Johnson’s survival over past month is bad news for Sunak
It increasingly looks like Johnson will remain
Just cast your mind back to the end of January when “partygate” was at its height and the prevailing assumption was that Johnson would not survive with the likely successor being Rishi Sunak. That’s not happened. Johnson set up the Gray investigation which was then taken up by the Met all taking the immediate sting out of the whole business.
For the fact is that Johnson is going to fight hard to retain the jobs that has been his objective throughout his whole life. He isn’t going to give this up easily and while he remains at Number 10 he has a lot of power in his hands.
The next big hurdle for him to surmount will be the outcome of the police probe and then the full Gray report. There are already reports of how Number 10 is testing different explanations for his attendance at events. This is from the Indy
As the clock ticks down to what looks like an inevitable fixed penalty notice – and enormous pressure for the prime minister to resign – we are being given a fascinating insight into the fightback to come..Friendly newspapers are being briefed about what are either, depending on your point of view, the clever arguments his lawyers will employ – or their increasingly desperate excuses. So, it has been briefed that Mr Johnson will acknowledge he attended up to 6 rule-busting gatherings the Met is investigating, but will argue they were “part of his working life”.
Given that he has made clear he won’t resign then the only way he could be ousted is by him losing a confidence vote of Tory MPs. There could be such a vote but maybe those opposed to Johnson missed their big chance to do this earlier in the month. Since then the PM’s team has been working hard with the parliamentary party and it is far from certain that such a vote would happen.
All this is bad news for Sunak who was said to have had a full leadership campaign ready to go at the end of January. His main chance of becoming PM is for Johnson to go before the next election
My current guess is that Johnson will survive and fight the next general election as PM and as I have reported here before I am betting at longish odds that the next PM will be Starmer. The bet clearly requires Johnson to still be in post on election day.