The smiling assassins at Boris’s latest No 10 party

‘ASSASSINS come with smiles, when you’re at your weakest and most in need,’ so said Henry Hill, the turncoat mobster in Goodfellas.

And on Tuesday, nowhere was a more dangerous group of smiling assassins than those gathered in Downing Street at the invitation of the boss of bosses.

Boris Johnson was hosting a legal – and booze-free – shindig in honour of all Tory MPs who have served 25 years in Parliament. The guests arrived for afternoon tea with pearly whites on display and knives behind their backs.

Among them, Sir Graham Brady, keeper of the letters of no confidence in the PM.

Also in this so-called Class of 1997 was Theresa May, who’s well used to hostile environments and has given Johnson both barrels over Partygate, lockdowns and the Rwanda deportation plan. But there was no mention of the many elephants in the room. ‘It was all very English – a genteel affair,’ said one MP present. The reason? All these Tory grandees are waiting the results of Thursday’s local elections before making clear where their loyalties lie – no doubt at the same time as sending Boris a thank you for a most pleasant party.

Meanwhile, Tory MPs are nervous about the Metropolitan Police’s verdict on the party held in the Downing Street flat during lockdown when Abba songs blared after Dominic Cummings’ departure.

It risks being BoJo’s Waterloo.

For the PM denied to Parliament that a party had been held, as he also told backbenchers on the 1922 Committee who had specifically asked him to confirm it was a ‘work event’.

Allies of Boris have since said he was only in the flat to conduct a job interview with Henry Newman, a Tory adviser and friend of his wife Carrie.

However, sources tell me that Boris has privately given a different account of why he and some No 10 staffers were in the flat after the departure of Cummings and his colleague Lee Cain.

It went like this: ‘You’ve got to understand, we’d just lost Dom and Lee. We didn’t know who we could trust. So some of us went up to the flat to work out what to do next – for a council of war.’

Naturally, every council of war should be accompanied by the sound of Abba’s ‘Can you hear the drums, Fernando?’.