Voices: There are no bombshells in Boris Johnson’s angry pre-emptive strike against the Partygate committee

Boris Johnson has mounted a characteristically angry defence against allegations that he misled parliament over the Partygate affair. In a 52-page dossier, the former prime minister accuses the cross-party privileges committee, which is investigating him, of moving the goalposts and insists it has not produced any evidence he had been warned the Downing Street parties breached lockdown regulations before telling MPs they were within the rules.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by Johnson’s Trumpian pre-emptive strike ahead of a marathon appearance before the committee. He accuses it of going beyond its remit, dismisses some of its claims as “absurd” and says he has “serious concerns” about whether its process is “fair.” He claims it is introducing an unprecedented new hurdle – whether he acted “recklessly” in his statements to MPs in an interim report earlier this month he claims had a “highly partisan tone”.

I think Johnson was unwise to criticise the referee on the eve of the big match – a hearing, after all, that could decide whether he remains an MP. His allies have already alienated some of the seven MPs on the committee by casting doubt on the independence of Harriet Harman, its Labour chair, urging grassroots Tory members to put pressure on its four Tory MPs. So that’s three own goals before kick-off.

At times the dossier reads as if it is aimed at his own supporters rather than the committee which holds his fate in its hands. A bad decision. Perhaps his target audience was the Commons as a whole, which will have a free vote on the committee’s recommendations. But many MPs will be uneasy about his attempt to undermine the committee and an inquiry the Commons voted unanimously to set up last April.

Repeatedly questioning the MPs’ approach, Johnson writes: “The committee also now appears to be alleging that it was in some way reckless for me to rely on assurances [about the parties] that I received from trusted advisers. That allegation is unprecedented and absurd. I was the prime minister of the country, working day and night to manage the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It was self-evidently reasonable for me to rely on assurances that I received from my advisers.”

Despite talk among Johnson allies that his evidence would contain a “bombshell”, the 15,000-word dossier does not. The committee pointed out tartly: “Mr Johnson’s written submission contains no new documentary evidence.”

The heart of his defence is to admit the Commons was “misled” by his statements on Partygate but to insist “they were made in good faith and on the basis of what I honestly knew and believed at the time”. He says: “I did not intentionally or recklessly mislead the house … I would never have dreamed of doing so.” He claims there is “no evidence” to support such an allegation. The only exception, he says, is “the assertions of the discredited Dominic Cummings” – his former closest adviser, who questioned whether one of the parties should go ahead (and one of the people Johnson claims holds “ill will” towards him as he unconvincingly plays the victim).

One big weakness in Johnson’s dossier is that he does not fully answer the four possible ways in which the committee’s initial report said he might have misled MPs – including their view he had knowledge of two events which he did not disclose at the time. He will need to have better specific answers on Wednesday.

The committee said then: “The evidence strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Mr Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings” (Johnson admits attending five). The former PM tries to turn this argument on its head by insisting he was never warned by advisers that the parties might breach the rules and that his officials did not believe they did. Again turning his fire on the committee, he argues “this amounts to an allegation that I deliberately lied to parliament”.

Finally, Johnson insists he corrected the record about his inadvertently misleading statements “as soon as reasonably possible” once Sue Gray’s inquiry report on Partygate was published. Although he argues that “it was not fair or appropriate to give a half-baked account”, the committee might beg to differ; it clearly suspects Johnson was saying as little as possible – and less than he knew – at the time. Which, of course, would be entirely in character, and in line with his mantra of muddling through, hoping any media storm blows itself out and “trying to get away with it”.

Johnson’s case rests heavily on the issue of intent. His allies hope this is what will allow the man David Cameron dubbed a “greased piglet” to wriggle free once again. However, it is far from clear the defence he set out today will pass the crucial test set by the committee – that if he misled the Commons (which even he admits), whether his actions were “inadvertent, reckless, or intentional”. The word “reckless” may haunt Mr Johnson when this inquiry reports.