British MPs approved a damning report on Monday night which concludes ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson lied to Parliament over the ‘partygate’ affair. The deputies thus accepted the sanctions provided for in the report, including the banning of access to Parliament for the former Conservative leader. The report was validated by 354 deputies. Only seven voted against, but many MPs, mainly Conservatives, abstained.
In a report released on Thursday, the committee concluded that Boris Johnson had “misled the House on a matter of the utmost importance to the House and to the public” on “repeated occasions”. After the landslide 2019 election victory that brought him to power, he was forced to resign from Downing Street last summer, pushed out by a series of scandals including the partygate scandal.
If the outcome of this consultation will have little impact, Boris Johnson having already resigned from his mandate in Parliament after having received the report of the commission before its publication, it gives, on the other hand, an idea of ??the support he has kept in the ruling party for thirteen years.
The political future of “BoJo” is very uncertain. He who had denounced a “political assassination” on the occasion of the publication of this report, nevertheless remains popular in his party, in particular for having implemented Brexit, despite the turmoil caused within the party by the scandal. of “partygate”. The popularity of the former Prime Minister is less evident among the British population. 69% of Brits and 51% of Tory voters think he did lie in Parliament.
On Sunday, a new video published by the newspaper The Mirror showing members of the Conservative Party dancing at a party during the pandemic in defiance of the rules of distancing drew strong criticism. This umpteenth adventure around the “partygate” occurs at a time when the Conservative government is more than ever under pressure to fight against inflation and the rise in interest rates which is driving up rents and mortgages.
At its lowest in the polls against the Labor opposition, the party will thus face four by-elections in a bad position in the coming months, after the resignation this weekend of a new MP, David Warburton, accused of having consumed drugs and harassed an assistant.