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British prime minister Boris Johnson is facing another three potential fines for lockdown breaches, according to senior sources, as he suffered his first ministerial resignation over the Partygate scandal.
In a sign of the continued nervousness in government that Mr Johnson’s position could come under threat when MPs return to Westminster from recess next week, a Downing Street source admitted the apparent lull felt like “calm before the potential storm”.
Lords justice minister David Wolfson quit his role on Wednesday following the news that Mr Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak had been given a fixed-penalty notice for breaking their own Covid-19 laws by attending a party for the prime minister’s birthday in No 10.
Mr Wolfson said he was resigning not only because of the prime minister’s “own conduct” but also “the official response to what took place”.
He said the behaviour stood in stark contrast to many in society who “complied with the rules at great personal cost, and others were fined or prosecuted for similar, and sometimes apparently more trivial, offences”.
Mr Johnson sought to rally senior ministers behind him by holding a virtual cabinet meeting on Wednesday. The Welsh secretary, Simon Hart, said Mr Johnson would not quit even if he received multiple fines.
“I don’t necessarily see the difference between one or two,” he told Times Radio.
Momentum stalled
Before Mr Wolfson’s resignation, momentum appeared to have stalled for MPs prepared to oust Mr Johnson - just two Tory MPs added their voices to calls for the prime minister to resign, the Amber Valley MP Nigel Mills and Craig Whittaker, the MP for Calder Valley.
Mr Mills said he would be writing a letter of no confidence to the chair of the 1922 Committee: “I think for a prime minister in office to be given a fine and accept it and pay it for breaking the laws that he introduced is just an impossible position,” he said.
In the Halifax Courier, Mr Whittaker called for the PM to resign and “do the right thing” - though said he would not write a letter of no confidence, predicting that Mr Johnson would win any vote.
On social media, the majority of MPs rallied to Mr Johnson’s defence. But a former No 10 adviser predicted the fines could still prove “fatal” for the prime minister’s career.
“Conservatives, if they stand for anything, stand for the rule of law and the maintenance of order,” they said. “If they cannot abide their own rules, and do not show humility in the face of justice, it is impossible for them to maintain that mantle.”
Insiders said they believed Mr Johnson was likely to receive at least three more fines for events that have not yet been fully investigated by police.
The events that the Metropolitan police have yet to examine, which Mr Johnson attended, include the May 2020 summer party, a November gathering in Mr Johnson’s flat with his wife on the day of Dominic Cummings’ departure, and a leaving do for Lee Cain, a senior aide, in No 10 a day later. Sources said no attendees had yet received a fine for those events.
‘Comms blunder’
Some Tories have expressed concern that Johnson’s strategy has been to downplay the significance of the event for which he was fined - a short birthday gathering in the cabinet room.
“It’s been a terrible comms blunder for MPs to be briefed that the event only lasted 10 minutes and that the PM has been unfairly maligned,” one Tory source said.
Lord Frost, the former cabinet minister, also expressed concern that further damaging revelations were to come.
“I think it’s not possible just to say, ‘That was then, this is now, let’s move on, the world is different,’ as the government is trying to this morning,” he told LBC. “We don’t yet know what other penalties may be issued, and to whom.”
No 10 sources said the prime minister had attended the birthday gathering in the cabinet room in June 2020 for less than 10 minutes, eating salad from a plastic bowl and declining any alcohol or party food.
But those who attended the birthday party for the prime minister say they have raised eyebrows at the description of the gathering, with one describing it as a “party atmosphere” with singing, attended by his wife, Carrie Johnson, and his interior designer Lulu Lytle.
Another said they believe photos taken of the event by Mr Johnson’s personal photographer - which have been disclosed to the official Sue Gray investigation into lockdown parties - would leave it beyond doubt that it was an event that breached the rules.
One policing source said an assessment by Met detectives that the PM breached the rules more than once would increase future fines. The level of fine would go up each time Mr Johnson was found to have, or accepted that he had, breached the rules he had introduced. – Guardian