Thread by @SteB777

This is my take on why the Metropolitan Police left it so long before suddenly mounting an investigation, just before Sue Gray's report was ready for publications. Up until this point, the police were quite happy to say, let's see Sue Gray's report first.

https://twitter.com/SteB777/status/1488154137833394179

Then for whatever, reason, the police launched a sudden investigation, just before the publication of Sue Gray's report. As I explained, there was a very simple explanation for this. That a number of Downing St police officers, had been only too willing to speak Sue Gray.

It was widely reported 8 days ago, that Downing Street police were only too willing to speak to Sue Gray, even though they could not be compelled to speak to her. That they'd given Sue Gray damning evidence.
mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…

Yet, for the last month and a half, the Metropolitan Police have been refusing to investigate the parties scandal, citing a lack of evidence. Yet apparently, all along, police stationed outside and inside Downing Street had damning "evidence" on events.
thenational.scot/news/19800320.…

If the police had let Sue Grey publish the whole report prior to their investigation, it would have put the police themselves in legal peril. They'd be left floundering trying to explain why they'd failed to ask their own officers on duty at Downing St what had been going on.

Therefore, as soon as the police learned of what their own officers might have told Sue Gray, they needed to immediately launch their own investigation as a damage limitation exercise.

I believe this is the primary motivation for the Met, not wanting Sue Gray to publish her whole report, because if she did, it would immediately reveal that the police did have a considerable amount evidence available to them, to launch an investigation, but they chose not to.

What has happened here, is that the establishment for want of a better term, generally circles their wagons around the PM, to protect the PM in time of potential scandal, for fear it will damage public trust in the whole system.

However, because of Boris Johnson's cavalier attitude to rules as if they're just for the plebs, and his compulsive lying, the system had been protecting someone acting in a very dishonest and rule breaking manner.

By protecting Johnson to such a degree, they've all become complicit in Boris Johnson's compulsive lying. Johnson has infected the whole system.

This has put all those protecting Johnson in a terrible dilemma. Do they pull the plug on Johnson now and risk the blowback for covering up for him, or do they carry on protecting him, in the hope he can ride this out, digging a deeper hole for themselves.