Good morning. Boris Johnson has now been fined for breaking the Covid lockdown rules that he drew up and ordered the nation to obey, but Conservative MPs are happy for him to remain as prime minister – at least for now. Although no one would claim this is a triumph, his survival prospects now look much better than his colleagues thought they would be at this point. Crucially, the Tory press, which came close to giving up on him when the Partygate scandal first erupted, is broadly supportive, as my colleague Warren Murray shows here.
Here is our overnight story about Johnson, his wife Carrie and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, all being fined for lockdown breaches – and paying them – yesterday.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, and one of the best media performers in the cabinet, has had the awkward job of defending Johnson on the media this morning. His argument has been that Johnson made a mistake, but that he’s only human, it wasn’t intentional, and that he’s truly sorry. He told Sky News:
The one thing I know – and I spoke to the prime minister – is he is completely mortified by this happening …
He didn’t knowingly break the law. He didn’t do it deliberately. He didn’t come to parliament and having knowingly done this. He thought in fact that the same people who wished him happy birthday, who he had already been meeting with earlier that day, was not breaking the law.
The police take a different view. He absolutely accepts that and has paid the fine …
The question I suppose, your question goes to the heart of, you know, did he set out to do this? Was it something that was done with malice, with intent?
And the answer of course, is no. It’s something that happened in error, and as I have said, I’ve spoken to him, he is incredibly embarrassed by the whole thing.
He knows that it was stupid, indefensible. But he didn’t set out to break the law, and he has paid the fixed penalty notice fine, and has a very big job to do.
I will post more from the Shapps interviews shortly.
Yesterday Tory MPs weren’t calling for Johnson’s resignation. Today we will see whether that changes. Parliament is not sitting, and many MPs are on holiday, but there is a campaign event in Scotland where Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, and Douglas Ross, the current one, are appearing together. Davidson wants Johnson to resign, but Ross doesn’t, and so message discipline might get tricky.
Otherwise the only thing we are expecting is an update from Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, on his plans to get the housing industry to fund the removal of unsafe cladding from flats.
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