Tag: Boris Johnson

The former UK minister, Boris Johnson, was unable to cast his vote as he had forgotten his identification at the polling station.

The news in Britain said that Johnson, who made a rule that voters need a photo ID, was told by people at a polling station in South Oxfordshire that he couldn’t vote unless he proved who he was.

Sky News said that Johnson, who was the Conservative prime minister from 2019 to 2022, was able to vote and he voted for the Conservative party.

Johnson made a new law called the Elections Act in 2022. It says that people need to show a photo ID to vote. The new law started in local elections last year. However, on Thursday, many voters in England and Wales had to show a form of ID, like a passport or driver’s license, for the first time while voting.

The Electoral Commission said most people were able to follow the new rules for voting. But some people didn’t have the right ID and may have chosen not to vote because of that.

It was also found that some people, like those who are disabled or unemployed, had trouble showing their voter ID.

In spite of his party’s historic losses to the Lib Dems and Labour last night, Rishi Sunak avoided being the first prime minister since 1968 to lose three by-elections on the same day.

Conservative MPs in even the safest seats will be cautiously eyeing their majorities after Labour won Selby and Ainsty and the Lib Dems seized Somerton and Frome, overturning majorities of about 20,000 each.

But Tory Steve Tuckwell managed to save his party from complete humiliation by narrowly holding on Boris Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip with a majority of just 495, down from the 7,210 Mr Johnson secured in 2019.

In Selby and Ainsty, 25-year-old Keir Mather will become the youngest MP in the Commons – the Baby of the House – after overturning a 20,137 majority.

The 23.7% swing from Conservative to Labour in the North Yorkshire seat to deliver Mather a majority of 4,161 is the second largest managed by Labour at a by-election since 1945.

In a speech after he was declared the winner of the by-election, Mr Mather said he ‘understood the enormity of what has just happened’.

‘We have rewritten the rules on where Labour can win. People have opened their doors to us and embraced our positive vision for the future,’ he said.

‘The people of Selby & Ainsty have sent a clear message. For too long, Conservatives up here and in Westminster have failed us, and today that changes.’

For the Lib Dems, a 29.0 percentage point swing in Somerton and Frome saw a 19,213 Tory majority turned into a 11,008-vote cushion for new MP Sarah Dyke.

Ms Dyke said she was ‘excited, exhilarated and most of all humbled’ at the result.

Asked what message the voters of Somerton and Frome had sent to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives, Ms Dyke replied: ‘Clearly, they are fed up and they are frustrated, they are angry and they want a hard working Liberal Democrat MP.

‘They want a local champion and they have elected me to do that.’

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said the Somerton and Frome result showed his party was once again winning votes in its former West Country heartland.

‘The people of Somerton and Frome have spoken for the rest of the country who are fed up with Rishi Sunak’s out-of-touch Conservative government,’ he said.

The victory means Sir Ed has become the first party leader since Paddy Ashdown in the 1990s to win four by-elections.

Despite Labour’s success in North Yorkshire, the failure to secure victory in Uxbridge and South Ruislip in west London has led to a blame game among senior figures over the capital’s mayor Sadiq Khan’s plan to expand the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) to cover outer boroughs.

Labour candidate Danny Beales had distanced himself from the policy, saying it was ‘not the right time’ to expand the £12.50 daily charge for cars which fail to meet emissions standards.

The defeat in the seat was dubbed ‘Uloss’ by a party insider in a sign of the unease at Mr Khan’s plan.

In his victory speech, new MP Mr Tuckwell said Mr Khan had cost Labour the seat.

‘It was his damaging and costly Ulez policy that lost them this election,’ he said.

‘This wasn’t the campaign Labour expected and Keir Starmer and his mayor Sadiq Khan need to sit up and listen to the Uxbridge and South Ruislip residents.’

Newly elected Tory MP Mr Tuckwell told reporters after his victory: ‘My campaign has been incredibly single-minded and it’s really been in complete opposition to Ulez from the outset.

‘That’s not me saying that, it’s not me that called the referendum on Ulez. It is the people of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.’

After saying ‘Sadiq Khan needs to listen’, he added: ‘Well, I think there will be Labour MPs in outer London boroughs who will be looking at this result tonight with sweaty palms.’

For Mr Sunak, the defeats happened as MPs drifted away from Westminster to begin their summer break, so he may be spared a clamour against his leadership.

The Prime Minister could attempt to reset his administration with a Cabinet reshuffle in the wake of the contests – Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has already signalled he will exit the Government, so there is a vacancy to be filled – although No 10 has publicly said there are no plans for a shake-up.

Mr Sunak may have decided the benefits of freshening up his team at this stage would be outweighed by the risk of it being perceived as a panicked response to an electoral setback.

Sir Keir Starmer said Keir Mather’s victory in Selby and Ainsty demonstrates the ‘demand for change’.

The Labour leader tweeted: ‘Congratulations @Mather-Keir, Labour’s new MP for Selby and Ainsty!

‘Last night, Selby and Ainsty made history. This incredible result shows how powerful the demand for change is.

‘Only Labour can deliver that change, and build a better Britain.’

The Privileges Committee has identified Nadine Dorries, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Priti Patel as supporters of Boris Johnson who “undermined House of Commons procedures” by attacking its partygate inquiry.

Earlier this month, the Privileges Committee came to the conclusion that the former prime minister had violated the law repeatedly.

When it came to his denials of Partygate, they discovered that Mr. Johnson intentionally misled MPs. He then participated in a campaign of harassment and intimidation.

The seven-person panel, which was chaired by veteran Labour MP Harriet Harman but had a Conservative majority, used its 106-page report to warn Mr Johnson’s most vocal defenders they would face scrutiny themselves.

According to sources cited by The Guardian, the special report will include whether statements by Mr Johnson’s supporters could be considered a contempt of Parliament in their own right.

In its Partygate report published on June 15, the Privileges Committee said: ‘From the outset of this inquiry there has been a sustained attempt, seemingly co-ordinated, to undermine the committee’s credibility and, more worryingly, that of those members serving on it.

‘The committee is concerned that if these behaviours go unchallenged, it will be impossible for the House to establish such a committee to conduct sensitive and important inquiries in the future.

‘The House must have a committee to defend its rights and privileges, and it must protect members of the House doing that duty from formal or informal attack or undermining designed to deter and prevent them from doing that duty.

‘We will be making a special report separately to the House dealing with these matters.’

It recommended Mr Johnson should have faced a 90-day suspension if he had not quit Parliament.

The former prime minister and his allies have since stepped up their attacks, with Mr Johnson claiming the committee had reached a ‘deranged conclusion’.

In his resignation statement, he labelled the investigation a ‘kangaroo court’ that was akin to a ‘witch hunt’.

Former culture secretary Nadine Dorries, one of Mr Johnson’s most vocal supporters, urged voters to turf out Tory MPs who backed the committee’s report.

‘Any Conservative MP who would vote for this report is fundamentally not a Conservative and will be held to account by members and the public. Deselections may follow,’ she said on the day of the report’s publication.

That did not deter MPs from voting overwhelmingly to back the report, with only seven voting against the committee’s findings and 354 voting in favour.

Bassetlaw MP Brendan Clarke-Smith called the MPs’ conclusions ‘spiteful, vindictive and overreaching’.

Former cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke – who was knighted in Mr Johnson’s resignation honours – said the punishment dealt out by the committee was ‘absolutely extraordinary to the point of sheer vindictiveness’.

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, another honoured by Mr Johnson, suggested the committee’s ‘fundamental judgment’ was ‘wrong’.

For the time being, Boris Johnson has made the decision to leave politics on his own terms.

The former British prime minister has the opportunity to tell his own narrative after quitting as a member of parliament last week and refusing to accept the conclusions of a parliamentary committee that he intentionally misled legislators about violations of Covid rules. It’s another question completely if anyone will pay attention to or believe him.

The Privileges Committee proposed that Johnson not only be subject to a 90-day suspension, which would have required a by-election for his parliamentary seat, which he might have easily lost, but also that he not be granted a parliamentary pass, which former MPs are generally entitled to.

His statement responding to the committee’s report is a not just a rebuttal, but an attack on members of the committee.

“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 (the committee’s chair) and her Committee,” Johnson said.

The truth is that people have largely made up their minds about Johnson and the conclusions of this inquiry will probably not change his political future in any meaningful way.

Johnson, since resigning in disgrace as PM last summer, has seen his overall approval ratings remain low. The public fell out of love with him as scandal after scandal dogged the latter part of his premiership.

Conservative MPs fell out of love with him at around the same time, as was underscored when Johnson tried to make a dramatic comeback last year after his successor, Liz Truss, was forced to resign after just a couple of months in office.

MPs blocked Johnson’s bid as he endured the humiliation of flying back from a holiday only to return to that holidays days later. It was clear that however much Johnson and his loyalists wanted him back, the people that could make it happen wanted him out of the picture.

It’s worth mentioning the Johnson loyalists, because they do exist. They are smaller in number than they used to be and they represent increasingly fringe views within the Conservative Party. But they do exist and they are as loyal as ever.

It is these people who will ensure Johnson remains a political threat to Sunak. He will always have an audience. There will always be people who are forever grateful for his role in delivering Brexit and securing a parliamentary majority for the Conservatives in 2019.

Johnson has always been an effective political figure, even when outside of parliament. It is very likely that he will return to his media career, perhaps with a column or a TV show. His supporters will read and hear his words. He will be able to set the political agenda as effectively as he could in parliament.

Johnson will have the ability to do all of this because of choices he has made. He has decided not to fight for his seat. He has decided not to accept the committee’s ruling. He has set himself as the outsider who was brought down by a cabal.

The fact that there will always be a group of people who will listen to him means that a return to the front line of politics can never be ruled out. Should Sunak lose the next general election, Johnson’s loyalists may wish to remind people of his 2019 electoral success. And over time, that audience he enjoys could grow and at some point, it might make sense for him to come back.

Make no mistake: this report is very damaging for Johnson and he is certainly down. But it would be unwise to assume that one of Britain’s most effective political streetfighters is ever out.

A last-ditch letter from Boris Johnson to MPs looking into whether he lied to the legislature about lockdown parties.

The complete report is anticipated to be released later this week, according to the privileges committee, which reported that it got the letter at 11:57 pm on Monday.

The former prime minister blasted the ‘absurdly discriminatory restrictions’ in a statement.

The privileges committee should make their report public so that everyone may judge their absurdity, he said.

‘They have no excuse for delay. Their absurdly unfair rules do not even allow any criticism of their findings.

‘I have made my views clear to the committee in writing – and will do so more widely when they finally publish.’

He took aim at the committee’s chair and Labour grandee Harriet Harman, branding it a ‘kangaroo court’ during his dramatic exit as MP last Friday.

The panel rejected Mr Johnson’s defence that senior officials advised him Covid rules and guidance had been followed.

He also launched into a public spat with arch political nemesis Rishi Sunak who he blasted as ‘secretly blocking’ the peerage of his loyal follower Nadine Dorries.

Mr Sunak said his predecessor wanted him to ignore the recommendations of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, but Mr Johnson retorted: ‘Rishi is talking rubbish.

‘To honour these peerages it was not necessary to overrule Holac – but simply to ask them to renew their vetting, which was a mere formality.’

A Downing Street source said the Cabinet Office made it clear to Mr Johnson there is no re-vetting process.

Mr Johnson’s spokesperson said it is ‘entirely untrue to say that anyone from No 10 attempted to remove or change’ the list.

The Tories are now faced with three upcoming by-elections after Mr Johnson, Ms Dorries and Nigel Adams sensationally quit.

But the by-election in Ms Dorries’s Mid Bedfordshire constituency is delayed because she has not formally resigned.

Despite quitting as MP, Mr Johnson quoted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator when he said: ‘I’ll be back.’

It echoed his final appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions last year, when he told MPs ‘Hasta la vista, baby’.

When questioned about the Partygate affair, Boris Johnson lost his cool and yelled at the chairman of the committee, telling him that “those who allege that we were partying in lockdown just do not know what they are talking about.”

The Parliamentary Privileges Committee has previously questioned the former prime minister for a number of hours.

Although Mr. Johnson acknowledges deceiving Lawmakers, he will argue that he ‘didn’t mean to.’

In a 52-page paper turned in on Monday, he said that what he did at the time was what he considered to be correct. He is fighting to save his political career.

He was greeted with cheers as he arrived in parliament, before taking a seat alongside other MPs in front of the committee.

He was shown footage of his own words, as he spoke to MPs on multiple occasions during the pandemic and said time and time again there was ‘no party’ in Downing Street.

Privileges Committee chairwoman Harriet Harman set out what Boris will be questioned about and said they would be talking about the ‘rules and guidance’ around his breaches, and that he said he complied with both.

Former PM snaps at people accusing government of “partying” in lockdown

She said: ‘In our report of the 3rd of March we set out the main issues which we will be asking Mr Johnson about today.

‘We will be talking about rules and guidance since Mr Johnson told the house No 10 complied with both.

‘When we refer to rules we mean regulations laid down by the house which have the force of law and under which fixed penalty notices were issued.

‘Guidance is guidance issued by the government, for example when Mr Johnson was talking about ‘hands face space’, he was referring to the guidance on social distancing when he said space.

‘On the basis of information that is in the public domain and evidence the committee has received and in the context of what Mr Johnson said to the House of Commons, we will be establishing what rules and guidance relating to Covid were enforced at the relevant time, Mr Johnson’s knowledge of those rules and guidance, Mr Johnson’s attendance at or knowledge of gatherings that were not socially distanced and those for which fixed penalty notices were issued.’

Boris Johnson pleads his innocence in Committee of Privileges opening statement

Ms Harman rejected the former PM’s demand that the inquiry only considers his discussion of coronavirus guidance.

The Labour grandee said the MPs on the cross-party committee will leave their ‘party interests at the door of the committee room and conduct our work in the interests of the House’ as she dismissed claims of bias.

She insisted the committee is ‘not relying’ on evidence provided by the Sue Gray report, as allies of Mr Johnson claim the inquiry is a ‘witch hunt’ now that the civil servant is joining Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s office.

Ms Harman added: ‘We have not changed the rules of the procedure that is not within our remit, that is laid down by the House, we’re bound to follow them, that is not what we’ve done.’

She said the evidence raises ‘clear questions and this is Mr Johnson’s opportunity to give us his answers’ before asking him to take the oath.

He swore to tell the truth before issuing an apology and adding ‘hand on heart, I did not lie to the House’.

He started with an apology for illegal gatherings in Number 10 and said: ‘That was wrong, I bitterly regret it, I understand public anger.

‘I continue to apologise for what happened on my watch. I take full responsibility’ but he said ‘I hand on heart I did not lie to the House’

Boris said it was ‘nonsense’ to suggest that it should have been obvious to him that rules were being broken in No 10 because of the pictures of him at events.

To suggest there were ‘illicit events in No 10 while allowing these events to be immortalised by an official photographer is staggeringly implausible’.

He said: ‘It seems to be the view of the committee and sadly many members of the public that they show me attending rule-breaking parties where no one was social distancing. They show nothing of the kind.

‘They show me giving a few words of thanks at a work event for a departing colleague. They show me with my red box passing on the way to another meeting or heading back into my flat to carry on working, often late into the night.

‘They show a few people standing together – as permitted by the guidance – where full social distancing is not possible and where mitigating measures are taken.

‘They show events which I was never fined for attending.’

Boris Johnson suggested that if it should have been obvious to him that rules were being broken, it should also have been apparent to current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

‘If it was obvious to me that these events were contrary to the guidance and the rules, then it must have been equally obvious to dozens of others, including the most senior officials in the country, all of them – like me – responsible for drawing up the rules.

‘And it must have been obvious to others in the building including the current Prime Minister.’

He said he does not think it ‘can seriously mean’ to accuse him of lying.

He said: ‘If it was obvious to me that these events were contrary to the guidance and to the rules then it must have been equally obvious to the dozens of others including the most senior officials in the country.’

He added it ‘must have been obvious to others in the building including the current Prime Minister’.

Mr Johnson said the ‘overwhelming evidence’ the committee has assembled is ‘that these individuals believed that the rules and the guidance were being complied with’.

He referred to the ‘total silence’ of any written or electronic record of concerns people wanted to raise with him and said the committee did not have evidence of any emails or WhatsApp messages that show he was warned about rule breaking before he made statements to the House of Commons.

‘You haven’t got any such evidence because that never happened,’ he said.

‘You are not only accusing me of lying, you are accusing all those civil servants, advisers, MPs, of lying about what they believed at the time to be going on, and as far as I know you’re not giving any of them the chance to explain themselves with their own oral evidence.

‘I don’t think you seriously mean to accuse those individuals of lying and I don’t think you can seriously mean to accuse me of lying.’

Boris Johnson defended his attendance at some of the events covered by the inquiry.

He told the Privileges Committee: ‘I know you will point to the photos and then to the guidance and what I said, and you will say ‘it must have been obvious that the guidance was being breached’. But that is simply not true.

‘My beliefs and my remarks to Parliament were indeed based on my knowledge of those events, but you have to understand how I saw them and what I saw during the period I was there.’

Referring to the leaving dos he attended, Mr Johnson said: ‘I know that people around the country will look at those events and think that they look like the very kind of events that we, or I, were forbidden to everyone else.

‘But I will believe until the day I die that it was my job to thank staff for what they had done, especially during a crisis like Covid, which kept coming back, which seemed to have no end and where people’s morale did, I’m afraid, begin to sink.

‘But never mind what I think, the more important point is that the police agreed – they didn’t find that my attendance at any of these farewell gatherings was against the rules.’

Social distancing was not ‘necessary or possible’ in Downing Street due to the working conditions in the ‘cramped’ 18th-century townhouse, Boris Johnson said.

The former prime minister said his comments that Covid guidance was followed in No 10 was based on ‘my understanding of the rules and the guidance’.

He told the Privileges Committee: ‘That did not mean that I believed that social distancing was complied with perfectly. That is because I and others in the building did not think it necessary or possible to have a two-metre, or one-metre after June 24, 2020, electrified forcefield around every human being.

‘Indeed that is emphatically not what the guidance proscribes.

‘It specifically says that social distancing should be maintained where possible, having regard to the work environment.

‘It was clear that in No 10 we had real difficulties in both working efficiently and at speed and in maintaining perfect social distancing.

‘It is a cramped, narrow, 18th century townhouse. We had no choice but to meet day in, day out, seven days a week in an unrelenting battle against Covid.’

Giving an account of the birthday party for which he was fined, Boris Johnson told MPs: ‘It never occurred to me – or I think the current Prime Minister – at the time that the event was not in compliance with the rules and the guidance.

‘At about 2.22pm on June 19, 2020 I went into the Cabinet Room where I worked after getting back from a long external visit.

‘I stood at my desk – briefly – before another Covid meeting began and had a kind of salad.

‘A number of officials came in to wish me a happy birthday. No one sang, the famous Union Jack cake remained in its Tupperware box, unnoticed by me, and was later discovered and eaten by my private secretaries.’

A ‘slightly exaggerated’ version of the event was briefed to The Times ‘with singing and cake eating’ and yet nothing untoward was detected ‘either by the reporter or by millions of eagle-eyed readers’.

That meant that when he addressed MPs ‘it did not for one second occur to me that this event, the one event for which I was fined, would later be found to be somehow against the rules’.

‘And the same goes for all the events I attended.’

Boris Johnson said it was ‘important’ for him to attend the leaving do of his former director of communications Lee Cain because it could have been a ‘potentially acrimonious’ moment.

Asked about a gathering on November 13, 2020, in which the former prime minister is seen in a photograph giving a toast, he told the Privileges Committee: ‘This meeting happened on an impromptu basis, it had to happen.

‘It happened because on November 13 two senior members… people will ask why was this happening, why was it necessary?

‘It was necessary because two senior members of staff, the effective chief of staff and director of communications had both left the building, or were about to leave the building in pretty acrimonious circumstances – or what were potentially acrimonious circumstances.

‘It was important for me to be there and to give reassurance.’

Mr Johnson highlighted that he was not fined by the Metropolitan Police for attending the event in No 10 and that the force ‘agreed it was a work-related event’.

‘I believe it was absolutely essential for work purposes,’ he added.

Asked whether he thought social distancing was being followed in the image of the gathering, he replied: ‘I believe that the guidance is being complied with.’

Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin told Boris Johnson the coronavirus guidance ‘does not say you can have a thank you party’.

Mr Johnson said: ‘I believed that this event was not only reasonably necessary but it was essential for work purposes.’

Lee Cain and Dominic Cummings had left their jobs ‘in very, very difficult and challenging circumstances’, and ‘it was necessary to steady the ship, it was necessary to show that there was no rancour, the business of the Government was being carried on – that’s what we had to do, that’s what I had to do’.

The former Conservative Party leader said he thought it ‘unlikely’ he, as claimed by an unnamed No 10 official, made a joke about a leaving-do being ‘probably the most unsocially distanced gathering in the UK right now’.

Boris Johnson, asked about the remarks he was alleged to have made on November 27 2020, told the Privileges Committee: ‘I don’t remember saying those words.

‘I think it unlikely that I would have said those words given what I have had to say to the committee just now about my memory of the event.

‘My visual memory of the event was that it was much more, as Cleo Watson describes, it was a clutch of people around that table … I don’t remember people being four or five deep.’

Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin intervened as Mr Johnson looked to go on, saying: ‘I’m sorry, you are giving very long answers and it is taking longer than we need.

‘You are repeating yourself quite a lot. Can we just get on with the questions? Thank you very much.’

Boris Johnson was asked why he believed his June 19 2020 birthday party was within the rules, given his wife Carrie and interior designer Lulu Lytle were present.

Labour MP Yvonne Fovargue asked: ‘At least two people attended who were not work colleagues, why did you think this was reasonably necessary for work purposes, as required by the rules at the time?’

The former prime minister said: ‘I thought it was reasonably necessary for work purposes because I was standing at my desk, surrounded by officials who had been asked to come and wish me a happy birthday – I’d only recently recovered from an illness, from Covid, and it seemed to me to be a perfectly proper thing to do.

‘We were about to have another meeting and they were very largely the same officials.’

Ms Fovargue said: ‘Presumably your wife and the contractor were not attending that meeting.’

On Monday the group slammed his so-called ‘deadly dossier’ and said it contained ‘no new documentary evidence.’

He called the inquiry’s allegation ‘illogical’, arguing that some of those who attended the events ‘wished me ill and would denounce me if I concealed the truth’.

He wrote that it was ‘Far from achieving a ‘cover-up’. He said: ‘I would have known that any deception on my part would lead to instant exposure. This would have been senseless and immediately self-defeating.’

He said it was ‘implausible’ that he would have known the parties photographed and ‘immortalised’ by his official photographer were rule-breaking.

The only evidence that he intentionally misled the Commons is from the ‘discredited Dominic Cummings’, and that Cummings’ assertions are not ‘supported by any documentation’, Mr Johnson said.

In his evidence he accepts he misled the House of Commons when he said lockdown rules had been followed in No 10 but insisted the statements were made ‘in good faith’.

Further today Mr Johnson’s 110-page bundle of evidence was also released, and it showed what his lawyers had been fighting to get put into the document.

In the evidence, his top aide, Martin Reynolds, said Boris ignored his advice to change his line in parliament over whether he had broken his own Covid guidance.

In written evidence to the Privileges Committee, Mr Reynolds said: ‘I do recall asking the then prime minister about the line proposed for PMQs on December 7 suggesting that all rules and guidance had been followed.

‘He did not welcome the interruption but told me that he had received reassurances that the comms event was within the rules.

‘I accepted this but questioned whether it was realistic to argue that all guidance had been followed at all times, given the nature of the working environment in No 10. He agreed to delete the reference to guidance.’

In the pages of submitted evidence Mr Reynolds expressed further regret at his ‘bring your own booze’ party invite.

He said: ‘With the benefit of hindsight, the language used was totally inappropriate and gave a misleading impression of the nature of the event.

‘It was an event held because staff needed a morale boost after an extremely difficult period when all sorts of tensions had begun to surface and I hoped that being thanked by the PM and talking to each other might strengthen their sense of being part of one team.

‘The event was not a party in any normal sense of the word.’