A Tory MP has become the first to publicly call on Boris Johnson to go after he was fined over partygate.
Nigel Mills spoke out nearly 24 hours after the Metropolitan Police handed a fixed penalty notice to the prime minister, his wife Carrie and the chancellor, Rishi Sunak over a No. 10 birthday party for Johnson in June, 2020.
Since then, a succession of Conservative MPs have rallied behind Johnson and insisted it would be wrong for him to lose his job over the affair.
But in an interview with the BBC, Mills, the MP for Amber Valley, said the PM’s position was no longer “tenable”.
He said: “I don’t think the PM can survive or should survive breaking the rules he put in place…we have to have higher standards than that of people at the top. He’s been fined, I don’t think his position is tenable.
“I think people are rightly angry that at a time when they were observing the very strictest of the rules people who were making the rules didn’t have the decency to observe them…that’s the nub of it.”
In a televised statement on Tuesday evening, the prime minister said: “I once again offer a full apology. I accept in all sincerity that people have the right to expect better.”
But asked if he would resign, he added: “I want to be able to get on and deliver the mandate I have.”
On the morning broadcast round today, transport secretary Grant Shapps insisted Johnson had not “knowingly” broken the rules - or misled parliament when he told MPs all covid rules were followed in Downing Street.
He told Sky News: “He didn’t do it deliberately. He didn’t come to Parliament and having knowingly done this.
“He thought in fact that the same people who wished him happy birthday, who he had already been meeting with earlier that day, was not breaking the law.
“The police take a different view. He absolutely accepts that and has paid the fine.”