Boris Johnson is the “king of crass comedy,” he wrote Guardians recently. The British Prime Minister had just made a speech at a dinner with party colleagues about the time when the Partygate scandal was at its peak – and the question was asked almost every day whether enough MPs had already sent a letter of no confidence to the party responsible for collecting Tory Tory responsible for these letters sent Sir Graham Brady. The letter writers, Johnson said in a good mood, should be glad they don’t live in Russia, where Putin is making sure “that nobody writes letters to Sir Grahamski Bradyski.” It’s supposed to have been a really fun evening two weeks ago. Good jokes depend on the right timing.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Metropolitan Police announced they would issue 30 more penalties, taking the number of Partygate penalties to over 50, as part of the weeks-long investigation into illegal parties at Downing Street. It didn’t take long for the government spokesman to announce that Johnson, his wife Carrie and Finance Minister Rishi Sunak were also among the recipients. Johnson is the first British Prime Minister in history to be punished while in office for breaking a law.
Virtually every party outside of the English Tories immediately called for the resignation of Johnson and Sunak, above all Labor leader Keir Starmer, LibDems leader Ed Davey, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales. Because Parliament is currently on an Easter break, the opposition in the lower house also demanded that MPs return immediately. The representatives of the association of survivors of Covid 19 victims again clearly criticized Johnson and called for his immediate resignation.
Carrie Johnson’s spokeswoman said in the evening that Carrie Johnson had paid a fine for her presence at a party on June 19, 2020 and apologized. Shortly afterwards, Johnson issued a statement in Downing Street confirming that he had already paid the fine. “I apologize fully,” Johnson said, saying he was “less than ten minutes” at a “gathering” for his birthday. “It didn’t occur to me that that could be illegal,” but of course he respects the fact that the police came to a different conclusion. He will now continue “with the mandate that I have”.
How many festivals has the premier been to?
The penalties are “Fixed Penalty Notes”, comparable to speeding tickets, they do not result in an entry in the police register. However, they indicate that the offender has broken a law. Breaches of Covid rules were initially charged between £30 and £60, later the amount was increased; several thousand pounds are due for repeated offences. It is unclear whether Johnson and Sunak will remain with a single penalty: The penalties imposed on Tuesday only relate to Johnson’s birthday party on June 19, 2020, at which around 30 people are said to have come together. However, Johnson is believed to have attended at least two other festivals and police investigations are ongoing.
It is quite possible that the letter counting will start again. It takes 54 such letters to trigger a vote of no confidence. In addition, the opposition could table a motion of no confidence, which the lower house would then have to vote on if it were to meet again. Loyal Tories such as Foreign Minister Liz Truss and Culture Minister Nadine Dories defended Johnson in the evening, saying he had already apologized and that it also made no sense to change the prime minister during a war. On the other hand, Labor foreign politician David Lammy, among others, emphasized on the BBC that Johnson had lied to the House of Commons – and recalled that the British exchanged their prime ministers in both world wars. Johnson had repeatedly stressed in the House of Commons that “no rules had been broken”.
Last summer, more than 133,000 people signed a petition to make lying in parliament a criminal offence: so many that MPs eventually had to deal with it. The petition was, unsurprisingly, rejected.