Analysis: Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have broken their own covid rules, but will they go?

The Prime Minister and chancellor have been fined after breaking the rules they created.

A police officer outside 10 Downing Street. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak have been told they will be fined as part of a police probe into allegations of lockdown parties

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were handed fixed term penalty notices on Tuesday in a move that threatens to derail this Tory Government.

This is not about whether the rules were too extreme, too vague, or easy to misinterpret, it is a simple truth both men have been issued fines for breaking the law.

This in itself should be a resigning matter, but it is their comments about the parties that are more likely to cause concern.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson (right) with Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak have both been fined.

It’s one thing to say you’ve attended a party by mistake, it’s another to repeatedly deny you did anything wrong.

Speaking in the Commons on December 7 last year, Mr Sunak told MPs he did not attend a party.

The Prime Minister did the same, a line he has repeated many times in the House of Commons.

By convention, a minister found to have misled parliament is expected to resign or face being sacked, but this is a Government far beyond following conventions.

We have seen the Priti Patel report fudged, Dominic Cummings kept in post, albeit briefly, and even Matt Hancock left able to resign rather than being fired.

If you expect Mr Johnson to throw in the towel, you have not been paying attention.

Instead, attention will turn to the reaction of backbench Tory MPs, and whether a vote of confidence will be triggered.

Conservative MPs were surprisingly quiet on Tuesday, a fact helped by recess, with the only minister to breaking cover to tweet doing so about the return of Derry Girls.

Backbench MPs brave enough to say something are reading from the same script they had before Mr Johnson was fined.

They point to the Ukraine crisis, and suggest a change of leader now would destabilise Britain and help Vladimir Putin.

How long that position holds, remains to be seen.

Mr Johnson will apologise and point to the issues facing people in Britain, and vow to deliver for them.

Tory MPs will possibly continue to do nothing until they realise the public have turned.