Boris Johnson launches plan to Save Big Dog with Operation Hangdog

The prime minister has explained himself, again. But what we really want to know, writes John Rentoul, is if he actually lied to parliament

‘Nobody told me’, claims Boris Johnson (Ian Vogler)

The prime minister adopted the most mournful expression that was possible with most of his face covered by a mask. Which meant the eyes had to do the work, looking down when he was asked about apologising to the Queen for the parties the night before her husband’s funeral, and looking wide and pleading at Beth Rigby of Sky News, who was asking the questions.

The answers were carefully worded, quite at odds with Boris Johnson’s reputation for careless bluster and inventive use of language. He was on a visit to a hospital to send a message that the government was getting on with delivering the people’s priorities, namely clearing the NHS backlog, but the only question journalists were interested in was whether he had lied to parliament.

The context of his answer to that question was an oxymoronic apology for “misjudgements that were made” (by persons unknown) “... for which I take full responsibility”. But the taking of full responsibility was offered as a general defence against how the drinks in the Downing Street garden looks “in retrospect”, because “I understand people’s feelings” and that they “feel as strongly as they do”.

If he had his time again, he said, “I would not have allowed things to develop in that way.” He repeated what he said in the Commons last week, which was that he should have told the assembled throng to go back inside and get on with their work.

On the specifics, however, he denied the allegation made by Dominic Cummings, who at the time was his chief adviser, that Cummings and others had warned him not to go ahead with the event. Here, his answers departed from natural language and, as he spoke, we could almost see the tracked changes on the legal draft he had memorised: “Nobody told me that what we were doing was against the rules; nobody told me it wasn’t a work event.”

He repeated these forms of words a few times, first adding a “categorically”, and then an “I am absolutely categorical about that”, although at the same time he lapsed into the third-person plural passive of the outside observer: “I can’t believe that we would have gone ahead with an event,” he said, if he had been warned against it. “I would remember that.”

It was a multi-ditch defensive rampart. It was a long time ago. Recollections may differ. If someone had said forcefully enough that it was a bad idea, it wouldn’t have gone ahead. Categorically.

Presumably, that is the story he has told Sue Gray, the civil servant charged with investigating what started as a presentational problem and has now become a constitutional crisis. And presumably, Johnson is reasonably confident that his account won’t be contradicted by anyone other than Cummings, who has some drawbacks as a witness for the prosecution – mainly that he has said he wants to bring the prime minister down.

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What is curious about this, however, is that it has nothing to do with whether the prime minister knowingly misled parliament. He hasn’t said anything in parliament about whether or not he was warned against holding an event in the Downing Street garden. That denial came from his spokesperson this weekend and was repeated by him in his hospital visit, but he wasn’t asked about it in the Commons at Prime Minister’s Questions last week.

What was striking about this element of Operation Save Big Dog – the name was given to the effort to rescue Johnson’s premiership by a source reported by Anna Isaac of The Independent – was how short and precise Rishi Sunak’s contribution was compared with the prime minister’s.

The chancellor said: “The prime minister set out his understanding of this matter in parliament last week, and I’d refer you to his words.” Sunak knows the difference between words uttered in the Commons and those said outside, which allowed him to sound as if he was minimally supportive of Johnson without any risk of being dragged into the “lied to parliament” hyperbole.

I assume that the prime minister will repeat his denial that he was warned about the “work event” in the Commons tomorrow. But Sunak will not have to defend those words. The chancellor has done the minimum required as a cabinet minister – so hastily he forgot to take his microphone off after his short interview – leaving him with clean hands and untainted by disloyalty to await events.