BORIS Johnson has this morning launched a blistering attack on the Commons Partygate report – slamming its “deranged findings”.
The furious ex-PM lashed out after the inquiry ruled he had deliberately misled MPs by claiming no rules were broken in No10.
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In a highly-critical report ,the Privileges Committee recommended tough sanctions including a 90-day Commons ban and being stripped of his ex-MP pass.
Raging BoJo – who last week resigned as an MP in anticipation of the ruling – let rip at the “kangaroo court” in a no-holds-barred onslaught.
Decrying a political stitch-up led by the Labour chair Harriet Harman, he said: “This report is a charade. I was wrong to believe in the Committee or its good faith.
“The terrible truth is that it is not I who has twisted the truth to suit my purposes. It is Harriet Harman and her Committee.
“This is a dreadful day for MPs and for democracy. This decision means that no MP is free from vendetta, or expulsion on trumped up charges by a tiny minority who want to see him or her gone from the Commons.”
On a dramatic day:
- The Privileges Committee recommended Boris Johnson be suspended for 90 days if he were still an MP
- MPs will vote on whether the ex-PM should lose his Commons pass
- BoJo was found to have misled MPs in five separate ways
- He was accused of stirring intimidation of the committee’s members through his attacks
- Allies of Mr Johnson rallied round this morning to warn he was being treated “very, very unfairly”
The 14-month probe today ruled that the ex-PM misled MPs over lockdown-breaking gatherings in No10.
In a 30,000-word paper, the committee of MPs skewered Mr Johnson for repeatedly claiming that no rules were broken.
They threw out his claims that when he insisted “no rules were broken” it was an honest mistake – saying there was no way he could not have known.
And they said some of his denials and explanations were “so disingenuous” he was “closing his mind to the truth”.
The Committee further rapped Mr Johnson for publicly questioning their integrity, which they say led to “intimidation” of members.
His behaviour in recent days meant the recommended sanction – to be voted on by MPs – was dramatically upgraded to 90 days.
AT A GLANCE: 5 THINGS FROM THE REPORT
WHAT DID WE LEARN
Boris knowingly misled MPs over Partygate
- The nub of the 108-page report is that Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs when he claimed no rules were broken in No10. The Committee says he misled the Commons in five separate ways.
Boris could have received a 90-day Commons suspension
- Had Boris not resigned as an MP, the recommended sanction would have been a 90-day Commons suspension. The Committee says they originally decided on sanction strong enough to trigger a byelection – 10 days minimum – but they decided to drastically upgrade this when he began accusing them of a “witch hunt” in public statements. All recommended sanctions are voted on by MPs.
Boris may have his ex-MP pass blocked
- The Committee wants Boris to lose his ex-MP parliamentary pass in light of his statements attacking the findings. John Bercow had this sanction applied last year for bullying.
MPs accuse Boris of ‘closing his mind to the truth’
- During their 14-month inquiry the MPs accuse Mr Johnson of making “denials and explanations so disingenuous that they were by their very nature deliberate attempts to mislead the Committee and the House”. They say this amounted to effectively having “closed his mind to the truth”.
Boris is having none of it
- In a defiant statement today, Mr Johnson tore into the Committee’s findings and branded the report as a “charade”. Decrying a political stitch-up, he blasts: “This is a dreadful day for MPs and for democracy.”
BORIS FIGHTBACK
The former PM shot back at the results as “complete tripe”, a “charade”, and “rubbish”, blasting them of “wilfully missing the point”.
And he accused their arguments of being “so threadbare that it belongs in one of Bernard Jenkin’s nudist colonies.”
He said of claims he he misled MPs: “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, or contradicted by the facts.
“I believed, correctly, that these events were reasonably necessary for work purposes.
“We were managing a pandemic. We had hundreds of staff engaged in what was sometimes a round-the-clock struggle against covid. Their morale mattered for that fight. It was important for me to thank them.
” But don’t just listen to me. Take it from the Metropolitan Police. The police investigated my role at all of those events. In no case did they find that what I had done was unlawful. Above all it did not cross my mind – as I spoke in the House of Commons – that the events were unlawful.
“Why would we have had an official photographer if we believed we were breaking the law?
” We didn’t believe that what we were doing was wrong, and after a year of work the Privileges Committee has found not a shred of evidence that we did.”
RALLYING ROUND
Some Tory MPs came out in support of their former leader this morning.
Ex-Cabinet Minister Esther McVey said: “Demands calling for Boris to be denied a former MPs pass to parliament are absolutely absurd & utterly unnecessary.”
Backbencher Brendan Clarke-Smith piled in: “I am appalled at what I have read and the spiteful, vindictive and overreaching conclusions of the report.”
MPs are set to vote on what sanction to dish out on Monday – which will be Mr Johnson’s birthday.
Rishi Sunak will have to decide how to order his Tory MPs to vote.
In a surprise twist last night, it was revealed that one of the top committee members himself was revealed to have attended his own lockdown party.
The former prime minister called for Sir Bernard Jenkin to resign and wrote to the committee last night claiming that he should have recused himself from the investigation.
Sir Bernard is alleged to have attended an event at which drinks and cake were served to mark his wife’s 65th birthday in December 2020.
The Sun has approached Sir Bernard for comment. He told Guido Fawkes he did not “attend any drinks parties during lockdown”.
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