Boris Johnson Is Standing Down As An MP Triggering Second By-Election
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson (Alamy)
3 min read
Boris Johnson is quitting as a Conservative MP with immediate effect, throwing a second difficult by-election for Rishi Sunak into the mix after Nadine Dorries stood down earlier on Friday.
The Conservative majority in the seat is just over 5,000.
The former prime minister unexpectedly announced on Friday night he would quit as the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, just hours after his controversial honours list was published.
A by-election will take place in his London constituency, which Keir Starmer's Labour Party will see as a winnable contest. A second by-election is also due to take place in Mid-Bedfordshire after staunch Johnson ally Dorries also quit on Friday, which the Lib Dems have identified as a target.
Johnson said he had taken the decision to stand down after receiving the Privileges Committee report into whether he misled Parliament about his involvement in the partygate scandal.
The former PM admits misleading Parliament, but claims that he did not knowingly do so. Following a tense committee hearing in March, it has been widely expected that its findings would be damning.
In today's resignation statement, Johnson accused the committee led by Harriet Harman MP of "egregious bias" and of being a "kangaroo court", and continued to insist that he didn't knowingly mislead MPs.
"I take my responsibilities seriously. I did not lie, and I believe that in their hearts the Committee know it. But they have wilfully chosen to ignore the truth because from the outset their purpose has not been to discover the truth, or genuinely to understand what was in my mind when I spoke in the Commons," he said.
"The Privileges Committee is there to protect the privileges of parliament. That is a very important job. They should not be using their powers – which have only been very recently designed – to mount what is plainly a political hitjob on someone they oppose."
Johnson became leader of the Conservatives and prime minister in July 2019, and led his party to a comfortable victory over Jeremy Corbyn's Labour in a general election later that year.
He was forced to stand down last summer after a large number of Tory MPs resigned from their ministerial positions out of protest against his leadership.
Johnson appeared to criticise the policies of Rishi Sunak's government in his resignation statement, saying: "We must not be afraid to be a properly Conservative government."
"We need to show how we are making the most of Brexit and we need in the next months to be setting out a pro-growth and pro-investment agenda. We need to cut business and personal taxes – and not just as pre-election gimmicks – rather than endlessly putting them up," he said.
Johnson's resignation risks inflaming pre-existing tensions within the parliamentary Tory party if his strongest supporters accuse PM Sunak of not doing enough to help him.
PoliticsHome understands supporters of Johnson are "already making their views clear on the WhatsApp groups" and have said things "could get very messy".
Separately, a Tory MP said simply, "FFS".
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