Can MPs still trust Johnson?

The Tory party’s key question

YORKSHIRE’S 26 Tory MPs from Chancellor Rishi Sunak to the new incumbents of ‘red wall’ seats have a profound question to reconcile this weekend: Can they look their voters in the eye and tell them they are proud of their Prime Minister’s behaviour, that they share his values and that their constituents should, too?

This fundamental question takes on new significance due to the hiatus over the publication of senior civil servant Sue Gray’s inquiry into Downing Street’s parties in lockdown – a scandal that has caused incalculable damage to the PM, his party and public trust in politicians per se.

And the current paralysis, all caused by Boris Johnson’s lack of honesty and humility when the party revelations became public, is another insult to the only jurisdiction that matters – the court of public opinion.

After all, there is no legal justification for any aspect of the Gray report being withheld amid the view that disclosure could prejudice the Metropolitan Police inquiry now underway.

No arrests have been made – the point when the judicial process becomes ‘active’ – and there is no jury to influence because the penalty for lockdown breaches is a fixed penalty notice.

And the fact that Britain’s biggest police force, and country’s top civil servants, do not grasp this, points to either naivety on their part or a suspicion that the Government is playing for time in the hope that this delay actually bolsters Mr Johnson’s position.

But what all Conservative MPs do now have to consider is whether this is justifiable when their constituents – people who obeyed by the lockdown rules – feel betrayed by the Government’s deceit and wider loss of trust in Mr Johnson’s integrity?

And, make no mistake, if they still choose to back the PM after all this neither voters, nor this newspaper, will either forgive or forget those MPs concerned at the next election.