Labour deputy leader says it is very clear Downing Street party broke Covid rules as Johnson faces crunch PMQs with Keir Starmer
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This is what some Conservative MPs have been saying about Boris Johnson in interviews broadcast this morning.
Huw Merriman told the Today programme that he did not think Johnson inevitably had to resign if he attended the party on 20 May 2020. He said:
We don’t know what’s happened and I feel rotten speculating before we know the facts – but as far as I’m concerned we judge people in the round. That includes the action that was taken during the pandemic, the support, the vaccination programme, [and] holding the nerve on plan B. Then you then judge where people have done wrong.
It is utterly untenable, we have seen people resign for far less than that. If the prime minister knowingly attended a party, I can’t see how he can survive …
If he was there he better try a hugely fulsome apology and see if the country will buy it but I’m not sure they will.
I strongly urge the prime minister to act now, to apologise for No 10’s poor judgment, to show some contrition and to be committed to appropriately respond to Sue Gray’s findings when they come out. We can’t allow things to drift, that is not an option.
It would probably be for the cabinet then to judge, and then also what he says and how he says it. But we need to get ahead of the story. This is distracting us, it is taking airtime away.
Boris Johnson has to account for his actions and the ministerial code is very clear that if he has misled parliament and he has not abided by that code, then he should go.
