Johnson seeks truce with Sunak after friendly fire in Commons

Rishi Sunak did not vote but Penny Mordaunt, Alex Chalk, Gillian Keegan, Chloe Smith and David TC Davies were among cabinet ministers who supported the damning report of the former PM.

More than 100 conservative MPs turned on former prime minister Boris Johnson and voted to back a damning report into his conduct.

Boris Johnson suffered a humiliating rebuke last night (Monday) from the party he led only months ago, when MPs voted overwhelmingly to back a damning report into his conduct in the Downing Street parties scandal.

Only seven MPs voted against the findings of the Commons privileges committee that Johnson deliberately misled parliament when he claimed there were no parties.

A third of the parliamentary Conservative Party - including nine cabinet ministers - endorsed the report, which will result in Johnson losing the right to enter the Commons without an escort. One MP shouted “who are you?” as the small number of members who backed Johnson was announced.

In all, 118 Conservative MPs voted to back the report. Rishi Sunak did not vote but Penny Mordaunt, Alex Chalk, Gillian Keegan, Chloe Smith and David TC Davies were among cabinet ministers who supported the report.

Tom Tugendhat, Victoria Prentis, Andrew Mitchell and Simon Hart, who attend cabinet, were among a further 23 ministers to back the report.

Other notable MPs to back the report included Sir Graham Brady, the Tory backbench shop steward, and Douglas Ross, who leads the Scottish Conservatives.

The seven MPs who backed Johnson included the veteran backbencher Sir Bill Cash and Joy Morrissey, Johnson former parliamentary private secretary.

However others such as Sir Jacob Rees Mogg and Sir Simon Clarke, both of whom were given honours by Johnson, abstained.

The vote came after a five-hour debate during which the former prime minister was attacked by his predecessor Theresa May who accused him of damaging the public’s faith in Parliamentary democracy. Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, suggested that the former prime minister’s resignation honours list had “debased” Parliament.

Yet other senior Tories defended him, even if they did not vote, with Rees-Mogg describing his ninety-day suspension as “vindictive sanction” and accusing the privileges committee, the cross-party group of MPs behind the report, of acting like “communist China”.

A source close to Johnson said that he now wants to “de-escalate” tensions with Sunak and has all but given up on the idea of making a political comeback before the next election.

“He’s moving into a different phase,” they said. “He wants to de-escalate tensions with the government, he believes that his long-term interests are best served by refraining from agitating. He’s in watching and waiting mode. But all of this is conditional on the Sunak government leaving him alone.”

It represents a significant shift in position from Johnson, who less than two weeks ago used his resignation statement to castigate the government over Brexit, levelling up and the tax burden.

Senior figures in government have said that he has reached the “end of the road” and no longer commands significant support within the parliamentary party. Relatively few Tory MPs were expected to vote against the committee’s report.

Sunak yesterday (Monday) gave MPs a free vote on whether to endorse the findings of the privileges committee’s year-long investigation into Johnson.

The cross-party group of MPs concluded that he deliberately misled the Commons and recommended that he be barred from holding the parliamentary pass given to ex-MPs.

The committee said that were he still an MP, he would have been suspended for 90 days, one of the toughest sanctions in history and more than enough to trigger a by-election .

Mordaunt, a former candidate for the Tory leadership, said that she would be voting for the report and suggested that Johnson’s resignation honours list had led to the “debasement of our honours system”.

May urged Tory MPs not to vote against the report warning that if Conservatives were seen to be standing by the ex-prime minister it would damage faith in politics.

“If they [the public] see members of this House trying to save the careers of friends who have been clearly found by due process to have been guilty of wrongdoing . . . respect for us is eroded,” she said.

“Without that trust and respect, their faith in our very parliamentary democracy is damaged.”

However Rees Mogg attacked the privileges committee for adding to Johnson’s sanction after he criticised them having been sent a draft of their report.

“It is absolutely legitimate to criticise the conduct of a committee, to criticise the members of a committee,” he said. That is politics.

“Our politics is adversarial. We must defend the right of freedom of speech. And, frankly, if politicians cannot cope with criticism you wonder what on earth they are doing with a political career.”

Johnson privately has given up on returning to politics before the next election.

Earlier Harriet Harman, the privileges committee chair, revealed that Johnson’s government had endorsed her position even after old tweets, critical of the former prime minister, came to light.

Harman said that she offered to step down but had been assured that the government which Johnson led had confidence in her continuing.

“I made it my business to find out whether or not it would mean that the Government would not have confidence in me if I continued to chair the committee,” she said.

“I was assured that I should continue the work that the House had mandated with the appointment that the House had put me into and so I did just that.”

Several MPs, including in Red Wall seats won by Johnson for the first time in 2019, made clear that they would not be prepared to endorse the privileges committee report, with one saying that the former prime minister had been “punished enough”. Another likened it to Manchester City’s star player being judged by Manchester United fans.

THE TIMES