A former Tory attorney-general just explained all the significant problems in Boris Johnson’s latest defence against partygate, expected later on Monday.
Dominic Grieve, the UK’s attorney-general under David Cameron who stepped down as an MP in 2019, spoke to Sky News about whether or not Johnson misled parliament last year.
Then-prime minister Johnson repeatedly claimed that no rules were broken when asked about the Downing Street lockdown parties in the Commons, despite later being fined by police for breaking the Covid lockdown measures.
Grieve told Sky News: “Mr Johnson does certainly appear to have a considerable problem – he attended some of the gatherings which were parties, and yet he said there weren’t any gatherings.
“It’s a bit difficult therefore to understand how he didn’t know that there had been parties going on at No.10 Downing Street.”
Grieve said leaked images from the parties inside Downing Street – where Johnson and others are all cheering with drinks and food, not socially distanced – “shows for itself the nature of the gatherings which were taking place”.
“They don’t look like work events,” Grieve concluded. “So Mr Johnson has a lot of explaining to do.”
A source also told ITV back in January that they overheard Johnson during one of the partygate gatherings telling a crowd of people: “This is the most unsocially distanced party in the UK right now.”
Grieve continued: “And of course, that is against a background of somebody who has a serial reputation for telling untruths whenever it suits him.”
The ex-MP has often expressed his concerns about Johnson’s leadership of the Tory Party over the years, despite the ex-PM’s ongoing popularity among Conservative MPs.
But, Grieve dismissed those who still support Johnson, dubbing those sectors of the Tory Party “delusional”.
“If they want to continue along that path, it’s a matter for them – but Mr Johnson is not going to help the Conservative Party’s electoral fortunes.”
Grieve also said that Johnson “can’t complain” about the fact that the investigation is being organised by MPs, because the Commons is self-regulating, and there is parliamentary sovereignty.
Johnson will release a defence dossier on Monday, and will appear before MPs in the Commons Privileges Committee on Wednesday.
His future as an MP is uncertain right now as it all depends on the committee’s findings.