Gray report teaches Boris Johnson a familiar lesson

In his statement to MPs about Sue Gray’s report into Downing Street’s boozy parties, Boris Johnson briefly affected a posture of humility and contrition.

“I am humbled, and I have learned a lesson,” he said.

But it soon became clear that the lesson he has learned is the one that has served him best throughout his career, that the rules others must follow do not apply to him. Less than a minute after telling MPs how humbled he was, he was urging them to put Gray’s report behind them and move on.

Many of Gray’s findings were already known to the public through press reports and the Metropolitan Police’s curiously selective investigation. But there were details that conveyed the essence of the culture of Johnson’s Downing Street more eloquently than any police report.

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She described how security staff asked partying officials to leave the building so they could lock it down and how the following morning a cleaner found red wine spilled on a wall and over some boxes of photocopy paper.

[ What’s in the Sue Gray report? ]

“I was made aware of multiple examples of a lack of respect and poor treatment of security and cleaning staff,” she wrote.

Gray’s report included a number of photographs but none had the shock value likely to change many minds about Johnson’s role in Partygate. And the prime minister has been lucky insofar as the only event for which he was fined was the most harmless in Gray’s catalogue, a brief birthday celebration in his office.

A few Conservative MPs stood up to echo Johnson’s call for everyone to move on and focus on the cost of living crisis and other issues they think should matter more to the public. Those who spoke out against the prime minister were, for the most part, known rebels who have already called for him to go.

Most of Johnson’s backbenchers stayed silent, half of them leaving the Commons chamber less than halfway through the questions and answers following his statement. Towards the end, there were no Conservatives left who wanted to speak, leaving the deputy speaker to call one opposition MP after another.

A further moment of peril for the prime minister will come when the cross-party privileges committee rules on whether he misled parliament over the Downing Street parties. The controversy has already hurt Johnson’s poll ratings, with voters disapproving of him by a margin of two to one.

Two byelections in Conservative-held constituencies next month will offer MPs a fresh opportunity to consider how safe their own seats are – and if they might have a better chance of holding on to them if they let go of their leader.