Party at 10 Downing Street on 13.11.2020 on departure of special adviser. Photo from Sue Gray final 60 page report on Boris Partygate
DEFIANT SCANDAL-RIDDEN PARTYGATE SLEAZE EX-PREMIER BORIS QUITS POLITICS ‘FOR NOW’
By SHAMLAL PURI in London
Associate Publisher & Senior Editor – UK
shamlalpuri4@gmail.com
Worth Noting:
- Boris dismissed the published 30,000 words report, a copy of which I have received, as “rubbish and a lie”. He called it a “protracted political assassination”. And that the report was “riddled with inaccuracies”.
- He accused Parliamentarians of a “witch hunt” by “Kangaroo court” undertaken by a committee that reached a “deranged conclusion”.
- The former Prime Minister, who could have faced a 90-day ban from entering the Parliament, retaliated by resigning as an MP last Friday, June 9, to avoid the penalty.
- Some MPs in the Committee had recommended even more extreme action: Boris be expelled from Parliament.
- There were moves in the Tory Party to expel Johnson as the repercussions escalated, and some angry members felt Boris had become a liability. There are allegations that Boris was not a committed Tory Party ideologist but merely in it as a political convenience.
A furious row blown in British political circles this week after a damning report, which took one year to complete, accused the disgraced former scandal-ridden Prime Minister Boris Johnson of deliberately misleading Parliament and telling lies four times over the Partygate affair during the Covid lockdowns when he was in 10 Downing Street.
Rather than face penalties, Boris Johnson dramatically resigned from his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency as a Member of Parliament on June 9, stoking a hornet’s nest and sparking a war of words which could seriously jeopardise the party’s chances of winning the next general election at the end of 2024.
The 108-page parliamentary Privileges Committee official report investigating his role in holding alcohol-fuelled parties in Downing Street during the lockdowns, released on Thursday, accused Boris of serious contempt and blistering attempts to intimidate MPs probing him.
He had claimed in the Commons that Covid rules and guidance were always followed at No 10 Downing Street – a point that turned out to be a lie and constituted repeated contempt of the Parliament.
His disingenuous denials culminated in one of the biggest scandals of this side of the 21st century.
Boris dismissed the published 30,000 words report, a copy of which I have received, as “rubbish and a lie”. He called it a “protracted political assassination”. And that the report was “riddled with inaccuracies”.
He accused Parliamentarians of a “witch hunt” by “Kangaroo court” undertaken by a committee that reached a “deranged conclusion”.
The former Prime Minister, who could have faced a 90-day ban from entering the Parliament, retaliated by resigning as an MP last Friday, June 9, to avoid the penalty.
Some MPs in the Committee had recommended even more extreme action: Boris be expelled from Parliament.
There were moves in the Tory Party to expel Johnson as the repercussions escalated, and some angry members felt Boris had become a liability. There are allegations that Boris was not a committed Tory Party ideologist but merely in it as a political convenience.
The investigation was launched in April 2022 to probe Boris’s breach of lockdown rules during Covid-19 when he held a series of alcohol-fuelled parties at 10 Downing Street in 2020 and 2021.
The report noted, “We came to the view that some of Mr Johnson’s denials and explanations were so disingenuous that they were by their very nature deliberate attempts to mislead the Committee and the House, while others demonstrated deliberation because of the frequency with which he closed his mind to the truth.”
He denied at first telling lies on record at the House of Commons; there were no parties, but faced with growing evidence from those who attended, including photos taken during the binge, caught out his lies.
The nation was livid. How could the country’s leader impose a lockdown, impose laws barring Britons from social gatherings, social distancing, shut pubs, and killing businesses on the one hand and then openly defy the laws he had created? This was one rule for them and one rule for others.
Loosely interpreted, Boris thought that as the Prime Minister, he could get away with anything and no one would question him.
An African diaspora member in London said that his arrogant attitude smacked of a Banana Republic government.
His actions came back to bite Boris. The Parliament ordered an investigation into the allegations led by senior civil servant Sue Gray.
She said whatever “the initial intent”, many of the gatherings breached Covid rules, and whatever the pressures of the time, this should not have happened.
Police stepped in. Those who attended were fined, including Boris Johnson and his then Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (the current Prime Minister), who was Johnson’s neighbour at 11 Downing Street, the official residence of the Chancellor and a list of guests who had attended those parties which include lavish use of alcohol.
His resignation has triggered a bye-election in his West London constituency.
In a 1,000-word statement, full of self-pity, self-praise and accusations, innuendos and barbs at his parliamentary colleagues, Boris, who has been an MP for 15 years, said, “It is very sad to be leaving parliament – at least for now.”
This appeared like an “I’ll be back” bravado message, a catchphrase associated with Arnold Schwarzenegger in his 1984 science fiction film The Terminator.
He is also on record saying Hasta La Vista (see you later).
Hasta la vista, baby” is a catchphrase associated with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s titular character from the 1991 science fiction action film Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Why did Boris defiant till now throw in the towel? Why quit just “for now”? This is to calm public opinion and buy time.
Boris Johnson said the Committee’s findings are ‘deranged’ and a ‘lie.’
He said it was a dark day for democracy.
‘This is rubbish. It is a lie. In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the Committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd.”
Finding Boris Johnson lied to MPs with his partygate denials, the Privileges Committee wrote: “We conclude that when he told the House and this Committee that the rules and guidance were being complied with, his knowledge was such that he deliberately misled the House and this committee.”
Boris was not only accused of deliberately misleading MPs but was also charged with “being complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation” of the Privileges Committee before he quit his seat last week.
Boris Johnson said the Privileges Committee was ‘beneath contempt’ because it had reached a ‘deranged conclusion’ to deliver ‘what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination’.
The report has sent shockwaves in the British electorate who voted for him and whom he let down, particularly the families of Covid victims who said Boris’s undignified protests were nauseating them. He had elbowed them aside when they protested and demanded reparations.
Others said his protestations had turned into a public pantomime.
In his 1,000-word resignation statement, “I have received a letter from the privileges committee making it clear – much to my amazement – that they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of parliament.”
The Committee accused Boris Johnson of an “egregious breach of confidentiality” by revealing the contents of the warning letter he had received from the Committee when he resigned.
He claims the investigation’s “purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court.”
Feelers are going around in political circles that Boris’s sudden resignation was to derail the investigation against him and to dilute any penalties.
The Privileges Committee is investigating whether Boris Johnson may have misled Parliament in statements he made in the Commons about alleged breaches of lockdown rules in Downing Street and, if so, whether this may have constituted contempt of Parliament.
Boris described himself as “a victim of a witch hunt.” Putting diplomacy on the back burner, he fired undiplomatic salvos, not even sparing his one-time friend and close political ally, the current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
They have traded vicious blows in a shocking fallout.
At the centre of this is the political honours list.
As is the political tradition, The Prime Minister’s Resignation Honours in the United Kingdom are honours granted at the behest of an outgoing prime minister following their resignation.
In such a list, a prime minister may ask the monarch to bestow peerages, or lesser honours, on any number of people of their choosing.
Boris Johnson’s list was immediately denounced as a “dishonours list” because it contained names of his sycophants who propped him during his time in Downing Street.
The row turned ugly after Rishi Sunak said, “Boris Johnson asked me to do something that I wasn’t prepared to do.” Boris replied that “Rishi Sunak is talking rubbish.”
It has been revealed that Boris was pressuring Sunak to approve the honours list.
Some of the names on the list are said to have said they would be much happier not being honoured because of the ruckus Boris has caused.
It could be tantamount to them withdrawing their support for the former Prime Minister.
The almighty row has spread so much bitterness among the Tories that those who had allied themselves with Boris have dumped him politically and asked him to shut up and go.
Today, the image of Boris, who paraded himself with his political trademark messy hairstyle, showing that he was too posh to fail, lies in tatters.
The Sue Gray report into Partygate was the first epitaph of Johnson’s political leadership failures.
There were “failures of leadership and judgment in No 10 and the Cabinet Office”. Gray wrote: “The events that I investigated were attended by leaders in government. Many of these events should not have been allowed to happen.”
Her conclusion: “Many will be dismayed that behaviour of this kind took place on this scale at the heart of government. The public have a right to expect the very highest standards of behaviour in such places, and clearly what happened fell well short of this.”
In her report, Gray described the sordid scenes at one party in embarrassing detail and how that event unfolded.
Boris was said to have tried to block parts of the report releasing only sections.
Gray looked into 15 events on 12 dates between May 2020 and April 2021, all involving people gathering during Covid lockdowns. Boris Johnson attended eight of these.
Several of the events appeared notably drunken and rowdy. At a leaving on June 18 2020, there was karaoke, “excessive alcohol consumption” in which someone was sick and “a minor altercation between two other individuals”, with staff staying beyond 3 am. Two leaving events on April 14 2021, which merged in the No 10 garden, involved drunkenness and people going after 4 am. At a Christmas party in December 2020, red wine was spilled on a wall and on stationery supplies.
As well as Johnson, a handful of senior officials are named, among them Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, and Martin Reynolds, Johnson’s former principal private secretary.
Reynolds appeared particularly involved in planning events. After one gathering, Reynolds sent a message saying No 10 “seem to have got away with” holding it.
The Gray report featured eight photos from two events – Johnson’s birthday gathering in June 2020 and a leaving event in November of that year.
Gray opted not to investigate claims of a party inside Johnson’s Downing Street flat on November 13, 2020. While Gray confirms this involved food and alcohol, she “concluded it was not appropriate or proportionate” to look into it – a decision likely to be controversial.
This was when Boris’s star started sinking. Boris apologised.
The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, responding to Johnson, dismissed his partial apology, saying: “When the dust settles, and the anger subsides, this report will stand as a monument to the hubris and arrogance of a government that believed it was one rule for them, and another rule for everyone else.”
In this month’s report, a small group of parliamentarians has enforced the principle that politicians must tell the truth – a parliamentary mechanism which, says Hannah White, is crucial to our democracy.
Johnson’s decision to resign echoes that of several other MPs – including his friend Owen Paterson.
Faced with the prolonged humiliation of a Commons vote on a Privileges Committee recommendation of suspension, Johnson chose an accelerated departure instead.
He has quit while protesting his innocence and berating the system that determined his guilt, doing so without subjecting himself to the judgment of his fellow MPs or constituents.
Even though Boris Johnson is sad, confused and deluded today, he still believes he will bounce back from another safe seat.
He continues to lose many of his ardent supporters, except the ones whom he did favours when he was the Prime Minister.
Whether the people who voted for him previously will flock back to support him remains to be seen.
Critics say his actions and strategy echo the actions of Donald Trump across the pond, where the former US President is facing more serious criminal charges unrelated to UK politics.
Trump played the victim card in his case, and Boris is doing the same.
Is this the end of the road for Boris Johnson? What are the chances of Boris returning to the Commons or becoming the Prime Minister?
The Privilege Committee report asks: Should Boris Johnson be banned from the Parliament? A free vote in the Commons on Monday will decide his fate. A free vote is when MPs are not bound by their party’s orders and policy but are free to vote on their beliefs and discretion.
Boris’s boys in the Commons have warned they will be watching those who vote against him. Intimidation? Oh yes.
Observers think that with each passing day, he is losing support and that it is unlikely to regain his lost credibility.
But this is politics – anything can happen! Boris may or may not bounce back!
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