Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to give a statement to Parliament later today (Tuesday, April 19). It will see Mr Johnson address MPs for the first time since he received a £50 fixed penalty notice for breaking lockdown rules.
And while he is set to make a full apology, it is understood the PM will not address allegations he instigated a separate lockdown leaving do. He is likely to focus on the crisis in Ukraine, along with the Government’s controversial new policy on sending “illegal” migrants to Rwanda.
Last week the PM was fined by the Metropolitan Police for attending a birthday bash thrown in his honour in the Cabinet room in June 2020, while coronavirus restrictions were in place. He was then accused over the weekend of not only attending a leaving party for his former communications chief Lee Cain on November 13 2020, but instigating the do.
Downing Street declined to comment on the claims. Mr Johnson is expected to make a statement in the Commons today at 3.30pm or later, as MPs return to Westminster following the Easter recess.
Shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry has appealed to Conservatives to rise above party politics if opposition parties secure a vote on the future of Prime Minister Boris Johnson after he was fined by police for attending a birthday bash in breach of Covid rules.
The Labour MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme “there are ongoing discussions between the opposition parties and with the Speaker” about how to try to deal with the situation, and said “it would be wrong for me to cut across those”.
She added: “Whatever means we take, the difficulty we will always have is that, since the 2019 election, the Conservatives have an 80-seat majority when there is a vote. Unless Conservative MPs can look at their consciences and vote the right way, we are not going to get the sort of result that we should get.
“Unless the Prime Minister looks to his own conscience and decides that he should do the right thing, we are not going to get the results that we should get and, frankly, the result that the public want us to get, which is that this Prime Minister should go.”
But now is not the time for Boris Johnson to step down over “partygate” and “it is certainly not in the country’s interests to think about replacing the Prime Minister”, the treasurer of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbench MPs has said.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “At a time when thousands of our constituents are facing the biggest squeeze in their cost of living for a generation, when we are facing a bloody war in Europe the like of which we haven’t seen since the Second World War, when we are seeing a slowdown of the world economy because of all of that – to force the prime minister out and have instability at the top of government for at least two months, as I know as treasurer of the 1922 when we re-selected a successor to Theresa May, I think would be not in the country’s interests.”
Sir Geoffrey said he wants to see “all the evidence” which would include whether more fines are issued, what Sue Gray has to say and what the verdict of the British people is in the local government elections.
Conservative MPs are not calling for the Prime Minister to go at the moment because “they are withholding their judgment and waiting to see what happens”, he said.
Sir Geoffrey added: “The culture in Number 10 has to be advised by the most senior senior civil servants and at the time that the Prime Minister made that statement in parliament I am absolutely certain that he believed he had not broken any rules.”
