Boris Johnson has told supporters not to vote against the Privileges Committee’s report which concluded that he lied to MPs over Partygate.
The former prime minister asked his allies not to oppose a motion in the House of Commons on Monday endorsing the findings of the Privileges Committee report, which found he had deliberately misled Parliament and had been part of a campaign to intimidate MPs investigating him.
Mr Johnson called the inquiry a “kangaroo court” after it said he would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days had he not quit the Commons last week.
But his close ally Sir James Duddridge MP told Sky News: “Boris’s view has changed. I spoke to him and he said the vote is not going to make any difference and it’s time to come together and move on.
“We want to turn down the temperature and calm down. I don’t think there’s going to be a vote. Very few people are going to turn up because it’s only a one-line whip.”
The Privileges Committee found that Mr Johnson deliberately misled Parliament with denials over Partygate and that he also launched what amounted to an “attack on our democratic institutions”.
Mr Johnson said it was “a lie” he had deliberately misled the House about what went on in Downing Street during lockdown.
He said the Met investigated and found he was not involved in rule-breaking with the exception of the “so-called birthday party, when I and the then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak were fined in circumstances that I still find puzzling”.
Mr Johnson also took aim at committee member Sir Bernard Jenkin, a long-time foe. The senior Tory MP is said to have criticised him before the Brexit referendum, something he has denied.
Ex-Cabinet minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg called the committee “foolish” over its sanction: “My biggest objection to this whole report is that it looks like it was not impartial.” He called the proposed 90-day ban “obviously vindictive”, adding: “They went too far.”
