The police ask to delay the publication of the report on the parties in Downing Street so that it does not interfere with their investigation

Boris Johnson has found two unexpected allies in his struggle to survive another day in office: the administrative and police bureaucracy, and the weariness of some conservative deputies who, as in the well-known joke about the relatives of the dying man, begin to complain that “neither die nor eat dinner”.

In the week that Sue Gray's report on the banned parties in Downing Street during the lockdown was finally due to be released, the decision by the London Metropolitan Police to open its own investigation into at least eight of those events - after detecting "serious indications of criminal infractions”—has altered the political agenda of a burning country and partially deflated the accumulated tension.

has asked the senior official to limit herself to publishing "minimal references" to those parts of the report that could affect ongoing investigations.

The Police discharge themselves of all responsibility, while assuring that they have neither asked for the publication to be delayed, as some reports had suggested, nor do they have a problem with the details of other meetings and meetings in Downing being disclosed. Street that did not involve an alleged violation of the law.

Gray is desperate to get a report that was completed last Wednesday out of her hands, but her professional prestige depends to a large extent on not suspecting a watered-down and sweetened final result, not telling the whole truth to the public .

In the current

situation , with lawyers on both sides combing through the details of the text, the general consensus is that its publication will be delayed until at least next Monday, or even later.

“The report must be published in its entirety.

Any attempt to hide or suppress key details will be a mistake," Conservative MP Mark Harper, one of Johnson's most critical, warned on Twitter on Thursday.

He was backed, with a retweet, by Steve Baker, the Eurosceptic parliamentarian who orchestrated the internal censure motion against former Prime Minister Theresa May;

he carried Johnson to Downing Street, and in recent days has written off the Prime Minister's career.

Starmer has already repeatedly called on Johnson to resign “out of decency”, and has spent three weeks exploiting the party scandal in the control sessions of the House of Commons.

In each of them, Johnson has been more defiant and combative.

This Wednesday he already made it clear that he did not intend to resign, whatever the result of the report on the parties, and reproached the opposition for wasting time while there were more urgent things to attend to, such as the crisis between Ukraine and Russia.

But the pressure has been so intense, from the media, the opposition and his most critical colleagues, that the prime minister has already promised at least three times before the cameras to publish the text in its entirety.

Conclusion: Gray wants to avoid both interference in the police investigation and the disclosure of private details of many low-ranking officials, who may have participated in the parties, but would hardly be forced to pay a fine;

the police do not want their investigations to be tainted and drawn into political debate, because the public and the media would quickly draw their own conclusions;

the opposition and the conservatives most irritated with Johnson do not want the debate to be falsely closed with a hasty and decaffeinated report;

and Johnson's team takes advantage of the uncertainty to continue gaining supporters for their cause, and convince the most dubious parliamentarians in their ranks to give their prime minister another chance.

Many have already called for an end to an issue that has paralyzed important economic and political decisions.

If Downing Street manages to deflate the soufflé, perhaps Johnson will once again demonstrate why many call him the Houdini of English politics.

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