Sue Gray's report into "partygate" has still not been handed to Downing Street, the Foreign Secretary confirmed this morning as Boris Johnson prepares to face MPs in the Commons.
The report, which is understood to have been completed, may not be published in full if there are "security issues" but the Government wants to be "open and transparent", Liz Truss told Sky News.
Asked to confirm No 10 had not received the findings, she said: "That's correct and of course it's an independent report, it's a matter for Sue Gray when she sends that report when she's completed her work."
Ms Truss, who has been the subject of speculation around leadership ambitions, insisted Boris Johnson had her "complete support" as he prepares to face Sir Keir Starmer at Prime Minister's Questions at midday.
"The Prime Minister has apologised for what has happened. He's said mistakes were made.
"I believe that he's done a fantastic job as PM whether it's delivering Brexit, delivering the Covid vaccines, the booster programme... We've now got a much faster growing economy than many of our competitors thanks to his work, and I believe that's what we should focus on."
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Who cares about "partygate"? Brendan O'Neill - never one to toe the line with mainstream opinion - is asking exactly that in his Spectator column this morning.
"Does anyone else feel uncomfortable with the idea of the police investigating the elected government? I think it's safe to say that partygate has gone too far," he writes. If the PM feels uncomfortable, he's hiding it well after publicly welcoming the investigation yesterday.
In the Sun, Trevor Kavanagh asks "who the hell" his old friend Dominic Cummings "thinks he is, bragging about toppling Boris".
"Let’s pause before sweeping a recently elected Prime Minister with a thumping majority out of office," he writes - and he notes that there does not seem to be a single, ready-made leadership challenger who looks like they could oust Mr Johnson on a whim.
From the other side of the political fence, Marina Hyde's latest columns claims Mr Johnson "has finally gone full Marie Antoinette - only he's hogging all the cake".
"A vast tide of something is flowing out of Downing Street, but it doesn’t smell like history," she quips. While the Guardian isn't exactly renowned for its support of the Prime Minister, she delivers a damning verdict of "Johnsonism [as] little more than a con trick".
You can find all of our own opinion and analysis throughout the day here
Sir Tony Blair, as he is now, was facing a far more serious charge than that which threatens to derail Boris Johnson’s premiership, write Robert Mendick and Daniel Capurro.
But cash for honours, a scandal that dogged the final months of the Blair government in 2006 and 2007, was also a much more complex inquiry too.
So while Mr Johnson faces only a fixed penalty notice, the reality is he is much more likely to come a cropper with police. Sir Tony was interviewed three times by officers but never under caution. Charges were never brought.
Sources said on Tuesday that aides inside Downing Street telephoned senior officers at Scotland Yard and advised them - but crucially did not tell them - that should Sir Tony be interviewed under caution as a suspect, rather than questioned as a witness, then the prime minister's position would be untenable.
The differences in public mood between Johnson and Blair
Top Tories defending Boris Johnson are treating the public as though they are "utterly stupid", the common standards committee chairman has said.
Chris Bryant - who found himself on a collision course with ministers late last year amid the row over Owen Paterson and allegations of lobbying and sleaze - told the BBC that the Downing Street reports constituted a "pattern of behaviour" at a time the country was in full lockdown.
"If I could just say something about this argument that Boris Johnson's henchmen are advancing, that this is all small beer and we should all just forget about it," Mr Bryant said.
"This whole idea that the Prime Minister was ambushed by a cake (see 8.55am), I honestly do think that they think that the British people must be utterly stupid," he said. "The truth of the matter is that this is a pattern of behaviour.
"It's not just one event, it's dozens of events, and every single one of us can recite a moment when a family member had to do without."
In the 1980s, Sue Gray briefly paused her stellar civil service career to buy a pub in “bandit country” in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, writes Robert Mendick. If Boris Johnson needed evidence that his inquisitor-in-chief is no pushover, then being landlady of a pub in Newry close to the Irish border shows she is no soft touch.
Ms Gray has the task of investigating a series of alleged lockdown parties held in Downing Street and across government during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Prime Minister has been questioned by Ms Gray over the "Partygate" allegations he and other MPs face and The Telegraph understands that he has shared all he knows with the civil servant.
Dominic Cummings is also being interviewed by Ms Gray as part of her investigation. Mr Johnson's former top aide, who has been critical of the Prime Minister since leaving No10, has previously claimed on his blog that he and other witnesses were prepared to swear under oath that Mr Johnson had "lied to Parliament about parties".
Profile: The 'Whitehall titan' who will have left no stone unturned
A Conservative MP has said that Covid rules were broken in "most homes", as he joined a chorus of Boris Johnson’s allies defending him over fresh Downing Street allegations.
Crispin Blunt likened any fine that the Prime Minister may receive for alleged breaches of the lockdown regulations to a “speeding ticket” and played down reports that around 30 staff ate birthday cake and celebrated in Number 10 in June 2020.
In one of the more attention-grabbing attempts made to defend Mr Johnson in the wake of yesterday's events, Conor Burns, the Northern Ireland secretary, said Boris Johnson did not attend a "premeditated" birthday party, insisting: "He was, in a sense, ambushed with a cake".
Conservative whips are said to be telling MPs that they should instead focus on the escalating situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border, and have argued that the party should not replace its leader before a major international crisis.
Giles Watling, a Conservative MP, described an urgent question from Labour on the parties as a "vexatious waste of everybody's time”. However, he was forced to withdraw his claims by Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker.
Labour MPs have repeated their calls for Boris Johnson to resign as he prepares to face Sir Keir Starmer in the Commons later today.
Demands for Mr Johnson to go are once again being led by Angela Rayner, the party's deputy leader, who wrote: "This has gone on long enough. Politics has real work to do.
"Boris Johnson has to go or the Conservatives have to make him."
Jo Stevens, the shadow secretary of state for Wales, said Mr Johnson "must resign - it is as simple as that" and accused him of having "lied about" attending a party which is alleged to have broken the rules.
Meanwhile, Chris Bryant, the senior Labour backbencher who represents the Rhondda, accused Mr Johnson of "always [acquiting] himself as judge, jury and defence counsel in the court of his own opinion. Others see things differently."
The Commons on Tuesday skipped from the ridiculous to the sublime, from parties to Putin, writes Tim Stanley. It all began with Cressida Dick announcing that the Met will investigate the lockdown frivolities in No10, which the PM should take as a compliment. You know it’s a good party when the police are called.
Tim Stanley: Boris Johnson undergoes miraculous transformation in Commons
Boris Johnson is making Britain an "international laughing stock", the shadow education secretary has said.
Bridget Phillipson argued it was "absolutely ridiculous" to compare photos of Sir Keir Starmer drinking a beer in a constituency office in Durham in May 2020 with what is now a criminal investigation into several alleged parties at Downing Street.
She said there was "absolutely no suggestion" Sir Keir had broken any rules. On the Sue Gray report, she added: "We should see all of it, but I don't think we need Sue Gray to tell us what is absolutely clear to the British people. The Prime Minister has lied, and lied, and lied again.
"He's taken us all for fools, he's treated the British people with contempt and we have this ridiculous spectacle of the Foreign Secretary and a whole litany of ministers paraded out every day to come up with evermore ridiculous excuses for what we all know happened."
Ms Phillipson said Liz Truss had to "look herself in the eye and ask herself if she wants to continue to prop up this Prime Minister", claiming Boris Johnson had "lost the respect of the British people."
The biggest political scandals often turn out to be slow-burners, starting off with a whiff of smoke and smouldering for weeks before crackling into flame.
Just as Watergate started off with a short story in the Washington Post two years before Richard Nixon was eventually impeached, “partygate” seemed to pose little threat to the Prime Minister when a report of drinks events in Number 10 during lockdown appeared last November.
For almost a week, Downing Street batted away questions about leaving drinks and an alleged Christmas party. The controversy seemed to be running out of steam, until a video emerged of staff joking that they were “business” meetings.
Almost two months on, Boris Johnson finds himself at the centre of a criminal investigation after Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, decided she could no longer overlook the ever-growing mound of allegations that shows no sign of abating.
？Gordon Rayner and Martin Evans have this analysis
Has Britain lost "all sense of proportion"? That's the striking claim on the front page of today's Daily Mail, which contrasts the focus on "partygate" with Vladimir Putin's military displays.
It quotes senior Tory MPs who called for a "sense of perspective" in the Commons yesterday.
The Daily Express agrees that "we all want a 'line drawn' under partygate", while The Times, The Guardian and the digital edition of the Independent all focus on yesterday's launch of the police investigation.
The Mirror alludes to reports from Sky News last night that Sue Gray apparently has pictures of Boris Johnson "with wine bottles at No 10 parties", and tells the PM his "number's up".
Jacob Rees-Mogg has said there should be a general election if Boris Johnson is ousted as Prime Minister over the partygate scandal.
Dark clouds have refused to be blown from Westminster, and on Tuesday the inquiry into alleged Downing Street parties ramped up as Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick announced her force were finally looking into the gatherings.
With MPs and the public waiting for the Sue Gray report - which has been finished but not delivered to No. 10 - there is still cross-party pressure on Mr Johnson to resign.
If the Prime Minister is pushed from his position, the Leader of the House of Commons Mr Rees-Mogg believes it should trigger a general election.
He told the BBC's Newsnight: "It is my view that we have moved to an essentially presidential system, and that therefore the mandate is personal rather than entirely party, and that any prime minister would be very well advised to seek a fresh mandate.
Yesterday, Mr Rees-Mogg said there was
？Read more from Gareth Davies here
How serious does Liz Truss think "partygate" is?
"We're currently expecting the outcome of the Sue Gray report [and] we'll need to look at what the contents of that report is", she told the Today programme.
"I don't want to prejudge what's in the report and of course we had the announcement yesterday of the police investigation and again I don't want to prejudge what's in that.
"I suspect we won't have much longer to wait for the Sue Gray report where we can have a fuller view of what exactly happened."
Ms Truss warned it was "very dangerous to comment on speculation" when challenged on Cressida Dick's comments that evidence from the Cabinet Office had met the threshold for "the most serious and flagrant type of breach of the rules".
"It's only once the evidence has taken place and that evidence has been examined that the police can come to a decision, and that process has to be gone through."
Joe Biden is "absolutely right" to warn of "enormous consequences" if there was a Russian incursion into Ukraine, Liz Truss said.
Appearing on Radio 4's Today programme, she said: "We are seeing a threat to a free democracy in Europe for an aggressive regime. And of course that would have huge implications for Europe if Vladimir Putin was to stage an invasion but that would also have huge implications for aggressive regimes around the world."
As for whether Vladimir Putin himself could be sanctioned, Ms Truss said nothing was ruled out: "It's by collective action, it's by showing Vladimir Putin that we are united, that we deter a Russian incursion."
She went on to urge Britain's allies to "do more to help supply defensive support to Ukraine" but acknowledged the "huge progress" made since Ms Truss hosted G7 delegates in Liverpool last month.
Liz Truss has been empty-chaired by Good Morning Britain after she did not appear on the show as part of her broadcast round this morning.
This was the scene on ITV's flagship breakfast show in lieu of an interview with the Foreign Secretary:
Only last week, The Telegraph reported that Liz Truss has used dinner and drink events - dubbed "fizz with Liz" - to ask MPs for their views on "real, authentic Conservative solutions" to policy problems.
But asked twice about her support for the Prime Minister amid swirling rumours of a leadership challenge, Liz Truss said on Sky News: "He has my 100 per cent support... Absolutely, he has my complete support.
"The Prime Minister has apologised for what has happened. He's said mistakes were made.
"I believe that he's done a fantastic job as PM whether it's delivering Brexit, delivering the Covid vaccines, the booster programmes, we've now got a much faster growing economy than many of our competitors thanks to his work and I believe that's what we should focus on."
"Security issues" could stop Sue Gray's report from being published in full, the Foreign Secretary suggested this morning.
"We have been absolutely clear that we will publish the findings of the report," Liz Truss told Sky when she was asked for a guarantee that the whole report would be published.
"We don't know the content of the report so there could be security issues that mean parts of it are problematic to publish. But we will absolutely publish the findings of the report and we will be able to say more when we see the report."
Asked again if it would be published in full, Ms Truss responded: "Unless there is some specific issue but we want to make the findings of the report public.
"We want to be open and transparent. That's why Sue Gray has been asked to do that report."
Another dramatic day in Westminster looms, but it is anyone's guess whether the Sue Gray report into alleged Downing Street parties will be released today.
Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, confirmed on Sky News that Downing Street is yet to receive Ms Gray's findings.
All this as the Metropolitan Police gets to work on a criminal investigation into "a number" of the events said to have taken place at No 10, while Boris Johnson faces MPs in the chamber at Prime Minister's Questions at midday.
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