What does Boris Johnson have to fear from the Partygate inquiry?

Johnson’s chances of a comeback are in the hands of fellow MPs – and possibly the voters of South Ruislip, says Sean O’Grady

A placard calling for Boris Johnson to resign after the Partygate revelations (AFP/Getty)

It is not looking good for Boris Johnson, and the next few weeks may decide his political fate.

The interim Partygate report by the House of Commons committee on privileges found that “evidence strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Boris Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings” and notes he did not seek to correct any of the contested replies he gave in the Commons to questions about the scandal.

Will the committee try to determine whether Johnson lied to or misled the Commons? Or if he did so deliberately or inadvertently or recklessly? And if he tried to correct any erroneous remarks at the earliest opportunity?

The Commons can be forgiving to ministers who mislead the House unwittingly and who show some contrition. A reckless or knowingly misleading statement is a rather more serious matter, and has led some ministers to resign their post or even leave the Commons.

The committee is clear Johnson did not seek to clarify or correct any of his statements, as tended to be his general habit, for example on the employment statistics. This is almost certainly something he will end up being sanctioned for, if nothing else. The committee also says: “There is evidence that the House of Commons may have been misled.”

The committee said it will determine: “(1) whether the House was misled; (2) if so, whether that was a contempt – which has been defined as an action or omission which may have obstructed or impeded the functioning of the House of Commons; and (3) if so, how serious was that contempt.”

Who is on the privileges committee?

By convention, the chair of any committee is an opposition MP. In this case it would be Chris Bryant, but he has been so outspoken about Johnson that he recused himself in favour of the mother of the House, Harriet Harman.

Aside from Harman, there is one other Labour member (Yvonne Fovargue), one from the SNP (Allan Dorans) and four Conservatives: Bernard Jenkin, Charles Walker, Alberto Costa and Andy Carter.

Why do some people call it a ‘kangaroo court’ or ‘witch hunt’?

Those taking this view tend to be the most loyal to Johnson, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries – figures who believe he did nothing wrong at all during Partygate.

Others might say the privileges committee process is “quasi-judicial” but lacks the kind of safeguards that would be found in a courtroom - rules of evidence, a defence lawyer on hand, or a jury.

That said, the committee will be run by respected clerks, will be given legal guidance by its adviser Ernest Ryder, a senior judge, and Johnson is the beneficiary of legal advice paid for by the taxpayer and reportedly worth £222,000. The standard of proof the committee will apply when deciding on factual issues will be “on the balance of probabilities”, the usual civil test (rather than “beyond reasonable doubt”, in criminal cases).

It is worth noting that lying to parliament is not a crime, but a breach of Commons rules and the Commons as a whole, not the committee, will decide what to do in what is an essentially political process. Johnson is not on trial.

Does Sue Gray leaving to work for Keir Starmer make a difference?

Yes, some. Johnson has already called it ”surreal” that the committee will rely on the investigation she conducted into Partygate. The Sue Gray report is an important official chronology of the events concerned, and contained her key judgement that: “Some of the more junior civil servants believed that their involvement in some of these events was permitted given the attendance of senior leaders. The senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for this culture”.

Johnson’s supporters argue that the Gray report is worthless now that her party prejudices have supposedly been revealed. However, the facts in the Gray report are widely accepted, and her judgments are rather mild. It was not a coup de grace that ended his leadership. Gray’s report is also far from the only piece of evidence laid before the committee, and Gray did not explore the truth of any of Johnson’s statements to parliament. The committee states that its current report “is not based on the Sue Gray report”.

What happens next?

Johnson will give evidence in person in the week beginning 20 March. Other witnesses will also be questioned, and documents have already been passed to the committee. After some rumination, the committee will issue a final report with recommendations for any “punishment”, and the Commons as a whole will decide if it wishes to accept them. It usually does accept the recommendations, but this unprecedented inquiry into the conduct of a prime minister is extremely contentious. The last time the House rejected the committee suggestion was when Tory MPs voted to save Owen Paterson from punishment over lobbying – a move that triggered so much anger that Paterson resigned anyway.

What sanctions could follow?

The committee can recommend to the House that an individual be found to have committed a contempt and sanctions can include oral or written apologies, suspension from the service of the House for a specified period, or even expulsion.

Might there be a by-election?

Quite possibly, it would be sensational. Under the Recall of MPs Act 2015, if the Commons orders the suspension of Johnson from the service of the House “for a period of at least 10 sitting days, or, if the period is not expressed as a specified number of sitting days, for a period of at least 14 days”, then a “recall petition” will be opened for signatures in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. The threshold to trigger a by-election is high – 10 per cent of eligible electors, in this case about 7,000 voters. They have six weeks to sign up.

If the threshold is reached, a by-election will be held and Johnson may stand as a candidate, whether as a Conservative or not. Given the current state of the parties in the polls, Johnson would almost certainly lose – even more so if the opposition parties put up a single anti-Johnson candidate (though there’s no suggestion of that at present).

Such a turn of events would mark at least a temporary break in Johnson’s political career. It would not preclude him from seeking to stand in the next general election in any constituency – such as, to take a pertinent example, the Mid Bedfordshire seat being vacated by Dorries. That would mean he’d be back in the Commons to make another move on the leadership of the Conservative Party and become leader of the opposition in the next parliament, assuming a Labour win next year. But we are now getting ahead of ourselves.