A Parliamentary report suggests that Boris Johnson knew about the illegality of Downing Street parties during lockdown

The conservative deputies caused the fall of Boris Johnson fed up with his successive lies.

And yet there was still no official conclusion or condemnation for his alleged dishonesty.

Until now.

The parliamentary commission that has spent more than a year investigating the famous parties prohibited in Downing Street during confinement - the scandal dubbed

- has published its first preliminary report this Friday.

And it clearly suggests that the former prime minister was aware, despite all the times he denied it in the House of Commons, that his team gatherings, with food and alcohol, contravened the social distancing rules imposed on the rest of the world. the population by its own government.

The report provides arguments, in the form of at least four WhatsApp messages between members of the then Downing Street core, which "suggest that the breaches of the recommendations would have been obvious to Mr Johnson when he attended those meetings."

And it also points out that there is also evidence that "those who advised Mr. Johnson on what he should say to both the press and the House of Commons were not themselves clear about whether or not those meetings conformed to the rules [of social distancing].”

Johnson's Communications Director on the date the

scandal broke was Jack Doyle, and the parliamentary committee has an exchange of WhatsApp messages between him and another member of the Downing Street team in which they are trying to find coverage legal to the attendance of the then prime minister at some of those parties.

“I'm having a hard time coming up with a way to justify that this [referring to one of the encounters] was within the rules,” says Doyle.

"It was reasonably necessary for work reasons," replies the adviser.

"I'm afraid that doesn't work.

And it creates another huge hole in the responsibility of the prime minister, right? ”, Doyle expresses his fears.

The commission partly blames Johnson's own team for the late delivery of its findings.

For months, he accuses, they resisted delivering the texts and exchanges of emails and messages requested by Parliament.

And when they did, in a first installment, they contributed highly edited and corrected material, instead of the original writing.

Johnson goes on the offensive

The former prime minister has decided to go on the offensive, before, as the commission's first conclusions suggest, a final report falls on him that would be devastating for his aspirations to return to the forefront of politics.

Johnson must appear before Parliament on March 20, to answer questions raised during the investigation.

But he has already published a first statement this Friday in which, in the absence of strong direct evidence to demonstrate his knowledge of the illegality of the parties, he considers himself exonerated.

“It has become clear, from this report, that I have not committed any contempt of Parliament [by lying, hiding or confusing the deputies with their statements].

There is no evidence that he knowingly or deliberately misled Parliament,

An unexpected movement has played in favor of the former prime minister and his ability to sow doubts and conspiracy theories against him.

The senior official who wrote the first internal report on

, Sue Gray, has just announced her willingness to leave the Government (she held the position of Deputy Cabinet Secretary, the second most important position in the hierarchy of the British senior civil service) and go to to be the chief of staff to the leader of the Labor opposition, Keir Starmer.

Gray's report, which described a culture of drinking and partying in Downing Street and pointed to the culpability of policy makers in curbing it, was devastating for Johnson.

Gray never singled him out personally, but the report indirectly placed much of the blame on him.

Gray's decision to enter politics has led Johnson, and much of the conservative press that still supports him, to question the credibility and legitimacy of the report that the senior official once produced, despite the fact that most of his colleagues and many politicians have defended his integrity and professionalism.

“It is surreal that the commission tries to base its conclusions on biased and orchestrated evidence” by Sue Gray, Johnson protested in his statement.

"I leave it to others to decide how much confidence can be placed in her [de Gray's] investigation and the report she submitted," he said.

The commission, however, has responded to the former prime minister that its preliminary conclusions derived from the evidence collected by Parliament itself, not from Gray's report.

Although they have not ruled out incorporating him into the ongoing investigation.

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