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Daily Record
Daily Record
Politics
Torcuil Crichton

Tory MPs ready to take down Boris Johnson if he is found to have 'misled' parliament

Rebel Tory MPs have made clear their intention to launch another attempt to get rid of Boris Johnson as party leader and Prime Minister.

Conservative MP Steve Baker has outlined how he will move against the Prime Minister if he is found to have knowingly misled parliament over partygate.

Baker, from the Brexit wing of the party, was one of the organisers who deposed Theresa May to make way for Johnson.

READ MORE: Boris Johnson insists leadership question is settled

A cross-party committee of MPs is investigating whether Johnson “knowingly misled” MPs when he claimed that there were no Downing Street parties.

Writing in the Times newspaper Baker, who has already called for Johnson to go, said resignation would be automatic if the PM mislead the Commons.

He wrote: “If he were not to resign in those circumstances, it may prove necessary to take action to remove him.”

Baker announced he will stand in the elections for the 1922 Committee which sets the rules on a confidence votes in Tory party leaders.

Johnson won a confidence vote earlier this month, although 148 Tory MPs voted for his removal.

Under current rules, another vote cannot be held for a year.

Baker, the first backbencher to announce his candidacy to the 1922, said the committee must be “quick and resolute” in changing the rules if the PM is found to have breached the ministerial code.

Baker added: “It is one thing to make an inadvertent error, but intolerable to deliberately mislead.”

Johnson, who is travelling from a G7 meeting Germany to a Nato summit in Madrid, has brushed off talk of removing him.

He told reporters accompanying him on the trip that the leadership issue was settled with a “renewed mandate” from Tory MPs and goaded rebels with a boast that he planned to go on for three terms as Prime Minister.

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