Rishi Sunak may be spared a vote that could enflame the row in the Tory party after Boris Johnson called his supporters off from opposing the investigation that found he lied to MPs over partygate.
The Prime Minister was agonising over his response to the damning Privileges Committee report which will be debated in the Commons on Monday as he seeks to unite his fractious Conservatives.
The report recommended that Mr Johnson should have faced a 90-day suspension had he not already resigned in advance of its judgment.
Though he cannot now serve that, the cross-party group of MPs also recommended that he should be banned from holding a pass to access Parliament for a series of offences.
Tory MPs will be given a free vote, but allies of Mr Johnson warned they could face battles with their local parties to remain as candidates at the next election if they back the motion.
However, Mr Johnson was privately urging his supporters not to oppose it, arguing the sanctions has no practical effect. He was aware that he would get his pass back if re-elected as an MP.
If the report is not opposed then it could just be nodded through the Commons saving Mr Sunak from having to chose between further riling Mr Johnson by backing it, voting against the report and risking public anger, or avoiding the action altogether and facing allegations of being weak.
It was unclear whether opposition parties could force a vote in order to apply pressure on the Tories.
The sanctions proposed by the Tory-majority committee are expected to pass regardless, with only a relatively small group of Johnson loyalists who would oppose the report’s findings.
Senior Conservative MP Damian Green told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “deliberately abstaining is not really rising to the importance of the occasion”.
The former de facto deputy prime minister said he intends to vote to approve the report with a “heavy heart”.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Cabinet minister who is a staunch ally of Mr Johnson, told LBC he believes Mr Sunak “will abstain on the basis that it is a parliamentary matter”.
He described the 90-day recommendation for Mr Johnson as “vindictive” and suggested the severity may have “helped his return, rather than hindered it”.
Liz Truss, who spent 49 days in No 10 after succeeding Mr Johnson as Tory leader, told GB News that preventing him holding a parliamentary pass would be a “very harsh decision”.
But she is not expected to vote on the report, with a source close to the MP pointing to her speaking at an event in Dublin on Monday morning.
Sir Jake Berry, a former Tory party chairman who is a close ally of Mr Johnson, conceded he was “almost certain that Parliament will vote in favour” of the report.
But he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain he will “certainly be one of those in the no lobby opposing this report, because I think both the conclusions and, to some extent, the way the committee was made up in terms of this report are wrong.”
Despite the Privilege Committee’s report being published early on Thursday, Downing Street said Mr Sunak “hasn’t fully had time to consider the report”.
“The Prime Minister takes these processes very seriously, which is why he intends to take the time to study the report closely,” a spokesman added.
The sanctions proposed by the Tory-majority committee are expected to pass, with only a relatively small group of Johnson loyalists set to oppose the report’s findings.
Mr Sunak will be hosting a foreign leader in No 10 on Monday, which could give him an excuse not to take part.
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