Rishi Sunak is still agonising over the investigation that found Boris Johnson lied to MPs with his partygate denials as the former British prime minister’s allies attacked the damning report.
Downing Street said the prime minister will “study the report closely” but Downing Street was refusing to say whether he will vote to approve it in the Commons on Monday.
The Privileges Committee report recommended that Mr Johnson should have faced a 90-day suspension had he not already resigned in advance of its judgment.
Though he cannot now serve that, the cross-party group of MPs also recommended that he should be banned from holding a pass to access Parliament for a series of offences.
Tory MPs will be given a free vote, but allies of Mr Johnson warned they could face battles with their local parties to remain as candidates at the next election if they back the motion.
However, Mr Johnson was privately urging his supporters not to oppose it, arguing the sanctions has no practical effect. He was aware that he would get his pass back if re-elected as an MP.
Mr Sunak will be wary of angering his predecessor’s remaining fanbase in the Tory party, but will also want to avoid allegations that he is too weak to stand up to Mr Johnson.
Senior Conservative MP Damian Green told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “deliberately abstaining is not really rising to the importance of the occasion”.
The former de facto deputy prime minister said he intends to vote to approve the report with a “heavy heart”.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former cabinet minister who is a staunch ally of Mr Johnson, told LBC he believes Mr Sunak “will abstain on the basis that it is a parliamentary matter”.
He described the 90-day recommendation for Mr Johnson as “vindictive” and suggested the severity may have “helped his return, rather than hindered it”.
Liz Truss, who spent 49 days in No 10 after succeeding Mr Johnson as Tory leader, told GB News that preventing him holding a parliamentary pass would be a “very harsh decision”.
But she is not expected to vote on the report, with a source close to the MP pointing to her speaking at an event in Dublin on Monday morning.
Sir Jake Berry, a former Tory party chairman who is a close ally of Mr Johnson, conceded he was “almost certain that Parliament will vote in favour” of the report.
But he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain he will “certainly be one of those in the no lobby opposing this report, because I think both the conclusions and, to some extent, the way the committee was made up in terms of this report are wrong.”
A welcome distraction between meetings…
First day of an Ashes series is always a bit special.
Exciting first session - good luck to @benstokes38 and the team for this afternoon 🏏 pic.twitter.com/R47vOUsYbe— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) June 16, 2023
Despite the Privilege Committee’s report being published early on Thursday, Downing Street said Mr Sunak “hasn’t fully had time to consider the report”.
“The prime minister takes these processes very seriously, which is why he intends to take the time to study the report closely,” a spokesman added.
The sanctions proposed by the Tory-majority committee are expected to pass, with only a relatively small group of Johnson loyalists set to oppose the report’s findings.
Mr Sunak will be hosting a foreign leader in No 10 on Monday, which could give him an excuse not to take part.
After an “erudite” new columnist who will be “required reading in Westminster” was billed to begin in the Daily Mail on Saturday, the PA news agency was told it will be Mr Johnson, as widely anticipated.
Mail unveils Boris Johnson as our new columnist https://t.co/BV0kXCgFNx pic.twitter.com/0Cy9kiDcrF
— Daily Mail U.K. (@DailyMailUK) June 16, 2023
The role will give Mr Johnson, who used to receive a £275,000 salary to write for the Telegraph, a powerful platform to take shots at the prime minister with whom he has been publicly clashing.
But Mr Johnson could again find himself under scrutiny, if confirmed, after the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) said he had not applied for clearance.
Former ministers who have left the UK government in the last two years must apply to the anti-corruption watchdog before taking up a new appointment or role.
Chairman Lord Eric Pickles, a Tory peer, will be writing to Mr Johnson to seek clarification on whether he is taking the job.
An Acoba spokeswoman told PA: “We haven’t had an application and we will be writing to Mr Johnson.”
A source close to Mr Johnson insisted he had written to the committee, but would not say when the letter was sent.
Mr Johnson’s exit from Parliament has also left Mr Sunak facing a tricky by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip on July 20th, with Labour hopeful of gaining the west London seat.
Another by-election on the same date, triggered by Tory Nigel Adams who was denied a peerage in Mr Johnson’s resignation honours list, will take place in Selby and Ainsty.
Former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries, who had also announced she was going to resign, is staying on while she seeks to investigate how she was denied a seat in the Lords as part of the former prime minister’s honours list.
She warned that any Tory MPs who endorsed the Privileges Committee’s report on Monday were not “true Conservatives” and would be “held to account by members and the public”.
“Deselections may follow. It’s serious,” she said.
The committee found Mr Johnson deliberately misled the House with his partygate denials before being complicit in a campaign of abuse and intimidation against the MPs investigating him.
Branding him the first former prime minister to have ever lied to the Commons, the Privileges Committee said the offences merited a 90-day suspension which would have paved the way for a by-election if he had not preemptively resigned in protest.
Mr Johnson was furious at what he called a “deranged conclusion”, claiming the 14-month investigation had delivered “what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination”.
The committee, comprised of four Tories, two Labour MPs, and one from the SNP, found many aspects of Mr Johnson’s defence were “not credible”, allowing them to conclude he “intended to mislead” MPs.
