Will MPs now act to bring about a change at the top of Government?

THEY might have thought they could get away with it. But fixed penalty notices and fines for Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak – the two most important members of the British government – for attending lockdown-breaking parties during the coronavirus crisis show that no one is above the law.

But the confirmation that the two men are confirmed as law-breakers is just the start of this latest episode in the excruciating and highly damaging partygate scandal. It’s what happens next that really matters.

Will Conservative MPs step up their moves to kick out the PM and, presumably, now he is implicated, the Chancellor too? Will the pair decide to do the honourable thing and fall on their swords? Or will both of them tough it out and hope that sufficient time has passed between the crime and the punishment?

The likelihood of resignations seems remote. Both surely knew they were likely to get a fixed penalty notice as soon as the police inquiry opened. If they were going to step down, it would have been better to have done it straight away. The fact that they didn’t, suggests they’re ready to hang on and hope for the best.

That leaves it to Tory MPs to call for a vote of no confidence. Even in normal times, voting out a PM and a Chancellor – even if that is possible – would be extreme. To do so at the moment, with a cost of living crisis, a war raging in Europe and coronavirus and its impact on public services still causing serious issues, it would be hugely damaging to land the UK with a leadership crisis.

And with Rishi Sunak bracketed as a law-breaker along with the PM, the man many thought Boris Johnson’s most likely successor has effectively been ruled out.

Rishi was already damaged by the scandal over his wife’s ‘non-dom’ status for tax purposes – since revised – while his own possession of a US green card giving him the ability to live and work in America saw his popularity rating plunge over the past week or so. If you rule out Rishi as a potential party leader, who is left?

MPs will be weighing up the costs versus the benefit of starting the process of ditching the Prime Minister today, as the news of this latest development hits home. Parliament is in recess so the opportunity to plot in the bars and the tearooms is not available. But MPs are, for the most part, in their constituencies.

It is here that they ought to get the most honest and candid opinions about what course of action they should take. We may be some way off a general election, but voters will want to see how their MP behaves over this issue. And the likelihood is that many who endured the misery of lockdown, unable to visit dying relatives and kept away from family and friends, will be making it very clear to their local MP just what they believe he or she should do.

Throughout this whole crisis it has been MPs who have held the future of the nation’s leader in their hands. Up to now they have chosen to sit back, rather than act decisively. They may stick to that course, citing all that is going on as a reason to sit on their hands. But don’t bank on it.