...as PM faces down his Partygate critics
BORIS JOHNSON will this week face down claims he misled Parliament as opposition MPs plot to make him quit.
The Prime Minister faces the threat of a formal House of Commons inquiry over his previous comments that no rules were broken at No10.
Sources say Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle is likely to allow two requests from opposition MPs for a so-called contempt motion into Mr Johnson’s conduct.
On Tuesday, the Prime Minister will make a statement to MPs about receiving a fixed penalty notice for breaking Covid laws he introduced.
MPs are expected to vote on Thursday on whether a parliamentary committee should look into claims that he misled Parliament over Partygate.
The Prime Minister will be in India on Thursday and Friday to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi for ongoing free trade agreement talks and to discuss security co-operation.
Few Tories criticised Mr Johnson publicly after he was fined by police, with a number of high-profile MPs saying it was not the right time to switch leaders, praising his response to Ukraine and playing down the fine.
But a Cabinet Minister told The Mail on Sunday last night that Tory MPs might not ‘hold the line’ if Mr Johnson was fined again, adding: ‘If he gets two, three or four fines, people can lose their nerve quickly.’
Today an exclusive poll for the MoS has Labour 11 points ahead of the Tories – the highest lead Deltapoll has recorded since the 2019 Election.
It came as George Freeman became the latest Minister to raise concerns to his constituents about those fined.
In an email seen by The Sunday Times, the Science Minister said he was ‘concerned about the damage the saga may be doing to already fragile public trust in our politics, Parliament and Government’, adding that he was ‘pleased that the PM and Chancellor have issued apologies’.
HOW mad we all are, demanding Alexander Johnson’s resignation because someone brought a cake into his office, quite possibly without his knowledge. The true madness is in the lawless rules under which he has been ‘fined by the police’ – a form of punishment expressly banned by the 1689 Bill of Rights, one of the foundation stones of our liberty.
If I thought he would be replaced by anyone better, I’d be perfectly happy for Johnson to quit. As it is, I barely care. Our current Parliament is a care home for nonentities, unmatched in our long history for mediocrity, ignorance and dimness. Who would be better?
But if we’re having resignations let them all go, all the panic-stricken conformists and groupthink victims who rushed this country into economic and social disaster in March 2020 and who invented the daft regulations under which the Premier has been fined.
Let them all go, the Cabinet Ministers without the sense their mothers gave them, hypnotised by guesswork dressed up as pseudoscience and gripped with pathetic admiration for the muscular dictatorial stupidity of the Chinese police state.
Let them all go, the Opposition who did not oppose, the MPs who wouldn’t think, the judges who refused even to hear a case against the ridiculous rules, erected on the tiny foundation of the Public Health Act of 1984. And the BBC, which closed its ears and doors to dissent. Not merely did the measures not work. To the fury and embarrassment of the Covid Zealots, Sweden did not take part in the frenzy of closure, house-arrest, ludicrous mask decrees and economic strangulation. And lo, its health outcomes are, if anything, better than those countries, such as us, which went off their heads. So here we stand, with inflation rotting our savings like an evil fungus, taxes soaring, millions of educations wrecked, countless small businesses ruined and worse to come, and all for nothing. As for the precious NHS, which we were supposed to be saving by all these insane actions, it was easy to see that the shutdown was in fact wrecking it. I looked up my articles: On November 1, 2020 I said: ‘Their decision to strangle our struggling economy once again in an alarmist shutdown is one of panic piled on panic and is visibly destroying the NHS they claim to be saving.’
Two weeks later I said: ‘Many are already experiencing a far poorer NHS, with private GP services starting to boom.’ On January 17, 2021 I wrote: ‘Last week, official figures showed tens of thousands of cancer cases went undiagnosed as NHS waiting lists ballooned. And 4.46million people in England are waiting for non-emergency surgery, the highest figure since records began in 2007. Lockdowns also kill.’
On May 30, 2021 I said: ‘The devastation of the health service, from NHS dentistry to GP services and cancer prevention and treatment, is and remains frightful and will cost lives for years – a total for which nobody is being blamed.’
We didn’t save the NHS. We didn’t save anything. We just trashed the country because we lacked an elite with enough experience and guts to do what Sweden did. Even now, most people aren’t angry about this. Instead, they are furious about a cake in a Tupperware box.