Get ready for another 48 hours of Boris drama. The Privileges Committee is expected to publish its findings tomorrow into whether Johnson knowingly misled the House, some 14 months after the Commons voted for an inquiry into his statements on Partygate. The former PM claimed that he was advised by senior officials that both Covid rules and guidance had been complied with at all times in No. 10 during the pandemic. But according to the Times, the seven-strong panel of MPs has concluded that staff did not in fact advise this, despite his repeated insistences in the Commons. Whoops…
In fact, Martin Reynolds – Johnson’s infamous Private Secretary of BYOB ‘party Marty’ fame – warned him against making such a claim on the basis it was ‘unrealistic’. In written evidence to the Privileges Committee, published in March, Reynolds said that he advised Johnson in December 2021 to remove a claim from a statement to the Commons that ‘all guidance had been followed at all times’. He questioned ‘whether it was realistic to argue that all guidance had been followed at all times.’ Johnson subsequently removed the line from his opening statement but then repeated the assertion during a debate in parliament less than half an hour later. According to the Times, the committee views this as evidence that Johnson deliberately misled the Commons.
Another major point of contention is Johnson’s evidence at the mammoth five hour Privileges Committee session in March. He insisted there that leaving drinks he attended at No. 10 without social distancing were in line with Covid guidance and a ‘necessary’ part of his working life in No. 10. The committee is understood to, er, take a rather dim view of all this and the notion that such shindigs were essential to the operation of Downing Street. Sounds like a lengthy suspension is incoming – not that it will make much real difference now Johnson has quit the Commons for life on the after-dinner circuit. Elsewhere there are reports in the Guardian that Rishi Sunak could block Johnson from standing for election again by barring him from the approved list of parliamentary candidates.
Bang goes this week’s Downing Street grid…
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