On this site today, Stewart Jackson makes a case for Boris Johnson and David Gauke, our columnist, a case against. But on one point friend and foe alike will surely agree. Namely, that when MPs debated last year whether or not to refer the then Prime Minister to the Privileges Committee, each one would have done so with prejudices intact, influenced by party political affiliation.
Opposition members would have viewed Johnson as a successful enemy, who had delivered his party an emphatic election victory. The views of Government ones will have been more mixed, ranging from fervent support to outright opposition. Johnson was to leave Downing Street only a few months later, and his position was weakening, which helps to explain why the motion passed unopposed.
If there was a common view, a shared pespective in the Commons that day, it would have been one of exasperation with the chaos in which Johnson seems to live and move and have his being. But whether so or not, the debate was – as all debates in Parliament must be – expressly political.
MPs should thus have been very careful, especially those on the Committee itself. Commons committees can undertake useful enquiries and, as David points out in his column, it would have been inappropriate for a court to judge the matter. Parliamentary privileges are the people’s privileges, and MPs, not judges, should decide who has and hasn’t broken their rules. All the same, it was impossible for all the Committee’s members to come to the case with clean hands.
Chris Bryant took the point. He had been very critical of Johnson, and so recused himself from the inquiry. But his successor as Chair, Harriet Harman, had been scarcely less so, tweeting expressly that Johnson had lied. Should she not have refused to be drafted?
Given the impossibility of the Committee approaching the inquiry without a preconceived, political view of Johnson itself, its report did a remarkably thorough job. The question it had to answer wasn’t the broad one of how Johnson had handled Covid, but the narrow one of whether or not the Commons “had been misled by Mr Johnson and, if so, whether that conduct amounted to contempt”.
This was a tricky one – if only because what goes on in Johnson’s head isn’t always clear, perhaps even to the man himself. But, as the report makes clear, he evidently made claims to the House that weren’t true. So he was either misrepresenting what happened in Number Ten, which would have been bad, or else hadn’t a clue, which in some ways would have been even worse.
It’s more reasonable to believe that he knew, didn’t take adequate advice about rules and guidance, and – here’s the rub – treated the whole business with the relaxed attitude to formalities that has distinguished his entire career. Many of the Downing Street “social gatherings” had nothing to do with Johnson: they were civil service ones from start to finish. All the same, the then Prime Minister was ultimately responsible, and a fish rots from the head down.
How should the Committee then have ruled? On the one hand, the matter was very serious, given the privations that the Covid rules caused, and the charge of hypocrisy. On the other, Ministers seldom tell the House the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so the Committee’s members also needed a sense of perspective.
Its members will have known that his conduct in the Commons had already helped to lose Johnson his job. And that, Parliamentary Privilege notwithstanding, the Covid Inquiry will get its teeth into what he did and didn’t tell MPs. Additionally, they will have been mindful of blowback over potential claims that they were in breach of the rules themselves – which is exactly what has happened in the case of Bernard Jenkin.
Finally, the Conservative members of the Committee had a particular concern – namely, that the tacking of the right to recall onto penalties issued by the Committee is unfair. We know that this is so because of an amendment that, as members of the Standards and Privileges Committee, they tabled to the report on Margaret Ferrier.
“The recommended sanction, if approved by the House, will trigger the possibility of recall. We believe the operation of the Act requires review,” it read. In other words, it’s wrong, in their view, for an MP to face, in the event of suspension from the Commons for ten days or more, a by-election forced by a petition of a mere ten per cent of their constituents. And what’s good for the goose of Ferrier should have been so for the gander of Johnson.
Nine days suspension would have been about right. Instead, the Tory majority went along with a penalty of 90 days, for goodness’ sake. Why? Because, as its report demonstrates, the Committee got its knickers in a twist about his attack on its probity. Parliamentary priviliges are indeed be the people’s privileges.
But the people themselves don’t always see it the same way, and the Committee has had a bit of a lucky break. For were Johnson not so unpopular – more so than Xi Jinping and Philip Schoefield, we read – it would have been panned. MPs risk further ridicule when they get hot under the collar about claims that they’re ridiculous.
A vote today is unlikely. Johnson doesn’t want one. His support among the public is low. That among Conservative MPs is a bit higher, and fair-minded ones will always honour his delivery of Brexit, vaccines and support for Ukraine. But for most of them, the Johnson ship has sailed.
Among party members, it’s probably higher still. But even here, activists know, in their heart of hearts, that on spending restraint, migration control, Net Zero and culture war, Johnson’s own doesn’t beat to the same rhythm as theirs. The cultists who maintain otherwise need not so much a psephologist as a psychiatrist.
Furthermore, Johnson’s response to the Committee suggested that he now wants Rishi Sunak out, even though the consequence would be to put Keir Starmer in. Party loyalism may not be what it was, but this will be too much for most to stomach.
A war’s end sometimes sees drumhead tribunals – court martials held to hear charges of offences committed in action. They are a kind of summary justice. At best, the Committee’s sentence can be seen in that light. At worst, it’s victor’s justice – that’s to say, the imposition of raw power by the victorious on the defeated.
In this context, Johnson’s standing down from Parliament is a bit like the condemned man swallowing a cyanide pill the night before he is due to face the firing squad – an acknowledgement of the inevitable. And men who have done so don’t come back from the dead.
Tory MPs who attend today’s debate (most won’t) must grapple with a paradox. It’s time for the Conservatives to move on, and for the curtains to come down on the Johnson show. But though the end is right, the means are unfair and the sentence disproportionate. That would justify a vote against the motion, in the event of there being one.
As Andrew Gimson pointed out on this site last week, most people have made up their minds – and my equivocal conclusions are unlikely to please. “Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, it will come to pass, that I shall spew thee out of my mouth.” Perhaps. But with Johnson, the best policy may be to have one’s cake and eat it.