Evening Standard Comment: Tory backbenchers – not Sue Gray – will determine Boris Johnson’s fate

The most sincere apologies, historically, are not painstakingly worded and lawyered to within an inch of their lives. But that is the one the British public received yesterday from Boris Johnson at the start of an extraordinary Prime Minister’s Questions.

After his initial statement, being repeatedly called on by opposition MPs to resign and receiving scant support from his own side, all Johnson could do was say he awaited Sue Gray’s report.

The reality is that a civil servant cannot be expected to act as judge, jury and executioner over a prime minister. The fate of Boris Johnson, therefore, does not lie in the hands of Gray, but the Conservative Party.

Gray may or may not conclude that Johnson broke the law or was involved in a suspected breach of the Ministerial Code. But irrespective of her findings, in the court of public opinion, a verdict has been reached.

The Prime Minister is accused of breaking a law he passed and attempting to cover it up. The question is now not what Johnson does — he is unlikely to walk away from the job he has spent years hoping to secure — but what Tory backbenchers do.

They must ask themselves if keeping Johnson in office is good for their party and right for the country, consider whether the British people can trust Johnson to guide them out of the Covid storm and more fundamentally, does he have the integrity to hold the highest office in the land?

Large and growing swathes of the public think not. A YouGov poll published last night showed Labour 10 points ahead, with the Tories on 28 per cent.

The choice facing Conservative MPs is whether to act or leave Johnson in post and tie their fate to his when voters give their verdict at the next general election.