The prime minister is a lawbreaker – and he is staying put

Just 10 weeks ago, Sunak was the spotlessly popular and competent prime minister in waiting. But that moment passed

Johnson and Sunak may insist that in their view they were within the law, but that they are paying the penalty because they don’t want to go to court (AFP/Getty)

It may be the birthday cake gathering, because that was the only one that we know Rishi Sunak attended. The chancellor says he was in the cabinet room for a Covid meeting when, in the immortal words of Conor Burns, the Conservative MP trying to defend the prime minister, they were “ambushed with a cake”.

That was on Boris Johnson’s 56th birthday, 19 June 2020. What would have been standard procedure in any pre-pandemic office in the land would seem to have been judged by the police to be a criminal offence during lockdown. The prime minister and the chancellor have been notified by the Metropolitan Police, as a courtesy, that penalty notices are on their way.

A spokesperson for the prime minister has confirmed the unprecedented news, fulfilling the undertaking some time ago that, while the identity of the recipients of penalty notices are not usually made public, we would be told if the prime minister or the chancellor received fines. (However, we also know that Helen MacNamara, the former civil servant who was head of ethics, has received one – how that became public is still unknown.)

If it hadn’t been for the Ukraine war, there would have been even more of a fuss, but I still don’t think Johnson would have been forced out of office. The appetite for as many as 54 Conservative MPs for a change of leadership evaporated remarkably quickly after Dame Cressida Dick, the then Met Police commissioner, announced on 25 January that she would be investigating lockdown gatherings.

That announcement meant that Sue Gray’s full report couldn’t be published straight away, and the pressure that had been building was suddenly dissipated. For a moment, Johnson’s position had been precarious. We still don’t know what is in Gray’s detailed report, but if it is as damning as most people assume it is, its publication could well have triggered the 54 letters needed to require a vote of confidence in Johnson’s leadership. And in the atmosphere of those days, Johnson’s survival would have been a finely balanced question – not least because just 10 weeks ago, Sunak was the spotlessly popular and competent prime minister in waiting.

But that moment passed. The most significant change was that Johnson and the Conservative Party started to recover in the opinion polls. Conservative MPs were contemplating a change of leader mainly because they thought Johnson had become an irredeemable vote-loser; but it became obvious quite quickly that Labour wasn’t nearly far enough ahead to maintain the necessary level of panic.

Then events started to crowd in on history. Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine; the chancellor delivered a mini-budget that went down badly; and then he was engulfed in controversy about his wife’s non-dom status. Johnson is up; Sunak is down; and what is more, Sunak has received a penalty notice as well. The prime minister may well receive more than one notice. I thought the birthday cake gathering was one of the lesser charges, and that Sunak’s defence for that was a good one – that he turned up for an important meeting. But Johnson was at several gatherings where there seemed to be less of an excuse.

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If the prime minister thinks he can try to avoid disclosing how many penalty notices he receives, he will be put right by his advisers: it won’t be possible. Too many people will know. Even so, he will survive.

In the meantime, the opposition will overreach itself, claiming that Johnson and Sunak misled parliament when they said no rules had been broken. But they cannot claim that the prime minister and chancellor did so “knowingly”, which is the constitutional tripwire. And ultimately, whether the law was broken remains a matter of opinion: the police say they think it was; Johnson and Sunak may insist that in their view they were within the law, but that they are paying the penalty because they don’t want to go to court.

The brutal bottom line is that Conservative MPs are the ultimate judge and jury in the prime minister’s case: if 54 of them demand a vote of confidence in Johnson, it must be held, and if 181 of the total of 360 vote against him, he must go. That is not going to happen. Johnson is going to survive.

The more interesting question is whether Sunak uses this as the moment to quit. There has been a lot of commentary in recent days about how he will just pack up and go to California if things get too rough for him here. I think that is a misreading of him. Things don’t look great for him, but the one thing that that last few days have shown is that politics changes fast. In a year’s time, Sunak may be a contender again, riding the tide of economic recovery.