Former prime minister Boris Johnson could be forced to resign as MP

I'm sure you will be as devastated as I will be...

You’re going to need to sit down for this one, but the privileges committee (which is part of the tofu-eating wokerati) has suggested Boris Johnson may have misled parliament. I emphasise “may” because the evidence is unclear, but it has been suggested the former prime minister (who tells the truth at least 26% of the time) might not have been telling the truth on this occasion.

Interestingly, Dawn Butler has slammed the privileges committee for accusing the former prime minister of lying because that kind of behaviour is obviously unacceptable. Those MPs definitely should have been forced to retract their words and apologise or leave the chamber. What was the speaker doing?

There has been fierce debate about whether the videos, photographs and emails which show Johnson gathering with his mates during lockdown, hosting a quiz night for junior civil servants, and arranging a bring-your-own-booze ABBA party prove he was holding gatherings. This is because the word “gathering” has no clearly defined meaning. It’s one of those vaguely understood political terms like “integrity” and “public service”.

I mean it’s not like the Oxford Dictionary defines gathering as follows:

gathering

/ˈɡað(ə)rɪŋ/

noun

1.

an assembly or meeting, especially one held for a specific purpose.

"a family gathering"

As you can see, there is plenty of room for ambiguity here.

For example, did Johnson blow out the candles on his cake while a bunch of braindead sycophants sang Happy Birthday? Did he have a cheese and wine party in the Downing Street garden or drink suitcases of wine in a conference room until a fight broke out? Did he behave like a knobhead every single day throughout the Covid pandemic? The photographic and video evidence which clearly shows him doing these things is unclear.

To be honest, a lot of the accusations sound like jealousy. If you’ve never indulged in Prosecco and pizza until you vomited at 4am for work purposes, you clearly have the wrong employer.

The karaoke nights sound like they were epic and the rap battle between Gove and Braverman on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral is the stuff of legend. But by “legend”, I mean none of this stuff has been authenticated, regardless of what the Sue Gray Report says. (Just like it’s not been authenticated that water is wet, bears shit in the woods, and Boris has fathered three quarters of the children in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.)

It’s true that Johnson selected fellow Tory Sue Gray to investigate him because he anticipated a fully independent whitewash. But when Sue partially told the truth in the most diplomatic way possible, this was proof she was part of a Labour plot. The fact Sue wasn’t as biased towards Johnson as he had hoped totally invalidates her findings.

Johnson insisted he never knowingly misled parliament, just like he never knowingly had sex with a Russian violinist; his defence being that he does not understand what “gathering” and “misled” mean because he is an idiot. This is an interesting defence because when it comes to racial epithets, the man is a walking thesaurus.

Again, the evidence for this one is ambiguous.

For example, the Whatsapp messages which show officials suggesting the gatherings were against the rules do not prove that Johnson was aware they were gatherings or that they were against the rules. There is a very high chance he was too drunk to pay proper attention.

Check out this inconclusive excerpt from my employers at the BBC:

In one from 28 April 2021, seven months before press reports about parties first appeared, an unnamed No 10 official noted that another official was “worried about leaks of PM having a piss up and to be fair I don’t think it’s unwarranted”.

In another, from 25 January 2022, Mr Johnson’s then director of communications, Jack Doyle, told a No 10 official he hadn’t “heard any explanation” of how a birthday party for the former PM in the Cabinet Room in June 2020 was within the rules.

In a separate WhatsApp exchange the same day, an official messaged Mr Doyle, saying: “I’m trying to do some Q&A [briefing for officials dealing with the media queries], it’s not going well”.

Mr Doyle replied: “I’m struggling to come up with a way this one is in the rules in my head”, adding: “PM was eating his lunch of course”.

The official responded: “I meant for the police bit but yeah as ridiculous as the cake thing is it is difficult”.

The official then suggested they could argue it was “reasonably necessary for work purposes”.

Mr Doyle replied: “Not sure that one works does it. Also blows another great gaping hole in the PM’s account doesn’t it?”

The only thing that’s clear from this evidence is that Johnson’s officials have dreadful grammar. It was unbelievably hard for me to resist correcting them!

When Johnson was questioned in parliament, he insisted he did not even suspect he’d broken the law because who the hell would question their actions when everyone around them is raising concerns?

Only 126 people were fined for attending Johnson’s gatherings, but you can’t reasonably expect the man who made the rules to understand that gathering with 126 people counted as breaking them. I mean who doesn’t have five bottles of wine, a bottle of vodka and plates of food on a table for a work meeting?

Scandalously, if Johnson is found guilty of misleading parliament, despite the overwhelming evidence, he could be suspended or even expelled as an MP, triggering a by-election. It will be interesting to see how many generous Tory donors are willing to lavish him with gifts once he is no longer a member of parliament.

It’s not all bad news for Johnson though.

A rabid Nadine Dorries has just chased Sue Gray out of Westminster, screaming: “I will kick the shit out of you, traitor!” and then fell over. Nadine might be drunk again, but I understand she is ready to fight the privileges committee to the death for her man, which is rather tragic because Johnson couldn’t give the slightest shit about her x

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