SettleonSunday Honour is an alien concept to Johnson

IT was, to say the least, quite a shameful achievement. The very place where the Covid laws were hatched was the one where they were most egregiously and most often broken.

No fewer than 83 people in Downing Street, including Boris Johnson, wife Carrie, and Chancellor Rishi Sunak, were responsible for flouting the rules 126 times. Indeed, one person is said to have broken the law no less than five times.

Some across Westminster and beyond are now holding their breath as Sue Gray, the Whitehall mandarin, publishes – at long last – her full report into the Number 10 culture that spawned partygate.

One suggestion is Downing Street staff’s WhatsApp messages and emails will be published “verbatim”, showing how they were warned that they would be breaking the law if they held lockdown parties. Some of the 500-plus photographs are also expected to be in the Gray report.

It’s due within the next 72 hours when the PM will address the Commons to give his version of events and plead his innocence and, for the one time he was fined, his mitigation.

But while some within SW1 are nervous, others will be relaxed, including doubtless the PM himself, believing for all the opprobrium he has suffered that the blonde Houdini has survived to fight another day. “The worst is past,” said one Tory source.

It has now emerged Johnson and Gray had a private meeting to discuss her report. A Whitehall insider made clear the contents were not discussed, just the process. But Labour, understandably, are demanding an “urgent explanation”, stressing how public trust in the process has already been “depleted”.

Around a dozen people, including the PM, will be named in the Gray report but it’s thought at least two officials are considering legal action to prevent them from being publicly identified. This could delay publication.

When he gets to his feet in the Commons, Boris will seek to explain away why he initially told MPs so emphatically that no

Covid rules had been broken; only later did he realise the danger of such a definitive statement

The biggest mistake politicians can make is to take the voters for fools – a price will always be paid

and inserted the notion he had been “reassured” no rules had been broken.

The biggest mistake a politician can make is to take the voters for fools – a price will always be paid for doing so.

Despite Scotland Yard’s probe being finally over, questions still remain. Privately, MPs have expressed “general mystification” as to why some people were fined for attending some social gatherings while others did not.

For example, Johnson attended other events – beyond being ambushed by a birthday cake – for which he did not get fined yet officials who were at them did receive fixed penalty notices. Quizzed if there was any explanation for the Met’s thinking on this, a Downing Street insider told the Politico website: “Your guess is as good as mine.”

With most of the fines dished out to lowly civil servants, one Whitehall insider complained: “It’s a disgrace how junior officials have ended up taking the rap.

“Some have had to get lawyers and are paying hundreds in fines.” Now, however,

months after Westminster’s partygate scandal reached boiling point, the mood among Tory MPs has cooled. For many, including some who submitted letters, calling for Boris to resign, there is a sense that the moment of greatest danger is behind him. The dog has barked and the caravan has moved on.

With the cost-of-living crisis now firmly at the top of the political agenda and likely to be so until the next General Election, Conservatives are weighing up what some see as the pros of Johnson’s ability to deliver and his iron resilience against the cons of his skulduggery and shamelessness.

Many will conclude it’s just too late and too risky to ditch the captain now and they’re stuck with Boris until the next election.

In February, Sir Charles Walker, a senior backbencher concluded it was “inevitable” Johnson would be forced out over partygate. This week, he admitted: “I was wrong.”

Yet some colleagues believe their leader is still in danger. Veteran backbencher Sir Roger Gale, a Johnson critic, said: “I don’t think he is by any means out of the woods. I still feel there is a likelihood of a leadership challenge mounted before the summer recess.”

Indeed, if Boris gets beyond

Gray, the next test will quickly arrive on June 23, when the Conservatives defend two seats in by-elections, Wakefield and Tiverton, and Honiton – ironically taking place on the sixth anniversary of the Brexit vote. Chances are high Labour will win the former and the Liberal Democrats the latter.

Later in the year will then come the partygate probe by the Commons Privileges Committee to judge whether or not Johnson misled Parliament, which he clearly did. The point is whether he did so intentionally, which may be impossible to prove definitively. Even though the headlines have moved beyond one controversy onto other things, as they always do, the shamefulness of partygate will linger on – if not so much for Conservative MPs looking to their own electoral survival, certainly for many voters who rightly demand integrity, honesty and high standards from their political leaders.

If Boris is wearing a smirk this weekend, imagine how much bigger it would be if, in the next few weeks, Durham police decide to fine Keir Starmer for breaking Covid laws and, consequently, the Labour leader resigns. Irony wouldn’t cover it.

The Government says it abides by the seven principles of public life introduced after the 1994 cash-for-questions scandal. They include honesty – “holders of public office should be truthful”; and leadership – they should “challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs”.

It seems likely that neither Johnson nor a majority of his colleagues in the Commons will take the honourable course over partygate, which has so demeaned our politics, and it will be left up to the good judgment of voters on polling day.