To the very end, Boris Johnson and his dwindling band of supporters – and Rishi Sunak and the Tory high command – were outwitted by the Labour Party in the parliamentary battle over partygate.
At the beginning of the Privileges Committee process, back in April 2022, the Tories failed to spot the trap being laid when an Opposition motion to launch the inquiry was allowed to go through unopposed, “on the nod”.
And at the end, after Mr Johnson “called off the dogs” last Friday and ordered his supporters to abstain at the end of the marathon debate on the committee’s report, Labour sprang another trap.
Mr Sunak – who now looks weak and feeble after skipping the debate and the vote – had desperately wanted the report to go through “on the nod” as well, in a bid to conceal the bitter Tory divisions.
But as Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle called the vote after more than five hours of acrimonious debate, Labour’s wily chief whip Sir Alan Campbell bellowed “No! No! No” in Sir Lindsay’s ear to make sure there was a division.
Then he and his deputy, Lilian Greenwood, acted as tellers so the division would go ahead.
And Mr Johnson’s humiliation was complete when just seven Conservative MPs voted against the committee’s damning report.
It was just the outcome Mr Johnson and his close allies didn’t want.
An overwhelming majority backs the report
It was after The Daily Telegraph reported on Friday that only seven MPs were set to vote against the report that he “called off the dogs”.
And indeed there were just seven votes in Mr Johnson’s defence when it came to the vote. No wonder Mr Johnson asked his allies to stay away.
But 118 Conservative MPs voted to damn him, including several government ministers and senior backbenchers, led by former PM Theresa May and including 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady.
Cabinet ministers and those who attend cabinet voting for the largely symbolic punishment of denying Mr Johnson a Commons pass available to ex-MPs were Alex Chalk, David TC Davies, Simon Hart, Gillian Keegan, Chloe Smith, Penny Mordaunt, Andrew Mitchell and Tom Tugendhat.
The Johnson diehards were Sir Bill Cash, Nick Fletcher, Adam Holloway, Karl McCartney, Joy Morrissey, Sir Desmond Swayne and Heather Wheeler. But many of the former PM’s cheerleaders did indeed abstain.
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Johnson’s reputation shredded
The marathon debate saw speaker after speaker – mostly opposition MPs, it must be said, but including several Tories – trash Mr Johnson’s reputation even more than it has been already.
Now he’s out of parliament and has been condemned by a report by a senior Commons committee, they were free to call him a liar. No worries about unparliamentary language. And they did, at every opportunity.
The stars of the debate were Mrs May and Harriet Harman, who made towering, blockbuster speeches early on.
Mrs May made the statesmanlike speech about the public’s trust in politics that Mr Sunak should have made.
The case for the defence was later led by knights of the shires Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Sir Bill Cash, but their attacks on the committee were too lawyerly and got bogged down in detail.
And a red wall backlash backfired after Lia Nici, MP for Great Grimsby, made a defiant speech in which she said she would vote against the report and then didn’t. Who nobbled her?
At least fellow red waller Nick Fletcher, from Don Valley – who made a good speech defending Mr Johnson, pointing out that he almost died from COVID – was true to his word and voted against.
While the drama was unfolding in the Commons chamber, in the VIP gallery for the early part of the debate was screen and stage legend Sir Ian McKellen, best known for his role of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
That story is, of course, a fantasy.
Now Boris Johnson has paid the price for his fantasy claims about no lockdown rules being broken in Downing Street during the COVID pandemic.