Partygate: Conservative MPs face moment of truth over Boris Johnson's law-breaking and lies – Scotsman comment

Boris Johnson’s strategy to handle the Partygate affair was to play a long game, with the Prime Minister repeatedly urging people to wait for civil servant Sue Gray’s report and then outcome of the police’s investigations.

Despite the ridicule this attracted – why did Johnson need an inquiry to tell him whether or not he had been at a party? – it allowed anger to fade and events to intervene, softening attitudes to a scandal in plain sight.

However, there are now signs that Labour too is playing a long game, and one that should worry Conservative MPs.

Labour know the Commons vote tomorrow on whether to refer Johnson to the cross-party Privileges Committee for an investigation into whether he knowingly misled Parliament is unlikely to pass.

However, on the off-chance it did, the affair would remain in the public eye. And a cross-party report which would struggle to avoid what is already a fairly obvious conclusion – that Johnson broke lockdown laws, then lied about it – might make his resignation inevitable.

But, if the vote fails, it will still have forced MPs in the so-called ‘party of law and order’, who may have hoped to avoid giving their seal of approval to a law-breaking Prime Minister, to make a public judgement that Johnson’s actions were acceptable and there was ‘nothing to see here’.

In the deeply partisan atmosphere of Westminster, tomorrow’s vote may seem like a fairly straightforward one in which ‘a good Conservative’ has little option but to back their leader to the hilt. That would be a grave error.

Boris Johnson is dragging others down with him as he refuses to resign over lockdown breaches and lies to cover them up (Picture: Daniel Leal/WPA pool/Getty Images)

It is, instead, a moment of truth and a test of character that will put on record the names of politicians who place party loyalty above honesty and respect for the law.

The Conservative Party dates back to Robert Peel's government of 1834 and it is its principles, not personalities, that have ensured its longevity. Johnson’s charms and Brexiteer credentials may make him popular in the minds of some for now, but they are ephemeral and his obvious flaws are pulling down others around him.

Tory MPs have a big decision to make in the Commons tomorrow and one that may well come back to haunt them.

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