I don’t get all the emphasis on the Gray investigation.
Surely, for the party which has been the focus of discussion for the last few days, there is nothing to investigate, all the evidence is out there?
The rules at the time were you could only meet one person from outside your family/home group outside at any time. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden had said exactly this on the telly on the day of the party.
Key workers could hold ‘essential meetings’. But even if people at 10 Downing Street are classified as key workers, there is documentary evidence, in the form of the email invitation, that this was not an ‘essential meeting’. It was an invitation for drinks, not work. If there is any doubt on this let’s see the minutes of the work meeting (decades ago I was a civil servant. Everything is minuted).
Other documentary evidence shows that several of those who received the invitation immediately doubted that it was within the guidance or wise. In fact most didn’t attend.
Witnesses have said that Johnson was there, with his partner, and did not close the gathering down. He later, and repeatedly, denied attending any events/parties etc at 10 Downing Street. Until a couple of days ago.
What can Gray add to this, unless she will be commenting on habitual lying? She might have stuff on the many other gatherings of course, but in this instance the rules were clearly and knowingly broken. She should be irrelevant , but the more people mither on about ‘independence’ and reporting lines and so on, the more hangs on her conclusions. Surely those who want Johnson to go should be saying ‘we don’t care about Gray, answer the case that is in the public forum now’, and more importantly making sure Tory party members and voters are talking about it as well.
It’s a banal and stupid situation, but the issue is not the details around the party, but ‘one rule for them, another for us’. If this is established, the Tory party gets to decide what happens, rather than parliament, such is the way our democracy works.