House of Commons vote will show if Boris Johnson still wields any real influence on MPs

Boris Johnson’s seemingly diminished band of supporters inside the Conservative Party and his increasingly emboldened critics can kick up as much dust as they like this week.

But come Monday, when the House of Commons debates and votes on the Committee of Privileges report that has found he deliberately mislead parliament over Partygate, Tory MPs must pick a side. It will be time for scores on the doors.

Only then will we know for sure whether or not Johnson, who would have faced a 90-day suspension had he not resigned as an MP last week, retains enough influence to foment substantial grief for the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, whom he blames for helping to force him from Number 10.

It is beyond doubt that the House of Commons will vote to approve the unflinching report released on Thursday by the committee, which has also recommended that Johnson be denied a pass for access for the parliamentary estate – barred like a pub bowsie. The opposition will make sure of that.

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There are 650 MPs in the House of Commons. Excluding the speaker and his deputies, and the seven Sinn Féin MPs who do not take their seats, the opposition numbers about 280 MPs, all of whom are more or less guaranteed to vote against Johnson.

There are a further eight DUP MPs, yet nobody can be sure what way they will vote. They have a complex relationship with the former prime minister. But the DUP also has ongoing business to conclude with the current government led by Sunak, so may not want to jab its fingers in his eyes by voting in support of his troublemaking predecessor-but-one.

[ Partygate inquiry: Boris Johnson knowingly misled House of Commons ]

With at least 280 anti-Johnson votes seemingly already in the bag to back the committee’s report, it will only require another 45 or so Tories to vote to back the report for the house to formally adopt it and censure Johnson. The Conservative Party has 352 MPs. Those votes will be easily mustered.

But while it is a foregone conclusion that Johnson will lose Monday’s vote, the margin of the loss matters. The vote technically will be a free one as it is on “house business”. Therefore the convention is that it should not be whipped – members should be able to vote however they see fit.

The breakdown of the votes among the 352 Tories will tell us much about the prospect of Sunak fully riding out the Boris storm in advance of next year’s election, or whether there remains enough of a hint of support for Johnson that will embolden him to believe that he can one day return as leader.

Some have pointed to Johnson’s failure to muster more than 21 Tory MPs to rebel against Sunak’s Windsor Framework agreement in the spring as evidence that he is a busted flush as far as parliamentary influence is concerned.

Those 21 anti-Windsor Framework votes in March were a rebellion against a whipped vote on the deal with the European Union. It was really only the pro-Boris ultras among the Brexiteers who were motivated enough to vote against Sunak then. Monday’s free vote on the committee report is an entirely different matter.

[ Partygate explainer: Five things we learned from the report on Boris Johnson ]

Although there is widespread acceptance among Conservative Party MPs that Johnson misled the house over Partygate, there is also some sympathy for him due to a sense that a government diktat making parties illegal is a fundamentally un-Conservative thing to do. That will win Johnson a few votes.

Then there are the ones who will be afraid of the reaction of their local party membership if they vote to ban from the parliament estate the man who personified Brexit. Some will be concerned at the prospect of deselection from angry members for the next election. That will win him a few more.

But the likelihood is still that the overwhelming majority of Tory MPs, including those who hate Johnson plus those who want to show unity with Sunak in advance of the next election, will vote to finish him off once and for all and to draw a line under the rancour of the Johnson years.

His chances of a route back look slim and Sunak will walk on, albeit with a limp, to lead the party into the next election.