Let’s conduct a dark thought experiment by imagining that Boris Johnson had successfully blagged and bullied the privileges committee into letting him get away with the repeated lies he told about Partygate. Our democracy would be in a very sickly condition this weekend. The Commons would be in disrepute with the public, a thumping majority of whom concluded long ago that the deceitful scoundrel lied about law-breaking in Downing Street. We would be looking at terrible damage to parliamentary scrutiny of the executive, which vitally depends on upholding the principle that MPs can expect ministers to give them honest information. If such a manifest deceiver had been let off the hook, it would not have taken long for lying to become institutionalised in parliament. So the excoriating judgment of the privileges committee was not just right, it was also imperative.
He greeted their findings with another of his toddler tantrums, screaming about “the final knife-thrust” and “a dreadful day for MPs and for democracy”. To the contrary, this has been one of the brighter moments in the recent history of our democracy. In politics, the media and many other parts of the public square, we are in the midst of a titanic struggle. On the one side are bad actors who seek to advance themselves and their causes by peddling misinformation, mendacity and fakery. Resisting them are those who prize facts, veracity and rules. It was critical that the defenders of integrity in public life prevailed over the forces of darkness.
It was important that the four Conservative MPs on the committee and their three colleagues from opposition parties spoke with one voice – and they did so by producing a unanimous report. It was important that they were meticulous in their assembly and examination of the evidence – and they were. It was important that they delivered a judgment commensurate with the severity of the offences – and they have done so.
Fourteen months in the making and running to 106 pages, the report is eviscerating about the scale and depth of his abuses. The MPs did not throw the book at the former prime minister; they hurled a library at him. And justly so. The report combines what was already known about his misconduct with previously unseen evidence to demonstrate that he lied to the Commons about Partygate on many occasions. He lied even when he appeared before MPs to purportedly correct earlier lies. He then lied during the investigation itself and compounded that with a Trumpesque campaign of abuse against the committee designed to delegitimise its inquiry and intimidate its members. They rightly call this out as “an attack on our democratic institutions”.
Had he not cut and run from parliament by quitting as an MP, the committee says he should have faced a 90-day suspension from the Commons. “Sir” Jacob Rees-Mogg and the residual rump of Johnson apologists are wailing that this is vindictive. “Sir” James Duddridge, another Johnson crony with a knighthood to show for it, whined: “Why not go the full way, put Boris in the stocks and providing rotten food to throw... at him. Moving him around the marginals, so the country could share in the humiliation.” Well, there’s a crowd-pleaser that a lot of people would be delighted to organise, but really this is just more of their nonsense. For flouting Covid restrictions, Margaret Ferrier, a hitherto obscure MP for the SNP, received a 30-day suspension that has demolished her political career. Mr Johnson repeatedly lied to parliament from the highest office in the land. He did so in an attempt to conceal an extremely grave scandal at the heart of government involving more than 100 offences against the law. He then tried to cover up his cover-up with yet more lies. A condign penalty was essential. Not just to give him the punishment that he so richly deserves, but also to act as a warning and a deterrent to all politicians of all parties. In future, prime ministers and ministers tempted to lie their way out of trouble will dwell upon the fate of Mr Johnson and think again. At least we must very much hope so.
It is appropriate to assign him pariah status by denying him the parliamentary pass customarily given to ex-MPs. That’s not a privilege he deserves to enjoy when he treated the centre of our democracy with such contempt. It is legitimate to demand that he repay the taxpayer for his legal expenses – believed to be about £250,000 – given the despicable manner in which he conducted his defence and a verdict that is so comprehensively damning. The committee has served the country well. Now it is over to MPs as a body to assert that the truth matters and the rules underpinning our democracy must be respected. The report will be debated in the Commons on Monday, but there is some doubt about whether there will be a vote on it. Mr Johnson is urging his claque not to object to the report for fear that this would expose how few supporters he has left. There needs to be a formal declaration of denunciation by the Commons, lest he later tries to twist the absence of a vote into a claim that he was never properly found guilty.
Some Tories do grasp the magnitude of what is at stake here. Some also feel a prick of shame about the devil’s bargain their party struck when it gave the job of prime minister to someone so utterly unfit for the job. Then there’s a whole lot of other Conservative MPs who are torn between fear of blowback from Johnson-sympathetic Tory activists in their constituencies if they ratify the report and brickbats from opponents and disapproval from voters if they don’t disown him. Abstention may seem like an attractive option to them and their whips have given them a coward’s licence to stay away. Nadine Dorries is making mafioso-like menaces that “deselections may follow” for Tory MPs who endorse the findings of the privileges committee.
Rishi Sunak ought to be giving a lead and setting an example. Yet the Tory leader has chosen to be mute. As I write, he has had nothing to say about the damning verdict against his predecessor, nor has he condemned Mr Johnson. Everyone is expressing an opinion about it except the man who is supposed to be in charge of the country. Number 10 is refusing to say whether the prime minister will even turn up in the Commons on Monday. Nor has he expressed a view about whether Mr Johnson should be permitted to stand as a Conservative candidate for parliament in the future. After Jeremy Corbyn refused to accept the findings of an official inquiry into appalling things that went on in the Labour party on his watch, Sir Keir Starmer banned him from standing as a Labour parliamentary candidate. By ducking and dodging over whether Mr Johnson should be similarly prohibited from representing the Tories in the future, the prime minister looks politically feeble and ethically clueless.
Allies of the Tory leader say that he has only contempt for Mr Johnson and hopes that the other man is now history, but he doesn’t want to “poke the beast”. Mr Sunak is deluding himself if he thinks there is any peace to be had. He sanctioned a deplorable dishonours list by Mr Johnson only for the former prime minister’s gang to rage about it anyway on the grounds that they were swindled because the list was not quite as grotesque as the selection of baubles originally demanded. The Johnsonites are inflicting byelections on the Conservative party that are not going to go well for the prime minister. Mr Johnson now has a column in the Daily Mail, breaching yet another rule by taking it up without consulting the relevant watchdog. He will use that platform and others to propagate his betrayal myth that depicts Mr Sunak as the backstabber-in-chief. Any hopes that Mr Johnson might entertain of a comeback are predicated on him destroying another Conservative leader and the Tories losing the next general election.
Is Mr Sunak not smart enough to see that he needs to be merciless in finishing off Mr Johnson? Self-preservation is one incentive. The other is demonstrating that he understands essential democratic principles. If there were any sincerity to his pledges to restore accountability and integrity to public life, he will unambiguously endorse the privileges committee’s report and he will urge Conservative MPs to do the same. Number 10 needs to organise a search party to find a spine for the prime minister.
• Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer
