Boris Johnson’s casual attitude towards the law won’t fly this week

Editorial: The question at hand is no longer if there were illegal gatherings, but whether the various accounts he gave to parliament were misleading – and intentionally so

(Dave Brown)

Scenting blood in the water, the opposition parties are making a show, at least, of trying to topple the prime minister. The SNP leader in Westminster, Ian Blackford, for example, is calling for parliament to be recalled by the speaker of the Commons so that Boris Johnson can tender his resignation.

Technically, Mr Blackford is wrong on both counts; it’s the prime minister who initiates the process to recall parliament, and he can tender his resignation to the Queen whether parliament is sitting or not.

Still, Mr Blackford has a point. The prime minister certainly does need to account for himself, and when parliament meets next week he will have an opportunity to do so. If he performs as badly and complacently as he has sometimes in the past, he will not enhance his chances of survival.

His one and only media appearance since his fixed penalty notice materialised had him smirking and constantly glancing down at his notes, as if he hadn’t given his reaction much thought and the key lines to take had been scribbled down for him by Guto Harri or some such apparatchik. In any case, Mr Johnson didn’t live up to Bob Monkhouse’s aphorism – “if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.”

It will be a difficult week for Mr Johnson. Having paid the fine and declined to take his case to the magistrates’ court, he will still face Sir Keir Starmer QC, former head of the Crown Prosecution Service. It will not be comfortable, and Mr Johnson should realise that he cannot just blather about the European Medicines Agency and the biological definition of a woman to escape scrutiny. If past experience is any guide, Mr Johnson will open with a humbly delivered non-apology, and then squirm. It’s a performance the country has witnessed before, and it is unlikely to convince many of his genuine contrition, behind profound regret that he got caught.

The question at hand is no longer if there were illegal gatherings, but whether the various accounts he gave to parliament were misleading – and intentionally so. Given that Mr Johnson enjoys something of a reputation for being guileful in his use of language, he will find this a tough sell. Even if his own MPs go through the rituals of shouting “more” after an abject show of arrogance, what really matters is what the public will make of it.

The polling and a run of disastrous by-elections suggest that the public is growing tired of being misled, inadvertently or otherwise. They don’t wish to be taken for fools and told that parties didn’t take place when they did, or that the prime minister, a sociable soul, can’t recognise a party when he walks into one, or that he didn’t understand the broad import of his own lockdown laws. There isn’t really a way out of that for Mr Johnson.

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The electorate may also be weary of being told that the economy is booming when the only thing booming are gas bills; that this is a tax-cutting government when their take-home pay is cut; that Brexit is a wild success when Kent has been turned into a lorry park; or that the government is “getting on with the job” when towns, villages and cities are feeling little benefit from levelling up, whatever that is.

Mr Johnson deserves praise and credit for supporting Ukraine, though much of the credit must also go to those directly involved in sending the military aid. His administration has other achievements to its name, not least the Covid vaccine programme. But success on any front cannot be weighed in some sort of balance sheet against his casual attitude towards obeying the law and his inaccurate statements to parliament. The Nolan principles of public life – openness, accountability, integrity and so on – set a minimum bar for high office, and a minister who fails to live up to those standards deserves their punishment.

If his MPs don’t send him the message, then the electors will happily oblige in the local and devolved elections on 5 May.