Why I resigned over partygate

This is an edited version of Lord Wolfson’s resignation letter, following the Met’s decision to fine Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak over Downing Street parties which broke Covid restrictions in 2020.

Dear Prime Minister,

It was a great honour to be invited to join your government as a justice minister. In my maiden speech, I twice used the phrase ‘justice and the rule of law’. Justice may often be a matter of courts and procedure, but the rule of law is something else – a constitutional principle which, at its root, means that everyone in a state, and indeed the state itself, is subject to the law.

I regret that recent disclosures lead to the inevitable conclusion that there was repeated rule-breaking, and breaches of the criminal law, in Downing Street. I have – again, with considerable regret – come to the conclusion that the scale, context and nature of those breaches mean that it would be inconsistent with the rule of law for that conduct to pass with constitutional impunity, especially when many in society complied with the rules at great personal cost, and others were fined or prosecuted for similar, and sometimes apparently more trivial, offences.