Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, will face a vote later this week on whether he should be probed for allegedly misleading parliament by repeatedly claiming that he did not break the COVID-19 restrictions.
Last week, Johnson was fined by the police for attending a birthday party in his honor in June 2020, during which people from various families were not allowed to gather indoors.
Opponents have called for Johnson’s resignation, accusing him of lying to parliament last year when he said that during the pandemic, all procedures were followed in Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence and workplace.
The Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, authorized opposition parties’ request for a vote on whether to refer Johnson to the privileges committee for an investigation on Thursday.
Knowingly misrepresenting parliament is a violation of the ministerial code, and it should result in resignation.
The motion is unlikely to pass since Johnson retains the support of most Conservative Party legislators and can still command a majority in parliament, but it will bring new attention to a potentially embarrassing problem for his leadership.
Johnson will apologize for breaking the lockdown laws in front of MPs for the first time since he was penalized at around 1530 GMT.
He’ll try to divert some of the criticism by discussing other topics he’s dealing with, such as the Ukraine conflict, the energy crisis, and immigration.
Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland minister, dismissed charges that the prime minister had deceived parliament, claiming that the fee he paid was comparable to that paid by other ministers who had previously received parking tickets.
Lewis told Sky News, “When he spoke to parliament, he was speaking what he considered to be the truth.” “However, he fully acknowledges that the police have looked into it and have come to a different conclusion.”
Johnson claims it never occurred to him that he was breaking the regulations, but he now “humbly” admits he was.
SUPPORT OF THE PARTY
According to a study conducted by J L Partners for The Times newspaper, which asked over 2,000 people to express their thoughts on the prime minister in a few words, 72 percent of respondents were negative, while only 16 percent were positive. According to the report, the most commonly used word was “liar.”
The main opposition Labour Party urged Conservatives to vote against their leader on moral grounds but admitted that they were unlikely to win enough votes to force an investigation.
With the war in Ukraine, in which he has sought to play a leadership role in the West’s reaction, pressure from Johnson’s own parliamentarians to quit has subsided. While a few have repeatedly called on him to step down, the majority believe now is not the time.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the treasurer of the Conservative Party’s “1922 Committee,” which represents parliamentarians without government employment, said he would wait until the police inquiry was completed and the British public had a vote in local elections in early May before passing judgment.
“At the moment, I believe it is not in the country’s best interests to consider removing the prime minister,” he stated.
Labour leader Keir Starmer accused Prime Minister of using the Ukraine situation as a shield to maintain his job, calling such a move “quite disrespectful.”
“Not only has he broken the rules, but he has also misled the public and the parliament about it,” he said.
