We’d all love to move on from Partygate – with Boris Johnson’s resignation

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Thursday 26 May 2022 15:14 BST
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Could he also take his government with him, as they’ve lost all credibility by enabling him for so long?
Could he also take his government with him, as they’ve lost all credibility by enabling him for so long? (Getty)

Boris Johnson wants the public to “move on” from Partygate. Does he not realise that most of the public want him to move on from being the disaster of a prime minister that he is?

Could he also take his government with him, as they’ve lost all credibility by enabling him for so long?

Ken Twiss

Yarm

Downing Street cleaners

My mum worked as a cleaner. Cleaning is hard, thankless, low-paid work, but it is socially vital.

The revelation in the Sue Gray report that partying Tories mocked cleaners and guards makes my blood boil.

That those cleaners then had to mop up Tory vomit and clear away their empties after the illegal parties, exposes the contempt the Tories have for working class people with a crystal clarity.

Sasha Simic

London

Pathetic prime minister

Johnson has degraded British society through his continual denial that boozy parties were occurring in Downing Street, whilst the rest of the country was instructed not to gather in groups.

“Do as I say, not as I do” has been sanctioned as government policy. This gives the green light to the rest of us that flexible interpretation of the law is acceptable.

It is already possible to sense that it is now even more acceptable to treat people carelessly, to drive inconsiderately, and to break all sorts of rules short of serious criminal activity.

Although his obvious, selfish ambition is to emulate great leaders of the past, Johnson will go down in British history as the most pathetic prime minister the nation was ever saddled with. And British society will be forever poorer as a legacy of his time in office.

Ian Reid

Kilnwick

It’s not Boris Johnson’s fault

Boris Johnson’s behaviour in office is written into his DNA. The Tory party knew this, yet elected him leader. Partygate is not his fault, but the fault of the institution that made him prime minister and continues to sustain him and his wrongdoing.

Anyone but the Tory candidate has to be the moral, ethical and, yes, legal choice at any election for the foreseeable future if this humiliation of our country is to end.

David Smith

Taunton

Partygate defiance

Our great prime minister Sir Winston Churchill is well remembered for his iconic “V for Victory” salute.

Our current embarrassing prime minister Boris Johnston has just given the whole country his rather rude version of the V sign with his continual immoral defiance to Partygate.

Paul Morrison

Glasgow

We understood the laws – why didn’t the PM?

The Met and Sue Gray are not the only arbiters on whether Johnson broke the law. We knew the laws, as told to us by the prime minister. We know he broke them.

His staff watched him live, telling the Commons that no parties took place and could not believe what they were hearing. They know he regularly dropped in for a glass of wine and was fully aware of events taking place at No 10.

Custodians and cleaners could not believe what had taken place, as they tried to intervene or cleaned up the appalling mess.

Johnson thinks leaving drinks did not breach his own laws. (He’s on his own there.) Worse, he thinks the distinction between work and socialising needs to be made clearer. We know the difference – why doesn’t the man who purports to lead the country? Is he really so dim?

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This whole series of illegal events during the pain of the pandemic, during a time of great sacrifice and loss, bring the Tory party and the country very low indeed. Tories who defend the prime minister betray us all.

Beryl Wall

London

Second amendment

It seems to me that the fundamental problem in the USA with school shootings and other gun-related deaths is with the rather ambiguous text of their constitution’s second amendment.

If a "well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" were updated and amended to "bear arms in defence of the nation and only in that circumstance specifically" or some text of a similar meaning, the use of guns in domestic settings might (just) be halted.

The NRA and gun lobbyists could still have their often ludicrously large personal arsenals and the munitions industry could still produce projectile weapons, but US citizens would only be able to deploy them in the highly unlikely instance of the USA being invaded by another nation state, hordes of ravening zombies or even space aliens, as opposed to minor, perceived infractions by their neighbours.

Alistair Vincent

Chipping Barnet

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