Reading Sue Gray’s interim report, it’s hard to believe that the people who made the law had obeyed the law
The interim findings of a report by the civil servant Sue Gray are damning of the culture at the heart of Boris Johnson’s government. Ms Gray cited “failures of leadership and judgment”; “excessive” consumption of alcohol in the workplace; and officials cowed into silence about Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street. Ms Gray said she has been “extremely limited” by a police investigation and was unable to make firm conclusions about what she had discovered. However, Ms Gray’s report suggests that some of the events she examined didn’t comply with lockdown rules, saying that “a number of these gatherings should not have been allowed to take place or to develop in the way that they did”. Reading this, it’s hard to believe that the people who made the law had obeyed the law.
Mr Johnson’s argument to MPs had been that the Downing Street parties were not parties because lockdown guidance had been heeded. The Johnson logic was that since the rules said there could be no party, whatever happened wasn’t a party. The trouble with this reasoning is that Ms Gray has amassed enough evidence for the police to investigate a dozen potential criminal breaches of Covid rules in Mr Johnson’s home and office. The Met has 300 photographs and 500 pieces of paper from Ms Gray, which only raise the stakes for Tory MPs. This feels more like the vapour trail from a cruise missile than the wispy smoke coming off a warm gun.