Boris Johnson had no choice but to throw himself upon the mercy of Conservative MPs

The prime minister was more contrite than expected, fully aware of the threat to his position, writes John Rentoul

Today he did what he had to do to keep as many Tory MPs on his side as he could (AFP/Getty)

Boris Johnson understands the reality of his position – that he is prime minister only as long as Conservative MPs continue to support him. He knows that they came close to getting rid of him in January, and that he was saved more by luck than by anything he did.

He knows that there is now insufficient appetite for a change of leadership and that there is no alternative Tory prime minister who currently threatens his hold on the post. But he has a keener sense than many commentators that he needs to work constantly to keep persuading them that he is their best bet, and that a leadership challenge is not in their individual interests.

I expected Johnson to repeat his apology from a week ago, when he received a penalty notice for breaking lockdown law. Then he said he “respected” the outcome of the police investigation, with the unmistakable implication that he didn’t agree with it.

He did repeat that, but made no attempt to hold the line. He had obviously realised that any hint of yesterday’s Times front-page headline – “Defiant PM insists he didn’t break Covid rules” – would be disastrous. So he told MPs he not only “respected” the police decision, he “accepted” it. He apologised for “the offence of which I have been found guilty”.

He seemed unusually aware that the most dangerous threat to him would be if he allowed his natural irreverence, pride and sense of destiny to override his instruction to himself to grovel and to keep grovelling. “I apologise profusely, very sincerely, heartily, once again, for what I have got wrong; I made a serious mistake,” he said, in as many variations as he could think of.

What we saw today was the other Boris Johnson identified by Dominic Cummings, his former chief adviser: the Boris Johnson who suddenly stops being a wonky shopping trolley babbling rubbish and becomes a politician ruthlessly focused on his own survival.

The prime minister remained totally alert for the whole 90 minutes in the Commons chamber, fully aware of the threat to his position. It came not from the benches opposite. Keir Starmer made a good speech, mainly devoted to the emotional argument against the prime minister, citing the case of John Robinson, a Lichfield man who followed the law and did not hold his dying wife’s hand, not even “just for nine minutes”. But Starmer didn’t ask any difficult questions – and nor did most other opposition MPs.

Joanna Cherry, for the Scottish National Party and a QC like Starmer, asked Johnson why he hadn’t taken the chance with taking his case to court. That produced another explicit acceptance of error. He had thought his birthday gathering was within the law, but that “has turned out not to be true and I humbly accept that”.

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But the weakness of the opposition was that they could only call on Conservative MPs to do the decent thing and “remove this prime minister from office”. In the past, a leader of the opposition would have demanded a general election, but Starmer recognises, as Johnson does, that the threat to him comes from the benches behind him rather than from those in front.

So much so that the prime minister and his advisers seem to have briefly considered cancelling Johnson’s trip to India tomorrow, on the grounds that it would be dangerous for the leader to be out of the country while MPs are voting back home – haunted by the folk memory of Margaret Thatcher’s visit to Paris while a leadership challenge was underway in Westminster.

Starmer has ingeniously tabled a motion for Thursday mildly referring the question of whether Johnson has knowingly misled parliament about lockdown gatherings to the privileges committee – a soft alternative to a motion of censure. This softer motion is designed to attract the votes of Tory MPs. They won’t vote for it, not this time. But it is the right tactic, and Johnson knows it.

Today he did what he had to do to keep as many Tory MPs on his side as he could.