson said:
‘It is totally untrue to suggest Mrs Johnson held a party in the Downing Street flat on November 13, 2020.’
In a statement, the Met said:
‘Having received the documentation from the Cabinet Office on Friday 28 January, we are now reviewing it at pace to confirm which individuals will need to be contacted for their account. This prioritization will include reviewing all the material from the Cabinet Office, which includes more than 300 images and over 500 pages of information.’
‘If following an investigation, officers believe it is appropriate, because the Covid regulations have been breached without a reasonable excuse, a fixed penalty notice would normally be issued. Once the penalty is paid, the matter is considered closed.
‘Alternatively individuals may decide to dispute the notice. In these circumstances officers will consider whether to pursue the matter in a magistrates’ court.
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