Police close in on Boris Johnson as he tries to block release of ‘partygate’ report

Like the Malaysian gout, the ‘partygate’ has become the crisis that does not stop. This Tuesday, the London Metropolitan Police -better known as Scotland Yard- announced the opening of an investigation against the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, for having violated the rules against covid that he himself implemented multiple times. A qualitative leap to scandal, which threatens to end his mandate in the short term. Although there is a big question on the table: if the public – and the deputies who could present the motion of censure against their leader – will have to wait to hear the allegations, or if they will be made public this week, as planned.

Johnson learned that he was being investigated by the police on Monday night, when the newspapers revealed the umpteenth party held in Downing Street: his birthday, in June 2020. The event, which the Prime Minister’s spokesman has not denied, was held in the room of the Council of Ministers, “for 10 minutes” in which Johnson ate some cake with officials, they insist. However, the leak to the press indicates that the party was also attended by his wife, Carrie, and Lulu Lytle, a designer who was in charge of decorating the residential wing of the building. His presence would disprove any allegation that it was a “labor act”, and can be corroborated in a very simple way: checking the surveillance cameras of the corridor that leads to the room in question. Sue Gray, the senior administration official investigating the scandal, reported that she was already aware of the alleged party, and had already investigated it.

Gray did not add any more information at that time, but this Tuesday morning, the director of Scotland Yard, Cressida Dick, announced that the data that Gray had shared with them had been enough for them to decide to open a formal investigation. Until now, the police had refused to do so, claiming that “they do not investigate violations of the anti-covid measures a posteriori”, but only if an agent corroborated them live, and that they would only open a case if they received clear evidence of any irregularity. This 180-degree turn, given the political pressure to which Dick was being subjected by the London Assembly, leaves Johnson in a very delicate situation, since it indicates that Gray must have found evidence indicating that the parties, in effect, they were illegal.

Johnson’s first reaction was to take advantage of the situation to try to buy time. The prime minister welcomed the opening of the police investigation as a way of “clarifying the matter.” However, at the same time, he indicated that he would not publish the Gray report, already practically complete, as suggested by the fact that the aforementioned sent his findings to the police. Until today, Johnson had been hiding behind the fact that Gray would publish his conclusions this week so as not to answer questions on the subject, and the deputies of his party had agreed to wait for that moment before deciding whether to present a motion of censure against him or not. But now, the report would be hidden in a drawer sine die “so as not to harm police investigations.”

The immediate reaction of the opposition, ‘Tory’ deputies in private, and political commentators was to point out that the concealment of the document does nothing more than add suspicions about the legality of their actions and extend to infinity a crisis that is slowly devouring to the Government precisely in the midst of a perfect storm: a possible outbreak of war in Ukraine and a serious economic and inflationary crisis.

But the plot twists keep piling up. After knowing the intention to delay the publication of the document, Scotland Yard made it clear that they do not have any problem when it is published, since they are carrying out an independent investigation and the case would not go to a popular jury, so there is no risk of ‘contaminating’ the process. Gray leaked to several media outlets that, in that case, he will firmly maintain the publication of the report for this week, and even for this same Tuesday, according to the Daily Mirror. The last thing that is known is that the Downing Street spokesman has denied that they tried to block the publication of the report -despite the fact that this is what he himself announced this morning-, but that they are consulting with lawyers and the police to find out if there is any Sensitive data that needs to be hidden.

Turn the page… or not

With this bomb on the table, the big question now is what the conservative deputies will do. Johnson has reorganized his campaign team to keep an updated list of which deputies from his caucus are loyal to him and which are not, and leaks to the media suggest that a hundred would be, an insufficient number to knock down a hypothetical motion of censure, in which the majority would be 182 votes.

The ‘Johnsonian’ wing is asking for one more opportunity, trusting that the crisis in Ukraine will recover the profile of the ‘premier’ and defuse the scandal. In his opinion, citizens “have turned the page” and want to talk about other issues. But the polls suggest that more than 60% of citizens -according to one published today by YouGov- believe that Johnson should resign, and their disapproval is touching historical figures. Perhaps the only thing that saves him is the risk of leaving the country in charge of an interim prime minister in the midst of a possible war in Europe, or the bad image of forcing the new ‘Tory’ leader to bear the electoral beating that is assumed already for the municipal ones of May. But every day it is more difficult to imagine a scenario in which Johnson continues beyond the summer.