Boris Johnson has launched an extraordinary fightback as he tries to wrestle back control of the narrative after the privileges committee released its report concluding that he deliberately misled parliament.
A 1,700-word statement from the former prime minister sought to rip apart their findings – impugning the committee’s integrity, evidence and conclusions. This is what he said, scrutinised in detail:
It is now many months since people started to warn me about the intentions of the Privileges Committee. They told me that it was a kangaroo court …
They also warned me that most members had already expressed prejudicial views – especially Harriet Harman – in a way that would not be tolerated in a normal legal process.
Johnson began his letter by trying to sow doubt about the credibility of the committee. His allies talked of “bias” by the chair Harriet Harman and pointed to tweets from her. In one, she shared a post by Alastair Campbell accusing Johnson of lying. In a second, Harman wrote that if Johnson and Rishi Sunak accepted police fines then that would amount to an admission that they had misled the Commons.
I knew exactly what events I had attended in No 10. I knew what I had seen, with my own eyes, and like the current PM, I believed that these events were lawful. I believed that my participation was lawful, and required by my job; and that is indeed the implication of the exhaustive police inquiry.
The committee found it was “unlikely” he genuinely believed the parties were within the guidance. Johnson sought to claim that if he thought the events were within the rules and guidance, then he could not have misled parliament when they turned out to be in breach of both. But the suggestion stretched beyond the credulity of the committee, and many others.
The only exception is the 19 June 2020 event, the so-called birthday party, when I and the then chancellor Rishi Sunak were fined in circumstances that I still find puzzling …
So when on 1 Dec 2021 I told the House of Commons that ‘the guidance was followed completely’ (in No 10) I meant it. It wasn’t just what I thought: it’s what we all thought.
Johnson knows there is at least one event where he has no wriggle room: the gathering in the cabinet room on his birthday. The police fined him for attending, meaning he unequivocally broke the law. He feigned ignorance as an excuse. Johnson also attempted to drag Rishi Sunak into the row, by pointing out that he was also fined for attending the event. His point was to show that others in government clearly thought that gathering, and others, were within the rules.
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.
Johnson has argued that he viewed the events as work. But the committee found that his unwillingness to say whether he would have encouraged the public to attend such events was an implicit acknowledgment he did believe them to be against the rules.
If we had genuinely believed these events to be unauthorised – with all the political sensitivities entailed – then there would be some trace in all the thousands of messages sent to me, and to which the committee has had access …
Johnson skirted over the concerns that were raised by senior figures about some of the events. Jack Doyle, his director of communications, admitted it “would not be possible for me to say” all the guidance was followed at all times. And Martin Reynolds, who was his principal private secretary, also said in evidence he cautioned against Johnson saying in parliament that all the guidance had been followed at all times – with the claim deleted from his briefing pack.
They try, absurdly and incoherently, to say that the assurances of Jack Doyle and [Doyle’s predecessor as communications director] James Slack were not enough to constitute ‘repeated’ assurances – completely and deliberately ignoring the sworn testimony of two MPs, Andrew Griffiths and Sarah Dines, who have also said that they heard me being given such assurances.
Perhaps the craziest assertion of all is the committee’s Mystic Meg claim that I saw the 18 Dec event [where guests were told to bring ‘secret Santa’ presents] with my own eyes.
There was a “plethora of evidence” about “how obvious it would have been to him” things were happening that broke the law and Covid guidance, the committee found. It cited him directly passing the entrance to the press office, where the event that was “beyond desk drinks” took place, with 25-40 people present. Johnson argued his mind was elsewhere with planning for a possible no-deal Brexit.
The committee also took issue with the testimony of two Tory MPs – Dines and Griffiths – who were Johnson’s aides at the time. It said they could provide neither the specific dates that assurances were given to him that all events were within the rules, nor who gave them to him.
I was wrong to believe in the committee or its good faith … 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.
Trying to pin the blame on the committee is Johnson’s strategy. But all MPs get to vote on the report. So a “tiny minority” do not have the powers to expel or sanction an individual politician. It is up to the whole House of Commons.
For the privileges committee to use its prerogatives in this anti-democratic way, to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination – that is beneath contempt.
By calling what has happened an “assassination”, Johnson appeared to admit that his political career had been killed off. He vowed earlier this week “I’ll be back” and his allies say he could go on to become Tory leader again some day.
But it is a moment of self-clarity from Johnson that his political career has come to an end for the foreseeable future. Though it was not killed off by the committee – as he decided to resign as an MP of his own volition last week.
