New crisis for Boris Johnson as ethics adviser quits

Calls for prime minister to quit after second custodian of ministerial code stands down

Boris Johnson’s independent ethics adviser Christopher Geidt has quit following disagreements over Partygate.

The shock resignation thrusts the prime minister back into crisis, after he last week won a vote of confidence in his position among Tory MPs by a narrower than expected margin of 211 votes to 148.

The peer was blocked from launching an inquiry into whether the PM had breached the ministerial code by rules which state that any such investigation must be approved by Mr Johnson himself.

In a statement, Lord Geidt gave no explanation for his decision, saying only: “With regret, I feel that it is right that I am resigning from my post as Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests.”

He is the second of Mr Johnson’s ethics advisers to resign, following the departure of Sir Alex Allan in November 2020 after the prime minister overruled his finding that the home secretary Priti Patel had bullied staff. No holder of the post under previous PMs has ever felt obliged to quit.

The chair of the Commons standards committee, Labour MP Chris Bryant, called on the prime minister to resign.

“Christopher Geidt is one of the most honourable men I have ever met,” said Mr Bryant. “In the end, he was a decent man working for an indecent prime minister. He thought he could discreetly bring about incremental change but he was repeatedly lied to by No 10. In honour, Johnson should resign.

“So far Johnson has ruined Allegra Stratton’s career, tarnished Christopher Geidt’s reputation and let dozens of staff take the blame for his lawbreaking. Tories must surely wake up one day?”

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “The prime minister has now driven both of his own hand-picked ethics advisers to resign in despair. If even they can’t defend his conduct in office, how can anyone believe he is fit to govern?

“Yet he remains propped up in office by a Conservative Party that is mired in sleaze and totally unable to tackle the cost of living crisis facing the British people. The person who should be leaving No 10 tonight is Boris Johnson himself. Just how long does the country have to wait before Tory MPs finally do the right thing?”

In a scathing public rebuke of the PM last month, Lord Geidt warned Mr Johnson was at risk of placing the ministerial code in a place of “ridicule” over lockdown-breaching parties at No 10.

He said there were “legitimate” questions over whether Mr Johnson had breached ministerial standards and made a veiled threat to quit if the PM continued to insist there was no case to answer.

His intervention then forced Mr Johnson to release a detailed explanation of why he believed that his fixed penalty fine for breaking Covid lockdown laws did not amount to a breach of the ministerial code.

In a preface to his delayed annual report on ministerial standards on 31 May, the ethics adviser said that Mr Johnson had failed to heed advice repeatedly conveyed to No 10 that he should make a public statement on whether he had abided by the code.

Failure to do so would put him in the position of having to advise the PM to launch an inquiry into himself and then resign when Mr Johnson refused to do so – which would put the code “in a place of ridicule”, said Lord Geidt.

But Mr Johnson responded that Lord Geidt had not raised the issue directly with him and blamed the situation on a “failure of communication between our offices”.

Appearing before a panel of MPs on Tuesday, Lord Geidt hinted that he might have launched an inquiry into Mr Johnson’s behaviour if the powers had been available to him at the time.

He told MPs: “It’s reasonable to say that perhaps a fixed penalty notice and the prime minister paying it may have constituted not meeting the overarching duty under the ministerial code of complying with the law.”

Speaking just a day before his eventual decision to quit, Lord Geidt repeatedly refused to say if he had threatened to resign.

But he admitted he was an “asset of the PM” rather than enjoying full independence, telling MPs: “How can I defeat the impression that it’s a cosy, insufficiently independent relationship? It’s very hard. But I’m trying my best to work with what I’ve got.”

Following his appointment in the wake of the Patel bullying scandal, Lord Geidt was granted new powers to propose inquiries into possible breaches of the code of conduct by ministers. His predecessors had been able to act only on the request of the PM.

But he asked for new powers to launch inquiries on his own initiative after it emerged that Mr Johnson had given him incorrect information during his investigation of the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat which cleared the PM of wrongdoing.

A review of the role extended Lord Geidt’s powers, but insisted that he must consult with the PM before opening a probe.

Liberal Democrat chief whip Wendy Chamberlain MP said: “When both of Boris Johnson’s own ethics advisers have quit, it is obvious that he is the one who needs to go.

“This prime minister has constantly lied and broken the laws he wrote. It’s clear as day that he has broken the ministerial code too. For the good of Britain, the next resignation we should be hearing about is that of Boris Johnson.”