Tory MPs say they don't want the PM to go, but several more political challenges await him.
On Wednesday, the civil service's chief operating officer, Alex Chisholm, and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case - who was removed from doing the investigation Ms Gray ended up carrying out because there'd been a party in his own office - wrote to civil servants.
This is crucial, because being proven to have intentionally lied to the House would cost him his job. And he said he had been right to drop into various leaving dos, even though the police fines would suggest many of them were in direct contravention of the very Covid laws he had championed.Mr Johnson apologised when speaking to Conservative MPs privately at a meeting, but there is deep anger and embarrassment among many Tory MPs over what has happened. They know much of this can't be easily excused or wished away.
"Think Gray wasn't the bombshell the PMs detractors were looking for," one says. "If anything the photos [shown in the report] look less like parties than we thought they would!""It doesn't really tell us anything newly incriminating. I sense general disinterest to be honest," says one.Plenty of cabinet ministers have publicly expressed their loyalty to the prime minister.
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