Boris Johnson’s escape act
Tories face defeat unless they try something new. Conservatism perhaps? Emily Hohler reports
For weeks Boris Johnson had insisted that Parliament and the public should wait for Sue Gray’s report before “passing judgment on his fitness for office”, says The Times. Thanks to the “inept late intervention” of the Metropolitan Police, this week’s report was merely an “update” on her investigation, “stripped of the evidence”. The result was a report that did not contain definitive proof that Johnson has committed a criminal offence or misled Parliament, “either of which would surely have brought a swift end to his premiership”.
Far from restoring confidence in the law, the Met’s “last-minute decision to prevent publication of the report in full has fuelled public suspicions of a cover-up”, says the Financial Times. The full Gray report should be published and the Met should also reveal full details of its own investigations once concluded (conveniently for Johnson, this could take months, notes Dan Falvey in the Daily Express).
The public has a right to know if its prime minister and top officials have broken the rules imposed on the rest of us. The “crisis-prone” Met commissioner Cressida Dick, who is also dealing with the fallout from a highly critical report about the Met’s “rotten culture”, is being “urged to resign”, says Rory Tingle in the Daily Mail.
She should, says former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal, in The Mail on Sunday. This is only the second time our political leaders – and prime minister – have been investigated by the police. The first was during the
Cash for Honours inquiry in 2006. It requires a “confidence-building response” and Dick has given us the opposite. The Gray report must be published in full – it is “rubbish” that a purely factual report would prejudice a police investigation into crimes that merit only a fixed penalty notice – and Dick should resign.
Slippery populism versus Leftist zealotry
The little that was published by Gray was “sufficiently damning” to ensure Johnson’s survival “remains in doubt,” says The Times. On Wednesday, The Daily Telegraph reported that Tobias Ellwood was planning to submit a letter to the 1922 Committee and had said that a vote of no confidence was now “inevitable”. In any case, Gray’s “update” tells us all we need to know, says the Financial Times. It lists 16 parties, 12 of which are under investigation and six of which Johnson (who still refuses to comment) has been linked to. As Theresa May noted in the Commons, he either “condoned the breaches, did not care enough to stop them, or is so disconnected that he does not know what is happening in his own office”.
Those hoping that Johnson will still be toppled are likely to be disappointed, says Philip Johnston in The Daily Telegraph. The focus will shift to Ukraine and the cost of living crisis. Johnson’s proposal to improve the Downing Street operation, part of his “escape act”, is likely to come to nothing. But if time sees “tempers cool”, it will not “dissipate the great harm done” to trust between the government and the governed. The only thing keeping him in place is the absence of any obvious successor. True, says Sherelle Jacobs in the same paper. In the meantime, the credibility of the entire Tory party suffers. The fact that Johnson “secretly did not believe in the lockdown... he championed” reinforces the idea that the Tories are “fake”. As Johnson accepts “high spending and the explosion of the Covid-19 regulatory state”, the political centre of gravity is shifting. The choice forming is “not between conservatism and radicalism or capitalism and socialism, but between slippery populism and Leftist zealotry”, and “unless the Tories regain some authenticity, their annihilation threatens to be not just decisive but historic”. The Tories face a “difficult road ahead. But a commitment to conservatism might just save them”.