Will Sue Gray row help Boris Johnson’s Partygate case?

Believe it or not, Boris Johnson is hard at work. The former prime minister and his allies are beavering away on a spin operation ahead of his televised Partygate inquiry hearing later this month in the hope the committee of MPs can be discredited.

It had looked a very tough task. The privileges committee’s 24-page interim report was damning stuff. The cross-party group saying it would have been “obvious” to Mr Johnson that No 10 gatherings breached Covid rules.

But Mr Johnson has been handed a gift from an unlikely source – top civil servant Sue Gray. She could become Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, which has allowed Team Johnson to cry “stitch-up”.

Allies have been keen to make the link between Ms Gray’s Partygate report and the work of the parliamentary inquiry. Mr Johnson has said it was “surreal” that the committee of MPs relied on evidence from gathered from the Cabinet Office civil servant.

It may not be remotely true – the committee says it has gathered evidence independently – but the former PM is hoping the Labour link muddies the waters with his most important audience: Tory MPs.

Old allies are firmly onside. The former Tory chairman Jake Berry suggested on Sunday that the public were entitled to believe the ex-PM “may have been subject to the biggest stitch up since the Bayeux Tapestry”.

Northern Ireland secretary Chris Heaton-Harris claimed Mr Johnson was “a great man, a wise man, an honest man”. But he needs to convince backbenchers who most definitely do not share Mr Heaton-Harries’s views and remain weary about so many headlines about their former leader.

The stakes of this month’s hearings, set to begin on 20 March, are incredibly high. The Times, reporting senior sources, said Mr Johnson could be suspended from the Commons for at least one month.

Any suspension of 10 days or more would leave Mr Johnson open to a recall petition and thus a potential by-election in his Uxbridge and Ruislip constituency.

But if he is found to have misled parliament – which appears highly likely after the interim report – the recommended suspension will have to backed by a vote in the Commons.

Can he count on Tory MPs to save him? Probably not. It’s worth remembering that he did gather up more than 100 signatures behind the idea of a dramatic return to Downing Street in the dying days of Liz Truss’s premiership.

But unless Mr Sunak makes a dramatic intervention and orders the whipping of MPs to vote against a recommended suspension, Mr Johnson is unlikely to drum up enough sympathy to survive the showdown.

Hence the desperate attempt to seize Sue Gray’s link to Labour and prove some kind of bias. The Sun reported claims that her son Liam Conlon, reportedly a Labour activist, was “boasting” about his mum’s role in the Partygate saga (firmly denied by Mr Conlon).

Labour is keen to stress the relationship with Ms Gray – who completed her report last May, remember – doesn’t stretch back very far. She is expected to tell the appointments watchdog on Monday that discussions about the chief of staff role began only several weeks ago.

Tory MPs have been scathing about Ms Gray’s career move, suspicious – rightly or wrongly – of potential bias in the civil service. But most are utterly sceptical about Mr Johnson and his efforts to undermine the probe. The ex-leader has “gone full Trump”, said one on the latest tactics.

Even Conservatives who are utterly fed up with Mr Johnson will be glued to their screens for the televised hearings. Ms Gray will fade from view as MPs judge both the evidence and the cross-party committee’s findings on their own merits.