Andrew Mitchell continues to deny the words attributed to him and recorded at the time in Police Notebooks. It is worth noting that in a court of law when an accused is in denial and challenged by the notebook evidence of three Police officers (not ordinary coppers, but from the elite Diplomatic Protection Squad) the likely verdict of most juries in most circumstances would be guilty.
This incident has done the Tory party huge damage leaving it with an image problem only marginally less toxic than the whiff of sleaze wafting around the Major cabinet. There is no doubt Cameron should have sacked his Chief Whip right at the beginning and is now contaminated by the same show of weakness previously seen over Coulson and Fox, both of whom went in the end.
If Mitchell survives, laughing stock as he has become as the source of endless jokes, some broadcast on popular shows, it will be because the Police Federation allowed itself to stray from the solid ground of outrage at the challenge to the integrity and truthfulness of sworn officers, who in the line of duty are required to put their lives on the line to protect the Cabinet, onto the quicksand of political manoeuvre. If the Federation had continually complained of the inferred slur and kept mum about what should be done with Mitchell, he would almost certainly have gone by now. The cynical view is that while demanding he goes, all opposed to the government want him to stay, knowing that the longer he does, the more damage he will do.