Rishi Sunak faces bitter Tory infighting erupting in public when MPs vote on whether to approve a damning report which found Boris Johnson committed "repeated contempts" of Parliament.
Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt confirmed that the Privileges Committee's findings will be debated on Monday, June 19 - the same date as Mr Johnson's 59th birthday.
MPs are expected to have a free vote, which is likely to expose rifts between Conservative MPs who back the former prime minister and those who want to see him being sanctioned.
Blue-on-blue sniping has already begun, with arch-Johnson loyalist Nadine Dorries calling for Tories who vote against the former prime minister to be kicked out of the party.
But Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, has said he will support the recommendations of the Privileges Committee "because we as a Parliament asked them to do this job".
The Privileges Committee report published today found he committed “repeated contempts” of Parliament by deliberately misleading MPs with his partygate denials before being complicit in a campaign of abuse and intimidation, a cross-party investigation found on Thursday.
Branding him the first former prime minister to have ever lied to the Commons, the Privileges Committee recommended a 90-day suspension which would have paved the way for a by-election if he had not quit in anticipation.
His resignation means he will escape that punishment but the committee recommended that he should not receive the pass granting access to Parliament which is normally given to former MPs.
The former Conservative leader hit out at what he called a “deranged conclusion”, accusing the Tory-majority group of MPs led by Labour veteran Harriet Harman, who he has repeatedly sought to disparage, of lying.
Mr Johnson called the committee “beneath contempt” and claimed its 14-month investigation had delivered “what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination”.
They found the former prime minister had committed a “serious contempt” for “deliberately misleading” MPs by insisting all rules had been followed in Downing Street despite lockdown-breaching parties.
The MPs had provisionally agreed a suspension long enough to potentially trigger a by-election before Mr Johnson resigned in protest at the findings, attacking the committee as a “kangaroo court”.
But they said he committed further contempts by undermining the democratic processes of the Commons and being “complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the committee”.
