Boris Johnson should not only resign as prime minister but be suspended from the Conservative Party if his attendance at a Downing Street party was found to be illegal, a Tory mayor has said.
Having a PM who had broken coronavirus laws at a time when others were suffering would be an untenable position, according to Roy Aldcroft, the Mayor of Market Drayton.
The intervention will be seen as significant because his town is in North Shropshire, the constituency where the party surrendered a 23,000 majority in a parliamentary by-election last month to lose the seat for the first time in more than a century.
Councillor Aldcroft, who also sits on the Conservative-run Shropshire Council, said: “Everyone…who is found to have broken the guidelines or the law – they must be dealt with as severely as you or I would have been. And, for the prime minister, he would have to consider his position.”
He added that a “suspension” from the party should also be considered: “you cannot just carry on if you have broken the law without the party acting. That’s not how we work. He [ the PM] is no different to anyone else.”
Such a removal of the whip would be unprecedented and would stand almost no chance of being supported by Tory MPs, Councillor Aldcroft’sc omments highlight the anger among rank-and-file party members.
Mr Johnson admitted on Wednesday that he attended a drinks event for 25 minutes in the garden of 10 Downing Street on 20 May 2020, a time when Britons were only allowed to meet one other person outdoors.
An email inviting roughly 100 staff to the “BYOB” shindig was sent out by the PM’s principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds.
But the delay in the PM’s admission had only caused more pain for Tory councillors and MPs.
“I thought it was all over after we had [all the revelations about] Christmas parties but now it’s just getting tiresome,” he said. “It needs to be put behind us so we can crack on with the important work of dealing with recovering from a pandemic.”
His call comes after Douglas Ross the leader of leader of the Scottish Conservative Party, and a plethora of senior northern Tories called for the PM to resign if he went to the bash.
On Wednesday morning, meanwhile, Christian Wakeford, the MP for the old Red Wall seat of Bury South became the first of the 2019 intake of new Conservative MPs to openly turn on the PM.
“How do you defend the indefensible?” he tweeted. “You can’t! It’s embarrassing and what’s worse is it further erodes trust in politics when it’s already low. We need openness, trust and honesty in our politics now more than ever and that starts from the top!”
