Boris Johnson has been branded a 'lying buffoon' by a Scots university professor as he urges voters to not let him get away with partygate.
Stephen Reicher, a member of the Sage subcommittee advising on behavioural science and a professor at the University of St Andrews, took aim at the Prime Minister over the rule breaking parties in Downing Street during lockdown in 2020.
The criticism from the academic came after 20 people were issued with fines by the Metropolitan Police earlier this week for breaching covid rules.
With the current war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis dominating the news agenda Reicher says the PM wants people to forget about partygate so he can remain in office.
He wrote in the Guardian : "Four months after the revelations of Downing Street’s parties first broke, things have moved on. The police have investigated the Downing Street parties, concluded the rules were broken, and have started issuing fines – 20 so far, with more expected soon.
"Even Dominic Raab, the justice minister, accepts that the parties happened and that the prime minister was wrong to tell parliament they didn’t. But the world is a very different place.
"As far as the headlines are concerned, Covid is yesterday’s crisis; Ukraine is today’s. Yesterday’s lying buffoon has today found his Churchillian moment.
"At a time when Johnson appears to be standing up to Putin’s tyranny, it might seem that there is far less reason to remove him from office."
He added: "It may be that our prime minister has given up on the truth.
"It may be that his party has given up caring about his giving up on the truth and no longer has the will to remove him.
"Some people may now argue things such as 'despite Partygate, Johnson got the big calls right' or 'we can’t remove him in the midst of a war' – so called 'greater good' arguments, which have always served as cover for the most toxic abuses.
"But if we allow ourselves to be seduced by these arguments then we too are giving up, and accepting that the distinction between true and false is only a secondary matter.
"That is why Partygate still remains a resigning matter, and why the public must call for Johnson’s resignation more loudly than ever."
Earlier today Policing Minister Kit Malthouse said Johnson would probably declare whether he had been issued with a Fixed Penalty Notice as a result of the police probe into parties.
The minister was asked, as someone who knows the Prime Minister well, whether he was likely to confirm if he had received a fine.
The crime and policing minister told LBC: "It is a hypothetical question, but I think if he did, he probably would, yes."
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