The attempt to get rid of Boris Johnson has been postponed – he lives to fight another day

The Metropolitan Police investigation means the important parts of Sue Gray’s report are delayed, writes John Rentoul

Sitting more comfortably, prime minister? (PA)

The moment Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, announced that her force was investigating “events” in Downing Street and Whitehall that may have broken lockdown laws, it seemed that Sue Gray’s internal report couldn’t be published. Oh yes it can, government and police sources assured journalists, rather uncertainly. Just one or two details to be sorted out.

After days of confusion, it turns out that we were right first time. This morning’s statement from the Met police makes it clear that, if the Gray report is published, it will deal in full only with the events that no one is interested in.

As I understand it, of the 17 “gatherings” investigated by Gray, the police decided that eight of them were serious. In those eight cases there was strong evidence that the law had been broken. The other nine cases (although she did not say how many there were) “are assessed as not reaching the threshold for criminal investigation”, Commissioner Dick said on Tuesday.

So now the Met says that Gray can report on those events, but that it has asked for “minimal reference” to be made to the events it is investigating. It tries to avoid the blame for what looks like chaos by saying that it did not ask “for the report to be delayed”, but it seems that the police did ask for the report to be completely rewritten to take all the important bits out, which could have been predicted might delay things.

More importantly, it means that the moment of clarity about what happened, and the extent of Boris Johnson’s responsibility for it, has been postponed. If the Gray report is published, it will contain only “minimal reference” to the most serious potential breaches of lockdown regulations; or it may not be published at all. Either way, we will have to wait for the outcome of the police investigation before there is a definitive public account of the Downing Street parties.

That means the attempt to dislodge Johnson is off. I thought there were enough Conservative MPs to trigger a leadership challenge, on the grounds that he has already admitted that the “work event” in the Downing Street garden shouldn’t have happened. But the 54 letter-writers needed the moment of clarity afforded by the Gray report to give them the pretext to move against the prime minister: it would have allowed a semblance of due process, and it would have acted as a signal to act together.

Without that moment, the disorganised rebellion against the prime minister has aimlessly dispersed, allowing him to escape to fight another day. Johnson may have been saved by the law of unintended consequences. Gray rightly consulted the police about her inquiries. At some point the police, having refused to get involved, realised that they would have to investigate, and Commissioner Dick was due to appear in front of the London Assembly on Tuesday to give a regular update. Suddenly, an orderly, step-by-step progress was thrown into confusion.

Quite by accident, the greased piglet, as David Cameron called him, has made it to the end of another week. If he can do that another 104 times he’ll be leading the Conservatives into the next election.

The police investigation ought to be the end for Johnson. We don’t know whether he broke the law. We don’t even know if the Met Police thinks there is strong evidence that he personally, as opposed to other people in government, broke the law. And if the Gray report is published it will make only “minimal reference” to such matters. But the police think there is strong evidence that the law was repeatedly broken all around him, in which case he knew or should have known about it.

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But we will now have to wait even longer for clarity. The police shouldn’t take as long as the doomed 16-month investigation into allegations of cash for peerages in Tony Blair’s time, because this time there is evidence for “the most serious and flagrant type of breach” and there is “little ambiguity around the absence of any reasonable defence”, as Commissioner Dick said on Tuesday. What is more, the police only have to issue fixed penalty notices for these offences – and only if those are challenged do they have to be ready to go to court.

But the prime minister now has weeks or months in which to hope that public anger will abate. I am not sure that it will. If the police do issue fixed penalty notices it will remind people of the mockery made of the rules the prime minister asked them to observe and the sacrifices he asked them to make.

A moment of clarity will come, whether it is the conclusion of the police investigation, the May local elections, or something else entirely, and then Conservative MPs will have to decide. But every week Johnson survives is another week closer to that decade in power he was said to be eyeing just four months ago.