Tories standing up to Johnson

Baseless Savile slur challenged

THE PAST positions held by Sayeeda Warsi and Julian Smith in the Tory party add even more legitimacy to calls for Boris Johnson to withdraw the slanderous slur that he levelled against Sir Keir Starmer in response to the ‘partygate’ report.

Today should be dominated by the launch of the levelling up strategy. Inevitably, however, the fallout from Sue Gray’s report will take precedence alongside Mr Johnson’s bogus claim that Sir Keir, as Director of Public Prosecutions, stopped criminal charges being levelled against TV presenter and paedophile Jimmy Savile.

And for Dominic Raab – the Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister – to dismiss this as the “cut and thrust” of Parliament, while declining to repeat the allegation so not to fall foul of defamation laws, smacks of further contempt.

Baseless smears have no place whatsoever in public life, never mind Parliament, and the Tory leader and Mr Johnson is duty-bound – if he has any honour left – to issue an unequivocal apology at PMQs.

As Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury, a former Tory chair, posted in support of Sir Keir: “Parliament cannot become a place to peddle tropes, conspiracy theories and falsehoods – this damages our democracy.”

Mr Smith’s intervention – namely personal slurs “corrode trust” – is equally damning because he was responsible for party discipline when chief whip.

And, given how both Tories respected Jo Cox, the Batley and Spen MP murdered in 2016, and Sir David Amess who was stabbed to death in his Southend constituency last year, they know that the weaponising of untruths – which is precisely what the Prime Minister did on Monday – marks a desperate new low for British politics that must be challenged.

The number of Tories who follow suit will also reveal if sufficient senior Conservatives also care about their party’s current plight under Mr Johnson.