Boris Johnson has accused Rishi Sunak of “talking rubbish” over his House of Lords nominations as the increasingly bitter feud between the prime minister and his predecessor descended into open warfare.
The astonishing clash came as the former Tory leader faces the final reckoning of his political career after a Commons committee finalised its Partygate report – expected to find that the former PM deliberately lied to parliament about lockdown parties.
Senior Tories expect the damning privileges committee findings to finish off any hopes of a comeback, telling The Independent that it would mark “the end of the circus”.
However, Mr Johnson threatened just that on Monday, telling The Express newspaper: “As the great Arnold Schwarzenegger said, I’ll be back.”
The rancour between Mr Sunak and Mr Johnson descended into a public slanging match on Monday when the PM claimed the former Tory leader has asked him to bend the rules over peerages – “something I was not prepared to do”.
But a furious Mr Johnson hit back, saying: “Rishi Sunak is talking rubbish” – adding that he had asked the PM to make sure the Lords’ authorities “renew their vetting”.
As the extraordinary row deepened, No 10 warned against any attempt to “traduce” the privileges committee after Johnson allies branded it a “kangaroo court” and compared it to an episode of Black Mirror.
A source close to the privileges committee told The Independent they expected to find that Mr Johnson “deliberately” lied to parliament over Partygate – and that MPs will make clear the length of the suspension they would have recommended, had he not quit the Commons.
The committee had reportedly been ready to punish Mr Johnson with a suspension of 20 days. But he is now expected to avoid the embarrassing sanction – likely to have sparked a by-election – because he is standing down as the MP for Uxbridge and Ruislip.
One senior Tory MP told The Independent they expected the report to be harsh and cement Mr Johnson’s unpopularity with the public, adding: “I think the public are completely fed up with him, as is the party. This is the end of Boris. This is the end of the circus. Thank goodness.”
Another senior Tory said they expected the report to be the end of his political career. “There’s only a dozen or so who’d like him back, and that’s it,” said the MP.
Despite Mr Johnson’s dramatic decision to resign his Uxbridge seat rather than face a widely expected suspension, allies have suggested he could still find another seat to run in at the next general election.
Jacob Rees-Mogg warned Tory HQ that any attempt to block Mr Johnson if he seeks another seat could plunge the party “into civil war”. Fellow loyalist James Duddridge MP said he would “put a fiver on him coming back – maybe even before the next election”.
Claire Bullivant, chief executive of the Conservative Democratic Organisation, told The Independent: “This is far from game over for Boris. Whether Boris stands again elsewhere before the next election or comes back later, who knows – I just know they’re so fearful of him that they’re now trying to ban him for life from parliament.”
Mr Johnson still faces the prospect of a permanent ban from parliament. If there is a debate on the privileges committee report next week, Labour is reportedly considering a motion to make sure the ex-Tory leader is handed a lifetime suspension.
Ms Bullivant said: “They know he would beat Starmer, that’s why. This whole kangaroo court is like a Black Mirror episode.”
One Johnson ally told The Independent the former PM had been “harshly treated” by the privileges committee. But they said it would be “a bit odd” if he was to seek another seat too soon – saying CCHQ and Mr Sunak would not stand for it. “Sunak wouldn’t want him sitting behind him on the green benches,” they added.
Tory peer Lord Hayward told The Independent: “He still hasn’t accepted he is not coming back. But every time he lashes out, he damages himself and gets even further away from coming back – it’s very unlikely he will be able to make a comeback now.”
In his first public comments since Mr Johnson quit as an MP, a defiant Mr Sunak claimed Mr Johnson asked him to either overrule the House of Lords appointments commission – which vets peerages – or “make promises to people” on the issue.
“Boris Johnson asked me to do something that I wasn’t prepared to do because I didn’t think it was right. That was to either overrule the Holac committee or to make promises to people,” the PM said at the London Tech Week conference.
But Mr Johnson denied that he had asked Mr Sunak to bend the rules. “Rishi Sunak is talking rubbish,” he said in a statement. “To honour these peerages it was not necessary to overrule Holac – but simply to ask them to renew their vetting, which was a mere formality.”
Former Tory leader Michael Howard – also a former Holac member – suggested Mr Johnson was lying about his recent conversation with Mr Sunak. “Not only was he not telling the truth this afternoon, he must have known he wasn’t telling the truth,” he told LBC.
Fellow Tory leader William Hague also condemned M Johnson and his camp in his latest Times column – saying cries of “witch-hunt” against the privileges committee were “highly inaccurate and insulting”.
Lord Hague attacked Mr Johnson’s “sadly irredeemable flaws”, saying: “The most serious of those has been a tendency to damage the institutions around him. Even as he bolts out of the door, Boris pulls out a few bricks from the wall of another vital institution, parliament.”
The saga over peerages has prompted the immediate resignation of two of those put forward, Mr Johnson’s allies Nadine Dorries and Nigel Adams – triggering three challenging by-elections for the PM as his party trails in the polls.
Mr Johnson wrote to the chancellor to formally resign as the MP for Uxbridge and Ruislip, a source close to the former PM confirmed. The three quitting MPs will be appointed to the ceremonial roles of the Chiltern Hundreds or Manor of Northstead while waiting for by-elections to be held.
Levelling up secretary Michael Gove said Mr Johnson’s parliamentary career had “ended”, but acknowledged his former ally was unlikely to step back quietly. “Boris will always want to argue his case, as he has done throughout his political career, with individual flair and pungency,” he told Times Radio.
Senior Tory MP Jake Berry, a friend of Mr Johnson’s, told reporters: “The establishment has seen Boris out the door.” But the ex-Tory chairman declined to say if he would like to see his friend standing at the next election, saying he looked forward to “campaigning with my friend Rishi”.
