It could be many months before its findings see the light of day. However, the makeup of the committee is still in flux, after Labour’s Chris Bryant recused himself, having already expressed a view about Johnson’s honesty, and with other members on the government payroll expected to be replaced. Either he’s very stupid or he’s very dishonest.” It seems to me very hard to argue that it wasn’t, because we now know he attended a number of parties. “The fundamental question is misleading the house, and whether it was deliberate or not. “The privileges committee is the lethal one,” said one former cabinet minister. Some senior Tories regard the privileges committee investigation as the more dangerous of the two. “It won’t be pretty reading, and in any normal world I’m sure it will be devastating, but they’ll no doubt crack on regardless.” “I don’t know what Sue Gray’s report is going to say next week,” the MP said. One Boris-sceptic backbencher suggested that while Gray’s report might solidify things in a few MPs’ minds, by setting out in black and white the unedifying details of the parties, it was unlikely to hit home with Johnson or his team. He still has two more hurdles yet to surmount, however: the final report of the formidable Sue Gray, who has already told Johnson that she plans to name him and an inquiry by the House of Commons privileges committee into whether he misled parliament. Earlier, he had told reporters during a factory visit that he could not “simply magic away” the cost of living crisis. He was back to his usual bumptious self in Friday’s speech to Welsh Conservatives, rattling through his greatest hits, from claiming he “got the big calls right” on Covid to attacking “Corbynistas” – though to a noticeably muted response from the audience. With a well-timed announcement of structural changes aimed at showing he has got a firmer grip on No 10, and the promise of action on the cost of living, Johnson now hopes to put the parties row behind him. Shortly after finishing a call with the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday morning, what Johnson had long been telling friends was formally confirmed to No 10: he will receive no further fines, aside from the one he was handed for sharing a birthday cake with colleagues in June 2020.
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