David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary, and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at the 2019 general election.
Of course Conservative MPs – and Rishi Sunak, in particular – should vote in favour of the Privileges Committee recommendations on Boris Johnson. No doubt many of them have been considering whether they might have other things to do later today but, really, it should be a straight-forward decision.
The starting point should be the belief that deliberately misleading the House of Commons is a serious offence – which it is. Without that principle being accepted, Parliamentary democracy cannot work. Ministers cannot be held to account if there is no expectation of honesty.
The next question is how this principle is enforced. This could be done through the courts or by some independent body not consisting of Parliamentarians, but most MPs would argue (correctly, in my view) that this would be an unacceptable intrusion on the rights of the Commons.
If these questions are to be judged by fellow MPs, however, certain consequences inevitably follow. Particularly when a high profile figure in under investigation – and they don’t come with a higher profile than Johnson – the MPs considering the case will have opinions about the individual and will have likely expressed them publicly. Excluding all those who have ever expressed criticism of the person under investigation would leave a very odd- looking committee.
The Commons, of course, endorsed the process when the inquiry was initiated. At the time it did this, Johnson cannot claim to be powerless – he was Prime Minister, after all – so it is a little late to object. Even in March, Johnson wrote to one of the Committee members expressing his “utmost respect for the integrity of the Committee and all its members and the work that it is doing”. Once the Committee found against him, however, Johnson immediately made accusations that the Committee constituted a “kangaroo court” and a “witch hunt”.
It is this charge that has been most prominent in the criticism of the findings by Johnson and others. Any failure to support the Committee’s recommendations will be taken by Johnson and others as tacit acceptance that there was something inappropriate and invalid about the process and the behaviour of the Committee.
The reality is that Committee was advised by a former High Court judge and Senior President of Tribunals, Sir Ernest Ryder. It gave Johnson every opportunity to respond to the evidence. It has a track record of finding in favour of Johnson in the past when accusations were made about failing to declare details of a holiday. And it had a Conservative majority.
The process – and the four Conservative members – should be defended by a demonstration of the emphatic support of MPs. If that does not happen, the idea that MPs are capable of regulating themselves, regrettably, may not be sustainable.
That is the principled case, but MPs are politicians and cannot ignore the politics. As I understand it, MPs have not been inundated with messages calling for them to vote one way or another, but Parliamentarians know that views are polarised. Rather than upset either side very much, some may be tempted to split the difference and abstain.
We know that the public now think little of Johnson. As the pollster James Johnson of JL Partners told the Sunday Times: “The ‘red wall’ prefers Rishi Sunak to [Johnson] by more than 20 points. He is less popular with the British public than Philip Schofield and Xi Jinping. If Conservative MPs want any chance of winning their seats, they will need to stop peddling the Boris fantasy and move on.”
The conflicting pressure was explicitly stated by Nadine Dorries who warned of deselections for those who support the Committee. Johnson has his supporters in the party membership who are disproportionately noisy and could make life difficult for incumbent MPs.
It would, however, be an act of gross cowardice – and be seen as an act of gross cowardice – for an MP to be intimidated by this threat. From a political perspective, what matters are the voters as a whole, and any failure to support the Committee will be a gift to Tory opponents. As for the fear of deselections, it is hard to imagine that CCHQ would allow any to occur on these grounds. And if an MP thinks that the nature of the party is such that standing up for standards in public life will result in dismissal, one wonders why they would want to represent such a party.
The Conservative Party is not the US Republican Party in which defending decency has become politically terminal – as Liz Cheney discovered. If Conservative MPs start acting as if it is, this would prove to be self-fulfilling. Voting for the Committee’s recommendations would be a very good way of establishing that the Conservative Party has not been surrendered to the loudmouth conspiracy theorists and the truth-deniers. MPs should want to be seen to take a stand.
If this is the case for Conservative MPs, it is all the more important for their leader. Rishi Sunak should walk through the lobbies today and back the Committee.
The case against is obvious. It will be provocative; Johnson and his supporters will be furious; it will exacerbate divisions. Keep out of it, some will argue, and move on.
This would be a mistake. Sunak will not win any friends by abstaining in that Johnson loyalists will still blame him for Johnson’s fall last July. (By the way, the Conservative Party can consider itself very fortunate that Johnson did fall last July and is not still in office – imagine the situation if the serving Prime Minister had been found to be in contempt of Parliament? – but not everyone sees it that way.) Appeasing Johnson will not work; Sunak cannot be forgiven for being Prime Minister when Johnson wants the role.
Rather than hoping the problem will go away, Sunak should lean in to the row. Johnson has contaminated the Conservative brand – associating it with unprofessionalism and lacking integrity. The best way to “move on” from Johnson is to demonstrate professionalism and integrity and uphold high standards. There is no room for equivocation.
Sunak’s response last week to the row over House of Lords appointments – “Boris Johnson asked me to do something I was not prepared to do, because I did not think it was right… if people don’t like that, then tough” – was refreshing. He needs to more of that, including today.
Johnson is in disgrace. The Privileges Committee has concluded that he lied again and again. That is bound to have collateral damage to the Conservative Party – damage that will last for as long as the party fails to properly repudiate him. In truth, the Conservative Party owes the country an apology for making him Prime Minister and asking the country to endorse him in 2019 (just as Labour owes a similar apology for putting forward Jeremy Corbyn). The sooner this is done, the better.
Conservative MPs can go some way in recovering the party’s reputation by how they vote today. But, above all, the Prime Minister needs to do so. Back the Privileges Committee, Prime Minister.