Out of interest, can Boris be removed without a Tory vote of no confidence in him or a vote of no confidence in the government? If he is ultimately found to have broken ministerial code or the law, do the police have powers to forcibly remove him, or does he just stay as long as the Conservatives still like him?
Nope, the police can't forcibly remove him. The Queen could
in theory get rid of him but that would kick off an unprecedented constitutional crisis, so wouldn't happen.
On the subject of the Ministerial Code, if he is seen to have broken the law or knowingly misled, he's broken the Ministerial Code:
The Ministerial Code should be read against the background of the overarching duty on Ministers to comply with the law and to protect the integrity of public life
Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister
It's worth noting as mentioned above, the Ministerial Code is overseen by the Prime Minister, so he is essentially the judge of his own actions. The whole thing was written with the assumption that whoever was Prime Minister would have the moral authority to never be in that position themselves.
I say this because I believe that it’s a very positive step, personally.
When Boris was presented with feedback, he took it on board and has agreed to drastically change procedure in Number 10 in spite of his own personal beliefs, which is no small thing to do. For that, I do applaud him; he’s agreed to make changes based on the Gray report, which should hopefully improve the way in which Downing Street is run.
Has he took it on board though? All I see is words to try and appease the Conservative Party. Even his apology yesterday referred to "we". There's zero personal responsibility there, it's always deflection as though he's surprised that it's happened.
No.10 Downing Street is the heart of government, they are not kids in school. It should not need an "Office for the Prime Minister" to manage adults working in a professional environment. No.10 is already officially known as "The Prime Minister's Office", so we would now have an "Office for the Prime Minister of the Prime Minister's Office"?! I don't need an office to manage my office, a competent leadership team has got the right people in place to do that already. If Boris Johnson took some personal responsibility and had done that at No.10 in the first place, we wouldn't be in the position that meaningless additional departments were having to be created purely to try and appease his own party.
If you want a party other than the Conservatives to win the next general election your best chance is to have Boris Johnson leading the Conservatives at the next general election.
Play the long game.
On the face of it, I would agree with you. But, this is now going far beyond party politics and into the way the United Kingdom is run as a whole. We currently have a government who appear to be more than happy to have even the most basic standards of public life thrown out the window.
Yes, it's easy to say "play the long game" and we'll be fine at the next election. But I would also say consider the even longer game. If we allow the government of today to set a precedent that this sort of behaviour can go without punishment, then where does it end? How do we guarantee that come the next election that someone else comes into power and doesn't do the same thing, or worse? We are actively demonstrating that the current checks and balances we have in place for public servants can be ignored simply by saying "sorry"...repeatedly. That should never be the case, when previous governments have seen such actions to be nothing less than a resigning matter.
The more the consequences for failing to uphold these standards are watered down or outright ignored, the more dangerous this could become. The UK has sat back on the view that it's the "Mother of Parliament" for a long time, and watched as other countries descend toward becoming more autocratic with the view that "it could never happen here". We're in danger of sleepwalking into that exact situation in the UK, which may sound overdramatic to some, but it's a very slippery slope!
