Boris Johnson resigns as he governed: in a blitz of misinformation, abjectly failing to accept responsibility for wrongdoing, and lacking in even a shred of integrity. The statement he issued on Friday evening announcing he was standing down from parliament with immediate effect was characteristically graceless, bitter and deceitful. Though he hinted he would like to make a political comeback, his withdrawal from British political life is long overdue.
It is an incredible turn in political fortune for a former prime minister who less than four years ago won a general election with an 80-seat majority. Three years later he was forced to resign after being fined by the police for breaking the lockdown regulations he expected everyone else to comply with, sometimes at unthinkable personal cost. Now after seeing a draft of the privileges committee verdict on whether he intentionally misled parliament, he has decided to step down as an MP altogether. This implies that this cross-party committee of MPs – chaired by the respected Labour MP Harriet Harman, and with a majority of Conservative parliamentarians – has made serious findings in relation to the charge that Johnson misled MPs when he told them there had been no social gatherings and no breaking of lockdown rules in Downing Street during his premiership. Johnson has baselessly accused them of a “witch-hunt” and of being a “kangaroo court”, and claimed he is being “forced out of parliament by a tiny group of people”. Yet the privileges committee investigation was democratically mandated by MPs; the committee has no powers to force Johnson to step down, only to recommend to the Commons sanctions that can include a suspension, with one of more than 10 days triggering a recall petition that could lead to a byelection. Only the Commons can collectively impose the recommended sanction on Johnson, through a vote. Only his constituents can unseat him, through a byelection.
