Did Boris Johnson knowingly mislead parliament?

The announcement that the prime minister is among dozens of people being fined removes that defensive shield, however. It now seems almost impossible for Johnson to claim that no criminality was committed. He may well be a politician with remarkable skills but surely it’s beyond even his wily ways to somehow convince the public that a police fine is anything other than a very firm signal of criminal guilt.

Never knowingly caught out

It is at this point that the conventions written into the Ministerial Code come into play. This document sets out various expectations about the conduct of government ministers when in office, including – crucially in this case – the expectation that any minister who knowingly misleads parliament will be expected to resign.

Multiple government ministers have fallen foul of this rule over the years but it is yet to take down a prime minister.

Attention during the next hours and days is likely to turn almost exclusively to this point. The key question is whether on all of those occasions when the prime minister has previously denied that any rules were broken he was knowingly misleading parliament.

The prime minister has never spoken in parliament about the 19 June event specifically but has told MPs on several occasions that no rules were broken at other key moments – and often in terms that implied no rules were ever broken.

He has, for example, insisted to parliament that he believed one of the most controversial Downing Street gatherings to be a “work event” – suggesting that if rules were broken, he was an unwitting participant in the breach. Asked about a Christmas party in December 2020, he said “all guidance was followed completely in No. 10”.

Both leave the prime minister on difficult ground. Nor has the Metropolitan Police ruled out issuing further fines in relation to events on dates other than 19 June.

The strategy

It is, in practice, highly unlikely that Johnson will admit to having lied. Saying sorry has never been his style, and an admission of treating parliament with such contempt is almost unthinkable.

Denial and detachment are by far the most likely responses.

Denial will come in the form of promoting a sense of confusion around whether the fines relate to rules, laws or regulations. Expect bluff and bluster until the wind has blown out of the issue – and perhaps another surprise trip to Ukraine.

Detachment will mean trying to shift the blame onto someone else. Johnson will continue to claim that he did not knowingly mislead the House and was simply following the essence of the advice that he himself received from officials and advisers. If he isn’t willing to accept blame, there remain plenty of other staff among those being fined who can carry the can.

Is Partygate going to be the issue that brings Johnson down? At the end of the day, ousting the prime minister would require a large number of Tory backbenchers to rebel and support a vote of no confidence in him. While there is embarrassment and frustration within his party, there does not appear to be an appetite for total capitulation. Not yet.

Bar all the noise and shouting, the Partygate moment has probably passed.

Matthew Flinders, Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, University of Sheffield

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/politics/956419/did-boris-johnson-knowingly-mislead-parliament