BORIS Johnson has this morning launched a blistering attack on the Commons Partygate report – slamming its “deranged findings”.
The furious ex-PM lashed out after the inquiry ruled he had deliberately misled MPs by claiming no rules were broken in No10.
Boris Johnson has launched a blistering attack on the Privileges Committee
Boris Johnson decried a political stitch-up led by Labour MP Harriett Harman
In a highly-critical report the Privileges Committee recommended the strongest possible sanctions – including a 90-day Commons ban and being stripped of his ex-MP pass.
Raging BoJo – who last week resigned as an MP in anticipation of the ruling – let rip at the “kangaroo court” in a no-holds-barred onslaught.
Decrying a political stitch-up led by the Labour chair Harriett Harman, he said: “This report is a charade. I was wrong to believe in the Committee or its good faith.
“The terrible truth is that it is not I who has twisted the truth to suit my purposes. It is Harriet Harman and her Committee.
“This is a dreadful day for MPs and for democracy. This decision means that no MP is free from vendetta, or expulsion on trumped up charges by a tiny minority who want to see him or her gone from the Commons.”
On a dramatic day:
- The Privileges Committee recommended Boris Johnson be suspended for 90 days if he were still an MP
- MPs will vote on whether the ex-PM should lose his Commons pass
- Rishi Sunak will have to decide how Tory MPs should vote
- BoJo was found to have misled MPs in five separate ways
- He was accused of stirring intimidation of the committee’s members through his attacks
The 14-month probe, headed up by Labour MP Harriet Harman, today ruled that the ex-PM misled MPs over lockdown-breaking gatherings in No10.
In a 30,000-word paper, the committee of MPs skewered Mr Johnson for repeatedly claiming that no rules were broken.
Today the former PM hit out at the results as “complete triple”, a “charade”, and “rubbish”, blasting them of “wilfully missing the point”.
And he accused their arguments of being “so threadbare that it belongs in one of Bernard Jenkin’s nudist colonies.”
Furious BoJo has dismissed the investigation as a “kangaroo court” and a “witch hunt”.
And today he came out with another huge rant against the committee as the report was finally published.
BORIS FIGHTBACK
He said of claims he he misled MPs: “This is rubbish. It is a lie. In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the Committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts.
“I believed, correctly, that these events were reasonably necessary for work purposes.
“We were managing a pandemic. We had hundreds of staff engaged in what was sometimes a round-the-clock struggle against covid. Their morale mattered for that fight. It was important for me to thank them.
” But don’t just listen to me. Take it from the Metropolitan Police. The police investigated my role at all of those events. In no case did they find that what I had done was unlawful. Above all it did not cross my mind – as I spoke in the House of Commons – that the events were unlawful.
“Why would we have had an official photographer if we believed we were breaking the law?
” We didn’t believe that what we were doing was wrong, and after a year of work the Privileges Committee has found not a shred of evidence that we did.”
MPs are set to vote on what sanction to dish out on Monday – which will be Boris Johnson’s birthday.
But last night, in a surprise twist, it was revealed that one of the top committee members himself was revealed to have attended his own lockdown party.
The former prime minister called for Sir Bernard Jenkin to resign and wrote to the committee last night claiming that he should have recused himself from the investigation.
Sir Bernard is alleged to have attended an event at which drinks and cake were served to mark his wife’s 65th birthday in December 2020.
HOAR has approached Sir Bernard for comment. He told Guido Fawkes he did not “attend any drinks parties during lockdown”.
