Boris bye by-election: will privileges committee take ‘nuclear option’?

Boris Johnson is back in a starring role in Parliament today as the former prime minister appears before the privileges committee to answer questions about the Partygate scandal.

Johnson has “already been tried in the court of public opinion”, said The Guardian’s political correspondent Aubrey Allegretti, after being forced to “give up the keys to No. 10” when Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers “mobilised en masse against him”.

And if the committee now decides he “intentionally or recklessly” misled MPs, resulting sanctions could trigger a by-election that scuppers his chance to “rebuild his powerbase as a backbencher and chart a course back to Downing Street”.

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‘Serious issues at stake’

“As easy as it is to mock this farcical episode, there are serious issues at stake,” said UnHerd’s political editor Tom McTague.

If Johnson were hit with a sanction in the form of a Commons suspension of longer than ten days, a recall petition would automatically be triggered. And if more than 10% of voters in the former prime minister’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency backed the petition, he would face a by-election that could result in him losing his seat in Parliament.

Insiders briefed on the probe told the Financial Times that Tory MPs on the cross-party committee were reluctant to deploy that “nuclear option”.

But McTague warned that it was “important” to show “there are consequences for MPs – even former prime ministers – when they lie to the House of Commons”. Regardless of whether Johnson realised he was breaking lockdown rules, he “clearly did break them” and “now admits as such” in a 52-page written submission delivered ahead of today’s committee appearance, McTague added.

Johnson’s submission said: “It is now clear that over a number of days, there were gatherings at No. 10 that, however they began, went past the point where they could be said to have been reasonably necessary for work purposes.”

‘A show trial’

Some of Johnson’s supporters have gone to “quite shocking” lengths to “smear” the privileges committee ahead of the hearing, said The Spectator.

Nadine Dorries tweeted that the committee’s chair, Labour MP Harriet Harman, had “stated a strong position of bias and an assumption guilt before even hearing the evidence”. Jacob Rees-Mogg has described the privileges committee as a “political committee against Boris Johnson”.

Johnson has also made some “punchy arguments” about the committee’s processes, the magazine continued, and complained about the “partisan tone and content” of an interim report published by the group earlier this month.

Johnson and his supporters may “have a point”, The Telegraph argued in its leading article today. “Whatever the background to this hearing,” said the paper, “it feels like a show trial designed to impugn Johnson’s premiership and close off any route back to power.”

Yet it is Johnson who has put himself in this predicament, not the committee, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. “Voters once loved his lies”, but he is “a magician whose trick won’t work anymore”.

“The spell has been broken,” Finkelstein concluded. “Hypocrisy has broken it.”

Perhaps, said McTague on UnHerd, but Johnson may try to work fresh political magic if he avoids a by-election. British politics “has calmed down” since Rishi Sunak took over as party leader, but “there is every chance that the Tory party will be looking for a new leader within the next two years”.

“That choice will ultimately fall to party members – most of whom still like Johnson,” McTague continued. “And Johnson will certainly not give up.”