The Tories can’t escape partygate

Is partygate all in the past? That’s what Rishi Sunak is hoping. He sent Penny Mordaunt to the Commons this afternoon to back the Privileges Committee report into Boris Johnson, while saying the vote on sanctions for Johnson himself ‘is a matter for individual members’. The chamber had far more opposition MPs in it than Conservatives. Sunak himself has packed his diary so he is unlikely to attend the Commons for the vote.

Labour’s aim for the debate is to tie Johnson very firmly to the current administration. Shadow leader of the Commons Thangam Debbonaire gave a furious speech in which she accused Sunak of being too weak to take a position on the report. She also argued that Johnson ‘claims the public don’t care, that we should all simply move on’, but that public anger was running deep and that members should not ‘dishonour their constituents’ by abstaining:

The final area I want to cover in my speech is the current Prime Minister’s reaction to this report and where it leaves standards in Parliament and public life more generally, because it’s painfully clear he is not strong enough to turn the page on his predecessor.