Partygate: Boris Johnson may be getting no more fines, but he’s a long way from getting away with it
Boris Johnson at a party: this one was in Christmas 2020, apparently, but the police aren’t fining him for it. Hmm…
Never mind the rumours that Boris Johnson met Sue Gray to discuss how to “manage” her report on the Covid-19 lockdown-busting Downing Street parties; he’s not likely to affect her verdict.
Apparently they only met to talk about whether she should publish images in her report – and he said it was a matter for her to decide on her own.
At the moment, it seems she is pushing for clearance to name the so-called ringleaders of the Partygate scandal, discussing with Civil Service human resources and legal teams, as well as trade unions, how explicitly she can point the finger.
That’s not the behaviour of someone who has taken orders not to rock the boat.
Indeed, avid scandal-watchers are bulk-buying popcorn in time for next week’s publication of her report, which promises to issue scathing criticism of senior political and Civil Service figures, calling into question why illegal social gatherings were allowed to take place.
But the real scandal appears to be the possibility that the Commons Privileges Committee is unlikely to report on whether Johnson intentionally misled Parliament over these parties until September.
The Committee has not yet met to decide who will chair the inquiry, after Labour’s Chris Bryant recused himself over [an] accusation of bias.
It is also unlikely to conclude its investigation before Parliament breaks up for summer recess in July, raising the prospect of Mr Johnson waiting until September at the earliest until the final verdict is delivered on Partygate.
The net result of all this delay has been to diffuse the strength of the scandal.
Ms Gray was originally set to publish her expected-to-be-damning report in January, less than two months after claims came to light that Tory ministers and civil servants took part in illegal parties over a period of more than a year.
But she was delayed after Johnson’s fellow Balliol College, Oxford, alumnus Cressida Dick commissioned a Metropolitan Police inquiry into the allegations that has delayed matters for four months.
And in the meantime, MPs decided to hold their own inquiry into whether Johnson had broken the Ministerial Code. It is known that he repeatedly provided false information to the Commons about whether parties took place but the important question is whether he did so, knowing that his words were not true.
It is this inquiry that may push Johnson out of Downing Street, because knowingly misleading Parliament is a breach of the Ministerial Code for which the penalties go as far as expulsion from that assembly.
But if the verdict won’t be known until September, who will care?
Source: Boris Johnson to wait months for final ‘Partygate’ verdict on whether he misled Parliament
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It’s already been decided that breaking his own law wasn’t a resigning matter. I think he will weasel out of the breach of ministerial code by insisting that the wording he used was ‘correct as far as he believed it to be true’ in that there were no ‘parties’ merely gatherings that he thought were perfectly legal. The fanboys will lap it up and the rest of us will become further enraged that this man is accountable for nothing, does what he wants and acts like Trump by making us forget the last scandal with a new one!
I am sick to the back teeth of these lying, thieving, crooked and corrupt MPs and the totally corrupt, lazy, bone idle police, fraud squad,prosecution service and judiciary! This tory criminal Cartel belong in prison, not in Parliament destroying the country and its people for personal wealth…Is there any point in voting anymore? There isn’t even an opposition to the tories, there is no opposition party to give the people a voice.