What the commentators said
All-night boozing. Punch-ups. Pools of sick. Wine stains on walls. Cleaners being mistreated. Imagine such scenes unfolding in No. 10 under any of Johnson’s predecessors, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. “You can’t” – because none would have tolerated them. Yet Gray’s report makes it clear that this was precisely the sort of behaviour that unfolded in No. 10, “the most Covid law-breaking address in the country”, at a time the rest of us were under lockdown restrictions. Gray’s verdict might have been “even more” damning, said Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times, had Downing Street not succeeded in having some details removed from it. What’s more, there’s now evidence that Carrie Johnson had a rule-breaking party in the Downing Street flat on the PM’s birthday – an event not even mentioned in the Gray report.
This scandal is about much more than parties, said Jonathan Sumption in The Sunday Telegraph. “It is about personal integrity and standards in public life.” Britain’s unwritten constitution is “uniquely dependent” on ministers acting with honour and decency. Yet Johnson – who repeatedly denied that events we now know he himself attended ever took place – has driven a coach and horses through the conventions that underpin it. Tory MPs should oust him.
When Gray’s report was first published, Johnson’s allies took comfort from a sense that there was “no smoking gun” to push Tory MPs over the edge, said Katy Balls in The Guardian. But in the days that have followed, more have submitted letters of no confidence. Some remain furious about Partygate; others are gripped by an “identity crisis” over the Government’s direction. Still others, who had been wavering, have been spooked by a new poll suggesting that the Tories could lose all but three of the 88 battleground seats where they hold slim majorities over Labour – including the PM’s own. So now, it’s “more likely than not” that a confidence vote will take place. Johnson’s allies, citing the lack of an obvious successor, “remain confident” that he’d win such a vote, said James Forsyth in The Spectator. But having to fight one would still be “a huge blow” to his authority. “Johnson is fast approaching his moment of maximum vulnerability.”