Conservative former minister Steve Baker has told MPs that Boris Johnson should quit, saying the 'gig is up." He said he had been tempted to “forgive” the Prime Minister for breaking Covid lockdown rules but conceded that possibility for him is now “gone”.
Mr Baker, who served as Brexit Minister, said the problem he has with Boris Johnson, “having watched what I would say is contrition, beautiful, marvellous contrition”, is that it “only lasted as long as it took to get out of the headmaster’s study”.
He said: “And that’s not good enough for me, and it’s not good enough for my voters. I’m sorry, it’s not. And I’m afraid I am now in a position where I have to acknowledge that if the Prime Minister occupied any other office of senior responsibility, if he was a secretary of state, if he was a minister of state, a parliamentary undersecretary, a permanent secretary, a director general, if he was a chief executive of a private company or a board director, he would be long gone.
"The reason that he is not long gone is because removing a sitting prime minister is an extremely grave matter, and goodness knows, people will know, I’ve had something to do with that, too.
“It’s an extremely grave matter and an extremely big decision and it tends to untether history and all of us, all of us should approach such things with reverence and awe and an awareness of the difficulty of doing it and the potential consequences and that’s why I’ve been tempted to forgive.
“But I have to say now, the possibility of that, really, for me, has gone. I have to say I’m sorry, that for not obeying the letter and spirit – and I think we have heard that the Prime Minister did know what the letter was – the Prime Minister now should be long gone. I’ll certainly vote for this motion. But really, the Prime Minister should just know the gig’s up.”
MPs will decide today whether a Commons committee should look into allegations that Mr Johnson misled the House with his repeated denials about Downing Street parties during the coronavirus lockdown.
The Prime Minister will miss the Commons vote on a Labour-led motion calling for the Privileges Committee investigation because he is on an official visit to India. Asked on the first day of his trade mission to India whether he knowingly or unknowingly misled Parliament, Mr Johnson said: “Of course not.”
