LONDON – Lawmakers are expected to release a long-awaited report Thursday on whether former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson deliberately misled Parliament over COVID lockdown-flouting parties at his Downing Street office.
Parliament's Privileges Committee has spent 14 months investigating Johnson's conduct over “partygate,” a series of boozy gatherings in his office that broke strict COVID-19 restrictions that his government had imposed on the country.
Johnson, 58, angrily quit as a lawmaker on Friday after the committee informed him in advance that he would be sanctioned. He described the seven-member committee — which included both the ruling Conservatives and opposition party members — as a “kangaroo court,” and accused political opponents of driving him out in a “witch hunt.”
On Wednesday, the eve of the report's publication, Johnson also called for the panel's most senior Conservative member, Bernard Jenkin, to resign over claims that he had broken pandemic restrictions himself.
Daisy Cooper, deputy leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, said the move was a “typical distraction tactic from Boris Johnson that doesn’t change the fact he broke the law and lied about it.”
If found to have lied and been in contempt of Parliament, Johnson would have been suspended from the House of Commons. A suspension of 10 days or more would have meant that Johnson’s constituents in his suburban London seat could have petitioned to oust him and elect a new lawmaker.
Johnson’s move to quit Parliament means he can no longer be suspended, and his seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip will be contested in a special election next month.
Johnson and his wife, Carrie, were fined by the Metropolitan Police last year for breaching COVID laws at a birthday party for Johnson in his Downing Street residence and office in June 2020.
Current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was also among dozens of people issued with fixed-penalty notices for a series of office parties and “wine time Fridays” in 2020 and 2021 across government buildings.
Revelations of the booze-fueled gatherings, which took place at a time when millions were prohibited from seeing loved ones or even attending family funerals, angered many Britons and added to a string of ethics scandals that spelled Johnson's downfall. Johnson resigned as prime minister last summer after a mass exodus of government officials protesting his leadership.
Johnson has acknowledged misleading lawmakers when he assured them that no rules had been broken, but he insisted he didn’t do so deliberately.
In March he told the committee he “honestly believed” the five gatherings he attended, including a send-off for a staffer and his own surprise birthday party, were “lawful work gatherings” intended to boost morale among overworked staff members coping with a deadly pandemic.
He also said that “trusted advisors” assured him that neither the legally binding rules nor the government’s coronavirus guidance had been broken.
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