Politics: nemesis
By Richard North - June 16, 2023
Of those who are taking any interest in the report of the Committee of Privileges on “a matter concerning the conduct of the Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP, the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip”, there are probably three groups.
The first two will comprise those who come to the matter with their minds already made up, either for or against the man whom we call “the Oaf”. The third group will be those who have actually read the report, cover to cover, and based their views on its contents.
The matter at hand is, of course, whether the Oaf had misled the House and whether that conduct amounted to a contempt [of Parliament]. And while some would seek to trivialise the issues, or the findings, the Committee itself says:
This inquiry goes to the very heart of our democracy. Misleading the House is not a technical issue, but a matter of great importance. Our democracy is based on people electing Members of Parliament not just to enable a government to be formed and supported but to scrutinise legislation and hold the Executive to account for its actions. Our democracy depends on MPs being able to trust that what Ministers tell them in the House of Commons is the truth. If Ministers cannot be trusted to tell the truth, the House cannot do its job and the confidence of the public in our democracy is undermined.
Whether the public has much (or any) confidence in our democracy, to the extent that the Oaf is even capable of undermining it is moot. But I take the point. “The House”, says the committee, “expects all Members to act with integrity, which is why we refer to each other as Honourable Members”.
When the House has within its ranks a dishonourable member, who happens to be prime minister, then the system, quite obviously, is going to come under some stress. In the longer term, if ministers – and in particular, prime ministers – lie to House, Parliament will have even greater problems in functioning effectively than it already has.
Anyhow, whatever one’s views of the functioning of Parliament, the Committee of Privileges has been given a job to do by the House – with the unanimous support of MPs – and no one can argue that it has not done a thorough job.
And, without equivocation, it lists the ways in which it considers Johnson has misled the House or been disingenuous in his responses to its inquiry. His personal knowledge of breaches of the rules and guidance, it says, combined with his repeated failures pro-actively to investigate and seek authoritative assurances as to compliance issues, amount to what it calls: “a deliberate closing of his mind or at least reckless behaviour”.
The Committee finds it highly unlikely that Johnson, having given any reflection to these matters, could himself have believed the assertions he made to the House at the time when he was making them. Still less, it asserts, could he continue to believe them to this day.
Someone who is repeatedly reckless and continues to deny that which is patent, the Committee charges, “is a person whose conduct is sufficient to demonstrate intent”. Many aspects of Johnson’s defence are not credible, it finds. Taken together, they form sufficient basis for a conclusion that he intended to mislead.
This is a rather neat way of dealing with the spray of deflection coming from Johnson and his supporters – looking at the evidence in the round and judging the former prime minister by his deeds, as much as his words. Not only that, but the Committee also concludes that in deliberately misleading the House, Johnson committed a serious contempt.
The contempt was all the more serious, it says, because it was committed by the Prime Minister, the most senior member of the government. It adds that there is no precedent for a Prime Minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House.
And the condemnation doesn’t stop there. Johnson misled the House on an issue of the greatest importance to the House and to the public, is says, and he did so repeatedly.
Despite multiple opportunities, he declined the Committee’s invitation to reconsider his assertions that what he said to the House was truthful. His defence to the allegation that he misled was an ex post facto justification and no more than an artifice. Thus, he not only misled the House, he also misled the Committee in the presentation of his evidence.
The core of the evidence considered was the nature of six gatherings in Downing Street, five of which were claimed by Johnson to have been work meetings – those on 20 May 2020, 19 June 2020, 13 and 27 November 2020, 18 December 2020 and 14 January 2021. Johnson attended five of these gatherings and was briefly in close proximity to the sixth (that on 18 December 2020).
In each case Johnson asserted that the Covid Guidelines were followed, and no Rules were broken. But, with regard to the Rules covering work meeting, the Committee says, the gathering had to be essential or reasonably necessary for work purposes.
As it turned out, the meetings were variously a workplace “thank you”, leaving drink, birthday celebration or motivational events. They were, the Committee asserts, obviously neither essential nor reasonably necessary.
Despite that, Johnson is adamant that he believed all of the events which he attended and of which he had direct knowledge were “essential”. That belief – which he continues to assert – has no reasonable basis in the Rules or on the facts, says the Committee.
Cutting to the chase, the Committee applies a “reasonable person” test. A reasonable person looking at the events and the Rules, it says, would not have the belief that Johnson has professed. That is plain, it says, from the fact that around the UK during the period of pandemic restrictions these events did not take place in any other workplace.
From there, the Committee reverts to a “balance of probabilities” assessment. “We think it highly unlikely on the balance of probabilities”, it says, “that Johnson, in the light of his cumulative direct personal experience of these events, and his familiarity with the Rules and Guidance as their most prominent public promoter, could have genuinely believed at the time of his statements to the House that the Rules or Guidance were being complied with”.
The English is a bit tortuous, but we get the point as the Committee continues with:
We think it just as unlikely he could have continued to believe this at the time of his evidence to our Committee. We conclude that when he told the House and this Committee that the Rules and Guidance were being complied with, his own knowledge was such that he deliberately misled the House and this Committee.
Reading the entire thing, it leaves Johnson nowhere to go. He can rant and rave, as indeed he and his dwindling band of supporters are doing, but the Committee has him bang to rights. The former prime minister has been branded a liar, and it is now up to the Commons as a whole to decide whether to endorse its findings.
According to the Telegraph, MPs will vote on Monday on whether to accept the report’s findings and its proposed sanction. Although the motion is amendable and debatable, even allies of Johnson, we are told, are expecting it to pass.
As of yesterday, just seven of the 352 Tory MPs had publicly indicated they would vote against the report. Opposition party MPs are preparing to back it en masse, with the ultimate sanction that Johnson, the former prime minister, will even be denied an ex-member’s pass. He is forever more to be denied privileges access to the Houses of Parliament.
This is right and proper for someone whom Iain Martin brands as a man who “sees truth as a silly detail for lesser mortals”. Johnson had the opportunity to fight his case from the floor of the House but chose instead to run away. He has now gone from Parliament and his prime ministerial career is history.
But this is no tragedy, and nor is it a “political assassination” as some will aver. The charlatan who should never have been elected to high (or any) office gets his comeuppance at last. The show is over – for now. The damage will linger on.
