The PM Broke The Law - But He Won't Quit Anytime Soon

It may be the birthday cake gathering because that was the only one that we know Rishi Sunak attended. The chancellor says he was in the cabinet room for a Covid meeting when, in the immortal words of Conor Burns, the Conservative MP trying to defend the prime minister, they were “ambushed with a cake”.

- John Rentoul

That was on Boris Johnson's 56th birthday, 19 June 2020. What would have been standard procedure in any pre-pandemic office in the land would seem to have been judged by the police to be a criminal offence during lockdown. The prime minister and the chancellor have been notified by the Metropolitan Police, as a courtesy, that penalty notices are on their way.

A spokesperson for the prime minister has confirmed the unprecedented news, fulfilling the undertaking some time ago that, while the identity of the recipients of penalty notices are not usually made public, we would be told if the prime minister or the chancellor received fines. (However, we also know that Helen MacNamara, the former civil servant who was head of ethics, has received one how that became public is still unknown.)

If it hadn't been for the Ukraine war, there would have been even more of a fuss, but I still don't think Johnson would have been forced out of office. The appetite for as many as 54 Conservative MPs for a change of leadership evaporated remarkably quickly after Dame Cressida Dick, the then Met Police commissioner, announced on 25 January that she would be investigating lockdown gatherings.