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Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said the Prime Minister was “right to apologise”, and said he supports Boris Johnson’s “request for patience” as Sue Gray conducts her investigation. A junior minister agreed, saying Johnson had effectively “bet the farm” on the Gray report. “He’s done enough to win himself another week or two. If Gray doesn’t directly pin the blame on him, it will be framed by No 10 as exoneration,” they said. But, anyway, Kwarteng echoed his colleagues in saying they need to let the investigation continue, before reeling off a list of Conservative priorities ahead of the next election - which he predicted will take place in two years. Funds do not have to have been handed over for a donation to have taken place. If someone paid off a bill that Johnson owed to someone else, that counts as a donation. If someone paid off a bill Johnson owed to a third party but then required Johnson to repay the money, that is a loan covered by the law.

verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Good evening, Tom Ambrose here to bring you all the latest fallout from Westminster today as Boris Johnson’s own MPs continue to turn up the heat on the prime minister after his display in the Commons this afternoon.Dr Saleyha Ahsan, who lost her father to Covid in the pandemic, said she believes the prime minister’s situation is untenable. The doctor, who is currently on a clinical break and doing a PhD at Cambridge, was working at a hospital in Bangor in Wales in the early part of the Covid crisis, PA Media reported. The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has seized upon a leaked message from Priti Patel urging other Tory MPs in a WhatsApp group to get behind Boris Johnson. That is not a prediction other ministers have been making. Even Johnson himself, at PMQs, responded to the many calls for his resignation by saying that he wanted to await the findings of the Sue Gray inquiry, not by saying that he intended to stay on regardless. People are hurt and angry at what happened and he has taken full responsibility for that. The inquiry should now be allowed to its work and establish the full facts of what happened”.

An NHS doctor has described Boris Johnson’s apology as “insulting”, as she recalled how she was sweating while working in full PPE around the same time as the event took place. Wragg also said the party should take the initiative, instead of leaving it to Sue Gray, the civil servant leading the partygate inquiry, to effective decide the PM’s fate. He said:And I’m particularly concerned, as a Conservative MP with interests of the country, my constituency and the Conservative party, that a series of unforced errors on matters of integrity are deeply damaging to the perception of my colleagues and the party. And that is deeply unfair to them. Some cabinet ministers later tweeted their qualified support for the prime minister – though the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, was noticeable by his silence and absence from the frontbench as Johnson offered his account during prime minister’s questions.

Boris Johnson is unlikely to be seen in public for the next week after a member of his immediate family tested positive for Covid, Downing Street has said. Published: 6:00 AM ‘I was young and naive – now I’m wizened and cynical’: James O’Brien on the politicians who always let you down Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy PM, told BBC News that Boris Johnson had given a “very clear account” of the events of 20 May 2020. Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister is over, and that means so is his tenure living in 10 Downing Street. Johnson usually films a brief, pooled broadcast interview on visits such as the one scheduled for Thursday, and would inevitably have faced questions both about the alleged party and about calls for him to resign from some of his MPs after he admitted attending it.Published: 3:29 PM Boris Johnson 'was obsessed with older people accepting their fate', Covid inquiry hears – video

As colleagues are saying to one another and off the record, I sadly think that the prime minister’s position is untenable.MORE : Bookies suggest Boris Johnson more likely to be on I’m A Celebrity than return as Prime Minister Well, that’s it from a busy day in Westminster (on this live blog, at least). One thing that is certain is this latest Tory scandal is set to run and run, so do join us again tomorrow for what I am sure will be another intriguing day as Boris Johnson’s own MPs continue to turn the screw on the prime minister. Rees-Mogg claims those Tory MPs calling for Johnson to resign are “people who are always unhappy… People who have never really supported the PM… Therefore you would expect them to be relatively grumpy."— Lucy Fisher (@LOS_Fisher) January 12, 2022 The commission launched its inquiry days after Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s former chief adviser, claimed in a blog that he had told the PM his “plans to have donors secretly pay for the renovation were unethical, foolish, possibly illegal”. Cummings has said he is willing to give evidence to the commission.