Three things we’ve learned from the Partygate report

The Privileges Committee has today published its findings on whether Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Partygate. The House of Commons voted for such an inquiry, fourteen months ago: its members now have a 100-page, 30,000 word report to trawl through. It makes for damning reading. It finds that Johnson committed multiple contempts of parliament, including deliberately misleading the House, breaching confidence and ‘being complicit in the attempted intimidation of the committee’.  

They conclude that ‘there is no precedent for a Prime Minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House’ and therefore recommend a 90-day suspension for him: one of the longest in parliamentary history. An attempt to expel him from the House – a far more serious sanction which would have forced an immediate by-election – was defeated after the four Tories on the seven man panel voted against it. But in an added humiliation, the committee recommend that Johnson lose his former members’ pass: a fate previously suffered by John Bercow.