Conservative former minister Steve Baker told MPs he had been tempted to “forgive” Boris Johnson for breaking COVID lockdown rules but conceded that possibility for him is now “gone”.
During the partygate debate in the Commons today, Mr Baker said the problem he has with Boris Johnson, “having watched what I would say is contrition, beautiful, marvellous contrition”, is that it “only lasted as long as it took to get out of the headmaster’s study”.
He said: “And that’s not good enough for me, and it’s not good enough for my voters. I’m sorry, it’s not.
“And 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.”
He added: “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.”
Mr Baker said he had been “tempted to forgive Mr Johnson, but 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.”
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