British MPs approve sanctioning Boris Johnson for lying to Parliament

British lawmakers on Monday approved a report that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson deliberately lied about illegal parties held during lockdowns, in an attempt to turn the page on a highly damaging scandal for the Conservative Party.

The lengthy parliamentary debate took place on the day the former Conservative leader turned 59 and led to a disciplinary sanction without much consequence: Johnson was stripped of his parliamentary pass, effectively barring him from Westminster, a token privilege offered to the former legislators.

In a lower house of 646 active members but with many absent, 354 deputies voted in favor and only 7 did so against the recommendations of the “privileges committee” about the scandal of “partygate”, whose conclusions reignited the divisions between the conservative deputies.

Johnson’s detractors hoped to finally cut ties with the controversial politician with the unruly blonde hair.

But others continue to defend him, predicting that he will return to the electoral contest, taking advantage of the loss of popularity of his successor, Rishi Sunak, who has promised to restore political integrity to the government but is mired in a historic cost-of-living crisis that has not manages to stop

Rather than oppose the report, the former prime minister called on his supporters to abstain, and many Conservative MPs were absent from the session.

Sunak did not attend the meeting, which earned him harsh criticism from the opposition.

Former Prime Minister Theresa May announced that she would vote against Johnson – who was her foreign minister and successor – and urged her colleagues to do the same to “help restore confidence in our parliamentary democracy”.

“Undermine the parliamentary process”

After standing out as one of the architects of Brexit from the 2016 referendum, Johnson won in December 2019 the biggest electoral victory for the Conservative Party in decades.

However, two and a half years and numerous scandals later, he was forced by his own formation to resign as prime minister last July.

Parliament commissioned a commission to investigate whether he had deliberately lied to deputies when he stated that the anti-COVID rules imposed by himself during the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns were always respected in his offices.

The result was devastating. His report determined that Johnson committed a “repeated contempt” to Parliament and tried “undermine the parliamentary process”. “There is no precedent for finding that a prime minister deliberately misled the chamber”, he stressed.

On June 9, before these conclusions were made public, Johnson resigned from his seat as deputy, denouncing a political setup by his detractors.

In this way, he frustrated the recommendation of the parliamentary commission to suspend him for 90 days, which would have led him to a humiliating electoral struggle to try an improbable re-election in his constituency.

After this, the commission could only recommend to the deputies that they withdraw the parliamentary pass.

return to politics

Sunak and his government hoped to turn the page on the “partygate”.

But their efforts were undermined on Sunday by the leak to the media of a new video showing Conservative Party officials dancing at a party in December 2020 in full lockdown against the coronavirus.

They are images “terrible” and “indefensible”, recognized to the BBC Michael Gove, one of the main ministers of Sunak.

For his part, Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of Johnson’s staunchest defenders, predicted that the former prime minister could return to the electoral battle in the legislative elections scheduled within a year and a half.

For now, the controversial conservative, who is about to be a father for the eighth time, has returned to journalism, which was his profession before turning to politics.

He signed on with the Daily Mail tabloid newspaper to write a weekly column.

According to the US website Politico, he will earn several hundred thousand dollars a year for it, which will be added to the millions he has already earned giving lectures since he left power.

Source: AFP