It is now official: Boris Johnson lied, deliberately and repeatedly in the precincts of the British Parliament by asserting, between the end of 2021 and mid-2022, that “the rules were followed at all times” in Downing Street during the pandemic, while the birthday parties and other farewell parties that were held there at the time violated the rules of confinement. Here is the damning conclusion reached by the “Privileges Committee”, the Westminster Disciplinary Commission, in a report on “partygate” published Thursday, June 15.
The result of more than a year of investigation, the content of this report does not come as a surprise to the former Conservative Prime Minister: he caused his early resignation on Friday June 9. Boris Johnson had just learned of it and he preferred to leave on his own, claiming to be the victim of a ” witch hunt ” and insulting the Commission (by calling it “puppet court”), rather than suffer the humiliation of a sanction and likely rejection by voters in his constituency of Uxbridge (west London).
This thunderous outing certainly made his case worse in the eyes of the committee. Chaired by a Labor MP, Harriet Harman, but with a Tory majority, it found that Mr Johnson had not only “outraged” Parliament repeatedly by lying about parties when it knew they existed and knew they broke the rules, but also by “participating in a campaign of intimidation” against the institution.
One of the worst mistakes an MP can make
The committee recommended a ninety-day suspension from the House of Commons for Mr Johnson (all moot since he resigned), but it also proposed that he could not benefit, contrary to the custom for former MPs, a pass to access the Palace of Westminster.
Outraging Parliament is an extremely serious matter in the UK. It is even one of the worst mistakes a member can make in the House of Commons because, as the committee points out in its report, “Our democracy is based on the ability of elected officials to believe what ministers tell them”. Boris Johnson is the first prime minister in British history to be convicted for deliberately lying to Parliament. He joins the infamous list of elected officials accused of contempt, alongside War Minister John Profumo, forced to resign in the early 1960s for having lied about his extramarital relationship with a young model.
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