How much trouble is Boris Johnson in? Back-bench Conservatives, particularly in marginal seats, are deeply unimpressed by the Prime Minister’s half-hearted apology (in which he claimed that he had believed that the party he attended in Downing Street’s garden on 20 May 2020 was a “work event”). Departed minister David Frost has used his first big interview since his resignation to criticise the government’s approach to the pandemic and to reaching net zero. Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, has called on the Prime Minister to resign. And looming over everything is Sue Gray’s investigation into lockdown-breaking parties in government.
But one underrated asset the PM has is this: if Johnson does have to resign over lockdown-breaking parties, that raises awkward questions for many of his would-be successors. Rishi Sunak, the bookmakers’ favourite, literally lived next door. Can any departmental minister say for sure that no one in their employ – no special adviser, no civil service official – didn’t attend one of these parties? Or that they had a party of their own? As one back-bench MP put it to me last night, if Boris Johnson has to go as a direct result of “partygate”, “the only safe harbour” for MPs who want to put the row behind them is someone out of government, like Jeremy Hunt.
Now there are, of course, a number of Conservative MPs who do want Jeremy Hunt to be Conservative leader. And there are a number of Conservative MPs who want Liz Truss, and believe that she will be able to use her foreign policy briefs as a way to elide any wider questions about parties on Whitehall. And there are supporters of Sunak who think that, however awkward his physical proximity to Boris Johnson may be, his political distance would allow him to walk off any difficult questions about what was going on next door.
But what there isn’t is a critical mass of MPs who definitely think that their interests are best served by Boris Johnson going now – after all, as one MP points out, while a bad set of local elections are a problem for Conservative councillors, they aren’t a problem for Conservative MPs. So Boris Johnson has a good shot of surviving this row – at least until a cleaner pretext can be found by his would-be successors. So while Johnson’s premiership may well be in its terminal phase, I wouldn’t rule out that his government is a lot longer in the dying than we might expect.
He was at a cola convention.
…. He has a note from his mum.
We know the treasury had a party, even though Sunak wasn’t there. He’s not far from this mess.
I think, “well, nobody likes a grass” would be a far more convincing excuse than any of the ones Johnson has come up with.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s a proper cunt, but in the middle of the first lockdown my neighbours had a party…a loud fucking party with fights in the street etc…(I was woken up by one harriden screeching, “I’m washing my feet of you, Kyle”, which I found hilarious at the time).
They didn’t seem like the type that would take being grassed up lightly, and as such, I left it.
Two days later they were raided, they found a load of coke and a gun and the whole road was shut down all day.
He can’t be guilty for just living next door.
People will probably be alright with him not grassing up everyone else to save his job, provided he genuinely did not attend. I suspect a lot of people did not report neighbours for fear of being seen as a killjoy or due to fear of retaliation. I did not phone in my 90+ year old neighbour’s birthday party for example. I rolled my eyes, tutted and called them ‘fucking idiots’ under my breath; something I suspect happened a lot more than calls to the police. Sunak doing something similar will not damage his career all too much.
If Sunak was not invited to at least one of the parties then it would suggest he lacks support within the Party. Either you were in the parties or you are not in the Party.
So, no one else seems to be asking, but why the hell did they have parties? Did it not occur to anyone that it was such bad form?
Doesn’t Sunak actually live in the No 10 flat, and Johnson live at the flat above No 11 because it’s larger … ?
> “Boris and Carrie Johnson live in No 11 Downing Street but his office is in No 10”
So it’s not even next door, it’s directly upstairs.
I’m fascinated by how Sunak is managing to keep himself distanced in the public eye from the mess that is the current government given that he’s right at the heart of it.
The idea some Tories have at the moment about removing Boris and replacing with Rishi is laughable.
11 comments
How much trouble is Boris Johnson in? Back-bench Conservatives, particularly in marginal seats, are deeply unimpressed by the Prime Minister’s half-hearted apology (in which he claimed that he had believed that the party he attended in Downing Street’s garden on 20 May 2020 was a “work event”). Departed minister David Frost has used his first big interview since his resignation to criticise the government’s approach to the pandemic and to reaching net zero. Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, has called on the Prime Minister to resign. And looming over everything is Sue Gray’s investigation into lockdown-breaking parties in government.
But one underrated asset the PM has is this: if Johnson does have to resign over lockdown-breaking parties, that raises awkward questions for many of his would-be successors. Rishi Sunak, the bookmakers’ favourite, literally lived next door. Can any departmental minister say for sure that no one in their employ – no special adviser, no civil service official – didn’t attend one of these parties? Or that they had a party of their own? As one back-bench MP put it to me last night, if Boris Johnson has to go as a direct result of “partygate”, “the only safe harbour” for MPs who want to put the row behind them is someone out of government, like Jeremy Hunt.
Now there are, of course, a number of Conservative MPs who do want Jeremy Hunt to be Conservative leader. And there are a number of Conservative MPs who want Liz Truss, and believe that she will be able to use her foreign policy briefs as a way to elide any wider questions about parties on Whitehall. And there are supporters of Sunak who think that, however awkward his physical proximity to Boris Johnson may be, his political distance would allow him to walk off any difficult questions about what was going on next door.
But what there isn’t is a critical mass of MPs who definitely think that their interests are best served by Boris Johnson going now – after all, as one MP points out, while a bad set of local elections are a problem for Conservative councillors, they aren’t a problem for Conservative MPs. So Boris Johnson has a good shot of surviving this row – at least until a cleaner pretext can be found by his would-be successors. So while Johnson’s premiership may well be in its terminal phase, I wouldn’t rule out that his government is a lot longer in the dying than we might expect.
He was at a cola convention.
…. He has a note from his mum.
We know the treasury had a party, even though Sunak wasn’t there. He’s not far from this mess.
I think, “well, nobody likes a grass” would be a far more convincing excuse than any of the ones Johnson has come up with.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s a proper cunt, but in the middle of the first lockdown my neighbours had a party…a loud fucking party with fights in the street etc…(I was woken up by one harriden screeching, “I’m washing my feet of you, Kyle”, which I found hilarious at the time).
They didn’t seem like the type that would take being grassed up lightly, and as such, I left it.
Two days later they were raided, they found a load of coke and a gun and the whole road was shut down all day.
He can’t be guilty for just living next door.
People will probably be alright with him not grassing up everyone else to save his job, provided he genuinely did not attend. I suspect a lot of people did not report neighbours for fear of being seen as a killjoy or due to fear of retaliation. I did not phone in my 90+ year old neighbour’s birthday party for example. I rolled my eyes, tutted and called them ‘fucking idiots’ under my breath; something I suspect happened a lot more than calls to the police. Sunak doing something similar will not damage his career all too much.
If Sunak was not invited to at least one of the parties then it would suggest he lacks support within the Party. Either you were in the parties or you are not in the Party.
So, no one else seems to be asking, but why the hell did they have parties? Did it not occur to anyone that it was such bad form?
Doesn’t Sunak actually live in the No 10 flat, and Johnson live at the flat above No 11 because it’s larger … ?
https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnsons-flat-refurbishment-downing-street-refuses-to-reveal-why-pms-old-phone-was-accessed-after-claiming-it-could-not-be-12510474
> “Boris and Carrie Johnson live in No 11 Downing Street but his office is in No 10”
So it’s not even next door, it’s directly upstairs.
I’m fascinated by how Sunak is managing to keep himself distanced in the public eye from the mess that is the current government given that he’s right at the heart of it.
The idea some Tories have at the moment about removing Boris and replacing with Rishi is laughable.
This article is one reason why.
I never voted for Rishi.