Michael Settle: Johnson will believe he has 'got away with it'

In 2013, Johnson, while London Mayor, spelled out the so-called “dead cat strategy,” believed to have been the creation of his election guru Lynton Crosby, nicknamed the Wizard of Oz.

Johnson wrote: “The key point, says my Australian friend, is everyone will shout: ‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!’ In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”

And so the large feline plonked on the Westminster table to distract us from the scandal of Downing St’s lockdown drinking culture, was Johnson’s highly-expected £15 billion giveaway.

Of course, many people – including me – have called on the PM to pull his finger out and help people with the cost-of-living crisis. The Treasury tap was due to be turned on in July but, for obvious political reasons, it occurred yesterday.

To no one’s surprise, Rishi Sunak announced U-turn #77. Labour’s proposed windfall tax on the energy giants, once derided by Johnson as “totally ridiculous” and by other ministers as “unConservative,” was, nonetheless, announced by the Chancellor, who argued, in the circumstances, it was merited.

Sunak told MPs it was a case of pragmatism over ideology. As expected, to help households with energy bills, he turned the £200 loan into a non-repayable grant; and, unexpectedly, doubled it.

There was targeted help for the poorest, the elderly and the disabled. Almost all of the 8m most vulnerable households will this year receive at least £1,200 of support. Not all Tories were happy though. One backbencher accused the Chancellor of “throwing red meat to socialists”.

The package will go some way into helping people through the cold winter months in the midst of more energy price hikes.

The Liberal Democrats pointed out the Treasury had already dipped into our pockets with an £800 tax hike. “It’s the Sunak scam, promising you help but picking your pockets while you’re not looking,” declared party leader Ed Davey.

In anticipation of today’s headlines, the dead cat strategy will largely have worked.

Indeed, given the generally subdued response from Tory MPs at Wednesday’s statement, it was quite clear they had already moved on psychologically from partygate. The full Gray report simply confirmed what we already largely knew; apart from the shocking abuse of the Number 10 cleaners.

The PM privately suggested he had been “vindicated” by it; in other words, there were no more occasions for which he should be fined.

Taking “full responsibility” meant, in Boris’s mind-set, not resigning – as would have happened at the head of any major organisation – but simply saying he had been “humbled” by the experience and apologising for what others had done.

Boris reasoned that Number 10 staff had worked hard during the pandemic and if someone was leaving, it would have been wrong to forego raising a glass to them. A source at the 1922 Tory backbench committee meeting, which Johnson addressed, said he insisted Downing St revelry was not like a “Saturday night in July in Ibiza”.

But, hang on, this impression that Johnson was some sort of absent-minded landlord unaware of what his rowdy tenants were getting up to, won’t wash.

Many people up and down the land had to forego much worse, like visiting a sick relative, holding their loved one’s hand in hospital as they slipped away and even attending their funeral.

One can only imagine the sheer rage a nurse or a doctor felt, having worked a 12-hour shift wearing PPE and having seen people dying from Covid, at hearing how those in Downing St, who had drawn up the rules, shamelessly broke them and partied on a regular basis.

Politically, Starmer, Sturgeon and Davey will be more than pleased to see Boris still leading the Tories, believing he is so heavily damaged that he has become an electoral liability for the Conservatives.

Nowhere more so than in Scotland. Douglas Ross’s flip-floppery will not have impressed people. One Tory source claimed the Scottish party was in a “complete f***ing mess”. Any political backlash is, electorally, likely to benefit pro-Union Labour more than the SNP.

Sir Keir – if he survives the judgement of the Durham constabulary – will seek to squeeze as much political capital out of partygate that he can, contrasting Labour’s integrity with the Tories’ duplicity. Starmer’s cause will be helped in no small measure by the contention of some senior Conservatives that Johnson is unfit for high office. The campaign literature will write itself.

Davey will also be beaming internally that Johnson will remain at the Conservative helm as he eyes the possibility of the Lib Dems snapping up lots of blue wall seats in southern England with the first opportunity coming next month with the Tiverton and Honiton by-election in Devon. On the same day Wakefield holds another by-election with a good chance it will return to Labour.

Tory MPs will have priced in the humiliating losses but, nonetheless, it will be another unnerving moment in what is likely to be a very bumpy road towards the next General Election.

During the partygate revelry after the BYOB bash in the Number 10 rose garden, one senior aide noted with relief: “We seem to have got away with[it.]”

Boris may be thinking the same as the shameful chapter of partygate becomes smaller in the public’s rear-view mirror.

But what Conservative MPs fear is that the Johnson premiership is, in fact, a slow-motion car crash and that the full impact might not be felt until people enter the polling booths in May 2024.