Johnson’s testimony was shamelessly remorseless. But what else did we expect

Boris Johnson faced a three-and-a-half-hour grilling in front of the Commons privileges committee yesterday afternoon about whether he misled parliament over ‘partygate’. During the session, the former Prime Minister doubled down on his claim that the statements he made to MPs about accusations of Covid rule-breaking gatherings in Downing Street were “made in good faith and on the basis of what I honestly knew and believed at the time”, telling the committee that “hand on heart” he “did not lie to the House”. But committee chair Harriet Harman condemned the assurances Johnson told MPs he had received about whether Covid rules had been broken as “flimsy”, arguing that they “did not amount to much at all”. The Labour MP told Johnson: “You were there at the time. So it’s a bit hard to understand what the nature of an assurance is when you have been there and seen it with your own eyes. If I was going at 100mph and I saw the speedometer say 100mph, it would be a bit odd, wouldn’t it, if I said: “Somebody assured me that I wasn’t.””

Johnson tried to call into question the legitimacy of the committee’s inquiry, claiming that there are “some features of this proceeding that are extremely peculiar” and that comments Harman had made previously about partygate were “plainly and wrongly prejudicial”. But it was not just the Labour MP who subjected the former Prime Minister to intense scrutiny. A particularly heated moment arose when Tory committee member Alberto Costa asked why Johnson had told the Commons he had received repeated assurances that no rules had been broken “when you knew that that was not the case because you knew what the rules were, you were at gatherings that breached the rules and the breaches of the rules would have been obvious to you at the time”. The Tory MP told Johnson that some might see his reliance on the “purported assurances” he received as a “deflection mechanism” to prevent having to answer questions about his knowledge of the gatherings. Johnson rejected that argument as a “completely ridiculous assessment”.

The committee’s verdict on Johnson is not expected for weeks (though Chris Bryant – who ordinarily chairs the committee but stepped aside in light of his public criticism of Johnson – argues in a piece for the Mirror that it is “difficult” to see how Johnson has not misled parliament). But the session reinforced what was already clear about Johnson’s premiership – both during the pandemic and more generally – that the former Prime Minister perceived himself and others around him to be above the rules. His claim that various gatherings, including the birthday gathering for which he was fined, were “necessary for work purposes” was hugely insulting to the millions of people who followed Covid rules, as was his suggestion that the “difficult circumstances” in which staff were operating offered a justification for social distancing rules not being followed to the letter (does anyone remember similar allowances being made for healthcare staff and other keyworkers?). The former Prime Minister’s testimony was shamelessly remorseless. But what else did we really expect.

Trying hard to cut through the wall-to-wall coverage of Johnson’s evidence session, Keir Starmer today sets out the second of his ‘missions‘ that will form the basis of Labour’s next manifesto in a speech in Stoke-on-Trent. The Labour leader’s second mission focuses on crime, and in today’s speech, he will outline plans for the next Labour government to halve serious violent crime and raise confidence in the police and criminal justice system. Committing the party to four “ambitious” targets on police confidence, solving crime, knife crime and violence against women and girls, Starmer is expected to declare that tackling crime is the “unfinished business in my life’s work to deliver justice for working people”. Echoing criticisms of the Tories’ record in this area that he made during yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Starmer will tell attendees that the government has overseen a “recipe for impunity, with criminals invited to do whatever they want”, accusing the Tories of “complacency on another level”.