Boris Johnson is trying to use Sue Gray in a desperate ploy to fend off claims that he misled parliament

Rishi Sunak must be in despair at the return of colourful accounts of lockdown parties, writes John Rentoul

We all know what Johnson is up to (Reuters)

Sue Gray damaged her reputation for impartiality by taking the job of Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. If she didn’t realise it when she made the decision, she knows it now. Boris Johnson, desperate to use anything to defend himself, has seized on her “defection” to the Labour Party to set off a firestorm.

His attempt to exploit her departure is unconvincing. Gray was the civil servant who carried out the initial internal inquiry into lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street, but the fines that were imposed on officials and on Johnson himself were decided by the Metropolitan Police after its own further investigation.

So, the allegation that Gray’s inquiry was tainted by her subsequent change of loyalty doesn’t add up, but that hasn’t stopped Johnson from claiming that two and two make five. “It is surreal to discover,” Johnson said in a statement today, that the privileges committee “proposes to rely on evidence culled and orchestrated by Sue Gray, who has just been appointed Chief of Staff to the Leader of the Labour Party.”