Is Boris Johnson tearing the Conservative Party apart?

It is almost a year since many Tories decided that Boris Johnson would have to go, “yet a whole two prime ministers later, it’s almost as if he never left”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian.

This time last May, Johnson “was trying to bluster his way out of trouble” in the wake of Sue Gray’s report, with its talk of No. 10’s cleaners finding wine stains on the walls after lockdown-busting parties. Twelve months on and here he was again last week, cornered at an airport in the US, where he’d had a meeting with Donald Trump, having to defend himself from reports of new potential infringements of Covid regulations. These were uncovered by his own government-funded lawyers, who were looking at his official diary while preparing his defence for the Covid inquiry. Yet he still insisted it was a “stitch-up”.

‘Blame the blob’

Johnson would be the first to admit that his career has been a roller-coaster, said Andrew Pierce in the Daily Mail. Yet even he was left reeling by the phone call informing him that Alex Chisholm, the Permanent Secretary for the Cabinet Office, had referred the material to Scotland Yard and Thames Valley Police. They’re described as diary entries. But do not picture notes in a desk diary: what is being referred to is a minute-by-minute record of the PM’s working day, compiled by civil servants – and Johnson’s runs to 10,000 pages.

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The entries are believed to relate to a dozen or so gatherings, some at No. 10, others at Chequers, most of which were work-related (one “private” lunch was with his mother and sister in the garden at No. 10, which took place when a “rule of six” was in place). Johnson’s supporters maintain that if Cabinet Office officials had come to him, he could have explained that they all fell within the guidelines. Instead, they went straight to the police.

Johnson is said to have been apoplectic when he heard the news, said Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times. And though some of his allies have blamed it on the “blob” – hostile civil servants – others point the finger at ministers. Officials said that Chisholm had been duty-bound to refer the entries to the police, and that ministers had not been involved. But there is a suggestion that two ministers – Jeremy Quin and Oliver Dowden – had approved a separate decision to refer the matter to the MPs in the Privileges Committee investigating whether Johnson lied to the Commons about Partygate. This, say his allies, was a deliberate attempt to smear the former PM, and prolong the committee’s inquiry, which had been expected to report at the end of June. A finding against him could spark a by-election in his constituency.

Johnson is now reportedly considering suing the Government, said Katy Balls in The Guardian, while his supporters have made anonymous threats to “obstruct” Rishi Sunak’s premiership unless he calls a halt to the alleged “witch hunt”, with talk of forcing by-elections and triggering a no-confidence vote. This led to a pile-on on Tory WhatsApp groups last week. Jackie Doyle-Price posed the “question of the day”:“FFS, who on Earth is spouting this bonkersness? Are you determined to turn our party into a skip fire?” Insiders say the threats were the work of a small group of agitators, and don’t reflect the mood in the party. But even if Sunak has nothing to fear from them, the row has reignited a vexing question: after years of infighting, can the party unite behind the PM – or is the “appetite for a grudge match ... larger than the appetite to win?”

‘Skeleton of old, discredited regime still rattling around’

Sunak’s instinct is to deflect and defuse confrontation, said Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday, so that he can keep his “steely focus” on the economy. His efforts in that regard are showing signs of bearing fruit – but all voters see is a party that is pulling itself apart. The PM “is a competent manager”; he needs now to prove that he is also a strong leader, by telling his internal opponents either to get behind him, or expect to have the whip withdrawn. Johnson and his clique “have decided that if he is going down, he may as well take the Tory Party, the Government and the country with him”; the PM cannot “just sit impotently and watch that happen”.

Sunak’s problem, said Andrew Grice in The Independent, is that to avoid defeat in the next election, he must persuade voters that they have a “new” government. But “he can’t do that when the skeleton of the old, discredited regime is still rattling around”.

It doesn’t help that the PM was very much part of the old regime, said The Guardian. He “served loyally as Johnson’s chancellor for the very period he would now prefer to see fade from memory”; even if his opponents let him forget it, the Covid inquiry will keep that fact alive. Only this week, said The Times, the Cabinet Office was trying to block a demand to hand over to the inquiry all the WhatsApp messages Johnson sent and received during the pandemic – a prospect that will surely “send a chill” through any number of people who were in government during the crisis.