Boris Johnson announced on Thursday that “this is a dreadful day for MPs and for democracy”. In fact, it was the exact reverse. For the first time, a British former prime minister was found by his colleagues to have misled the House of Commons while he was in office. If Mr Johnson had not already done a runner from parliament, he would have rightly faced a 90-day suspension from it. But that does not make Thursday a dreadful day for democracy. On the contrary. It makes it a day of robust and necessary vindication of British parliamentary democracy against arguably its most unprincipled domestic enemy of modern times. The dreadfulness lay all along in Mr Johnson’s conduct alone.
The privileges committee report proves equal to its task. It took 14 months to compile and runs to 30,000 words and 108 pages. It was launched by an unopposed vote while Mr Johnson was still prime minister. The seven-strong committee was a mix of veterans and younger MPs. It had a Conservative majority, the two most senior of whom were celebrated Brexiters. The inquiry was conducted in a meticulous and fair manner. If the committee Conservatives had chosen to believe Mr Johnson’s version of events in 10 Downing Street during the Covid emergency, and the assurances that he gave MPs about them, they had the votes to win out. Instead, the committee rejected his version unanimously. The only issue on which it was divided was whether to expel Mr Johnson altogether (it voted not to).
