However you dress it up, last night was a bad night for the Conservative Party, and for Boris Johnson who’s authority is in tatters.

148 Conservative MPs have now declared that they do not have confidence in Boris Johnson’s administration. That’s roughly 40% of the Parliamentary party. It means that less than a third of all MPs want him to be Prime Minister and over two-thirds of MPs would prefer someone else do the job.

But if you take the view of the outgoing Anti-Corruption Czar that the Sue Gray Report (and the weak government response to it) mean that Boris should resign because he has failed to meet the standards set in the Ministerial Code, last night was the night the parliamentary Conservative Party failed to remove someone who deserves to go, who became the first sitting Prime Minister to break the law. Conservative MPs – particularly the 215 who backed him – are complicit in the rule breaking. They have by backing Boris said ‘its ok, we’ll let him off for breaking the law, for presiding over an establishment where a lot of law breaking took place, never mind the fact that everyone else had to keep the rules no matter how painful they were for so many’. What does that say about our governing party? One rule for them, another for everyone else.

The sooner the reign of this divided, shameful political party is ended, the better for everyone!