Boris Johnson should be "long gone", a former ally of the Prime Minister has declared in a dramatic turn against him over the Partygate scandal.
Earlier in the week, senior Conservative backbencher Steve Baker had asked Mr Johnson to assure him there would be no repeat of the offences which took place during lockdown, which have seen 50 fines issued to politicians and civil servants for breaking the law.
However today the former Brexit minister said he had run out of patience with the PM and his apologies, suggesting that the previous day's meeting of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs had changed his mind.
He said that “having watched what I would say is contrition, beautiful, marvellous contrition”, it “only lasted as long as it took to get out of the headmaster’s study”.
He added: “And that’s not good enough for me, and it’s not good enough for my voters. I’m sorry, it’s not.
"I’m afraid I am now in a position where I have to acknowledge that if the Prime Minister occupied any other office of senior responsibility, if he was a secretary of state, if he was a minister of state, a parliamentary undersecretary, a permanent secretary, a director general, if he was a chief executive of a private company or a board director, he would be long gone.
"The reason that he is not long gone is because removing a sitting prime minister is an extremely grave matter, and goodness knows, people will know, I’ve had something to do with that, too.
“It’s an extremely grave matter and an extremely big decision and it tends to untether history and all of us, all of us should approach such things with reverence and awe and an awareness of the difficulty of doing it and the potential consequences and that’s why I’ve been tempted to forgive.
“But I have to say now, the possibility of that, really, for me, has gone. I have to say I’m sorry, that for not obeying the letter and spirit – and I think we have heard that the Prime Minister did know what the letter was – the Prime Minister now should be long gone. I’ll certainly vote for this motion. But really, the Prime Minister should just know the gig’s up.”
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