Boris Johnson news – live: Senior Tory says PM unfit for office after Partygate fine
He called Mr Johnson’s apology ‘indefensible’
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Mark Harper, senior Conservative MP for the Forest of Dean, has said he believes Boris Johnson is “no longer worthy of the great office that he holds”.
It followed the PM’s address to the House of Commons in his first statement to MPs since he was fined by the Metropolitan Police for attending a birthday party – thrown in his honour – at No 10 while strict Covid restrictions were in place.
Mr Harper said: “I strongly support the government’s actions in standing up to Putin’s aggression and helping Ukraine defend itself and our values and it’s exactly at times like this that our country needs a Prime Minister who exemplifies those values.
“I regret to say that we have a Prime Minister who broke the laws that he told the country they had to follow, hasn’t been straightforward about it and is now going to ask the decent men and women on these benches to defend what I think is indefensible.
“I’m very sorry to have to say this, but I no longer think he is worthy of the great office that he holds.”
PM ‘must have known’ parties were taking place in No 10, says Thornberry
Last bit from shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry’s BBC interview this morning now.
The Labour MP said Boris Johnson, and his aides and allies, must have known that parties were taking place in Downing Street during lockdown.
“The sheer number of parties going on at No 10 on a regular basis make it perfectly clear to any reasonable person, let alone the person who made the rules, that those rules were being broken and they were being broken consciously,” she told Radio 4’s Today, adding:
“The fact that Dominic Raab said that when he was in charge there weren’t any parties shows that people knew there were parties going on and he made sure that, when he was in charge of No 10, when the prime minister was in hospital, that those sorts of things stopped, I think, again makes it clear.”
What time is PM speaking today? All we know about Partygate speech
As we’ve been reporting, Boris Johnson will face MPs today for the first time since he was fined by the Metropolitan Police for breaking Covid laws.
The PM will address the House of Commons this afternoon at around 3.30pm, after parliament returns from the Easter recees, writes Matt Mathers.
According to the Telegraph, he will stop short of going into detail about the gathering for which he was hit with a fixed penalty notice and any other “Partygate” events.
It comes after Mr Johnson, his wife Carrie, and the chancellor Rishi Sunak were all issued with – and paid – fines for attending a birthday bash held for the PM in June 2020. He is understood to have been present at at least six of the 12 events being investigated by the Met and is braced for more fines potentially to come.
Everything we know as Boris Johnson due to address Parliament on Partygate today
Prime Minister is expected to stop short of going into detail about lockdown-busting gatherings in Downing Street
Watch: Cabinet minister denies PM lied to parliament over Partygate
Starmer: ‘Offensive’ for PM to use Ukraine war as ‘shield’ in Partygate row
More from Keir Starmer’s Lorraine interview now, during which the Labour leader rejected the “offensive” assertion that Boris Johnson could not be removed from office while the Ukraine war raged on.
“I don’t really buy into this idea, by the way, that Johnson is the only person of any importance in the Ukraine crisis,” he said.
Any Tory successor would share similar views on Ukraine and there was support across the parties for the UK’s position, he said, meaning there was no need to keep Mr Johnson in place.
It comes after Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood - a former soldier - made similar remarks this morning, telling BBC Breakfast No 10 should refrain from using the war in Ukraine as a distraction against the Partygate saga. He also said any potential new PM would likely want to support the eastern European country as much as Mr Johnson has.
Sir Keir accused Mr Johnson of using the conflict “as a shield” and added: “I think that’s pretty offensive.”
He also said he believed that one day he will be the UK’s prime minister, which you can watch here:
Starmer condemns ‘pathetic’ Tory attempt to wash over PM’s fine
Labour leader Keir Starmer has dismissed the argument put forward by some of Boris Johnson’s aides and allies that his police fine was “like a speeding” ticket.
“I have never had anybody break down in front of me because they couldn’t drive at 35mph in a 30mph zone; I have had no end of people in tears - in real bits - about complying with rules that really, really hurt them,” he said in an interview on ITV’s Lorraine.
He added there had been a “pathetic display of Tory MPs going out to defend the indefensible” and it is “something they all ought to be ashamed of”.
Asked what he thinks the PM should do next, Sir Keir said he expected Mr Johnson to “apologise and then excuse himself” over the Partygate fine. He said:
“The prime minister makes the laws, tells the country to obey the laws, then breaks them and then - in my view - lies to parliament about it.”
Comparing PM’s party fine to parking ticket ‘insult to bereaved families’, says Davey
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey has called Brandon Lewis’s comments this morning (see my last post) “an insult to bereaved families”.
He said in a statement:
Brandon Lewis panned for comparing PM’s fine to speeding ticket
A closer look now at some of the commentary by Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis this morning.
Over the last week, some of Boris Johnson’s allies have told journalists that the Partygate fine he was given is no different to receiving a parking ticket, or a speeding offence. Brandon Lewis tried arguing the same this morning, much to the dismay of critics. He told Sky News:
“I think we do see consistently, whether it is through parking fines or speeding fines, ministers of both parties over the years have been in that position. We’ve had prime ministers in the past who have received penalty notices, from what I can see, and also front bench ministers.
“I saw there was a parking notice that Tony Blair had once. We’ve seen front bench Labour ministers and, let’s be frank, government ministers as well. You’ve asked me, can someone who sets the laws and the rules, can they also be someone who breaks the rules. That clearly has happened with a number of ministers over the years.”
This defence was panned as being too vague, especially considering Mr Blair, the former Labour PM, never drove a car when he was leader.
An hour later, on BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme, he tried the argument again. He said there had been cases in the past where Labour or Conservative ministers - without mentioning Mr Blair by name this time - were given speeding fines. When presenter Mishal Husain asked him to clarify this, Mr Lewis said:
“As I say, if somebody gets a speeding ticket - and I’m not in any way trying to equate a speeding ticket that somebody has had with the situation of the sacrifices people made through Covid, I’ll be really clear about that ...”
However, Ms Husain quickly interrupted, telling him: “You’ve actually literally just done that. These were rules that we were told we couldn’t even flex because lives are at stake ... and you are essentially downplaying that by bringing in some spurious reports that you’ve heard without even backing.”
Mr Lewis then retreated, turning instead to the point that Mr Johnson did not knowingly lie to MPs in the Commons.
Green MP Caroline Lucas had this to say about the minister’s defence:
Labour urges Tory MPs to ‘vote the right way’ on PM’s future
Back to Partygate now. Shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry appealed to Conservatives this morning to rise above party politics if opposition parties secure a vote on the future of Boris Johnson after he was fined by police for breaking his own Covid laws.
The Labour MP suggested parliament is looking into whether it believes the PM knowingly lied to the Commons, telling 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. But she added “it would be wrong for me to cut across those”.
Appealing to Tory MPs, she explained: “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.”
Ms Thornberry also urged the PM to “look to his own conscience and ... do the right thing”. Unless that happens, she said:
“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.”
Watch: Grant Shapps releases bizarre promotional video for ‘Great British Rail Sale’
Sending migrants from UK to Rwanda the ‘humanitarian thing to do,’ minister claims
Let’s hear from Brandon Lewis again now, but this time on the widely panned government’s Rwanda immigration plan.
Mr Lewis, who is himself a former immigration minister, defended the move as the “humanitarian thing to do”.
Describing immigration as a “really difficult area” for ministers to get right, he told BBC Breakfast:
“There are horrible scenes and stories of what these people smugglers put these people through.
“We’ve got to break this business model and doing something like this with Rwanda, which has such a strong track record, is right for the people of the UK, who can be rightly proud of our humanitarian support because this is a humanitarian thing to do.
“It is ensuring that we are deterring people from taking a treacherous as well as illegal journey to the UK.”
Asked about civil servants reportedly having raised objections to the scheme over its possible cost – an estimated £120m – Mr Lewis said only that he thinks it “will work”.
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