Boris Johnson is set for a Valentine’s Day visit to Edinburgh during a stop on his ‘levelling up’ tour of the UK amid a scandal-hit period for Downing Street.
The Prime Minister felt little love from the Capital on a previous trip when a crowd booed and heckled the Tory leader on the steps of Bute House as he met with Nicola Sturgeon.
Johnson is hopeful this whirlwind tour of Scotland and the North West of England will help him avoid a fine after the PM was issued with a questionnaire by metropolitan police investigators in London over his part in alleged lockdown-breaching gatherings.
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Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis insisted the Prime Minister will "fight" and will win the next general election as he faces the prospect of Tory MPs - including Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross - forcing a vote to oust him as leader.
Mr Ross extended an olive branch to the PM with an invite to the party's conference in Aberdeen, but Johnson opted to decline that invitation and will instead visit a manufacturing site and research and development projects in the Capital and Fife.
The calls for the Prime Minister to go will only grow louder and more widespread if he cannot convince police he was not in breach of regulations at up to six events.
As he employs the help of personal lawyers, the Telegraph cited Mr Johnson's allies in reporting he plans to argue he was working in his official Downing Street flat on the night of the alleged "Abba party" in November 2020.
The Times said that even if he is fined he will not resign, in a move that would be likely to trigger Tory MPs to force a vote of confidence in his leadership.
Scotland Yard says the questionnaires ask for an "account and explanation of the recipient's participation in an event" and have "formal legal status and must be answered truthfully".
Fifteen Tory MPs have publicly called for Mr Johnson to quit, while more are thought to have privately written to the 1922 Committee of backbench Tories calling for a no-confidence vote.
More are poised to do so if the Prime Minister is found to have broken his own coronavirus laws, or further damaging details emerge from the Sue Gray inquiry.
He will face a vote of no confidence if 54 Conservative MPs write to 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady, and would be ousted if more than half of his MPs subsequently voted against him.
