The deputy leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner, has branded former Prime Minister Boris Johnson a 'coward' over his resignation as an MP during the Partygate investigation.
Former PM Johnson yesterday (June 9) announced he would quit as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip with immediate effect in a bombshell statement accusing his enemies of trying to "drive him out". This was after the House of Commons Privileges Committee looking into whether he misled Parliament over the Partygate scandal warned him he faced being kicked out of Parliament over this.
He said he was "bewildered and appalled that I'm being forced out". However, deputy leader of the Labour Party and MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, has labelled him a 'coward' for his actions.
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Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live this morning, Ms Rayner said: "To me, he is a coward. He knows that the Privileges Committee has seen through this fiasco and he has jumped.
"He could have defended himself, he could have gone to his constituents and fought the suspension, and he has decided he is not doing to do that because he knows he is in the wrong. And he has never apologised to what he has done to the British people… he has basically been gaslighting the nation, and I think he is a disgrace."
Ms Rayner added that it was 'tosh' for Mr Johnson to argue that the inquiry had not been fairly conducted. In his full and lengthy resignation statement he described the committee as a 'kangaroo court' and accusing its chair, Labour MP Harriet Harman of 'egregious bias'.
However, Ms Rayner described the Privileges Committee as 'highly respected' and pointed to the fact that the majority of its members are Conservative MPs. "Their report is also subject to a vote in the Commons where the Tories currently have a 66-seat majority, so this idea that he hasn’t been given a fair hearing is absolutely for the birds," she said.
"It is absolute rubbish and tosh, as he would say. It is just another way of Boris Johnson not accepting responsibility for his actions. He thinks he can run fast and loose, and this time it has caught up with him. He is trying to play the victim when the real victims in this is the people that he tried to gaslight, those that couldn’t see their relatives during Covid, who sadly passed away while they were in Downing Street having parties."
Speaking from Ashton-under-Lyne, she also told BBC Breakfast: "I think it's just how Boris Johnson has been throughout his life but it's caught up with him now. And rather than face the music, he's decided to jump...He's tried to blame everybody else when actually, he's got to accept responsibility for the consequences of his own actions."
Ms Rayner later told BBC Radio 4 that Boris Johnson had let down those voters who handed him his landslide election victory in 2019, arguing that the former prime minister has shown he had "no respect for the British public". "I think the people put their trust in him because they thought he was about change and he was about putting them at the heart of decision-making, and he has let them down truly in the most devastating way at the time when they needed him most," she said.
"No one could have predicted what happened to this country during the pandemic, but at the time when the public needed him the most, he basically was partying and lying to them at a time when they couldn’t see their loved ones. And that is unforgivable.
"The fact that he cannot recognise the damage that he has done, and he has tried to stuff the Lords with people that propped him up and helped him and assisted him at the time shows us that actually he had no respect for the British public.It was all about Boris and it has always been all about Boris to him, and people will be left disappointed by his legacy."
Mr Johnson’s resignation means Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces two difficult by-elections, with former culture secretary Nadine Dorries also announcing on Friday that she was departing the Commons immediately, rather than waiting until the next election. Mr Sunak, who Mr Johnson in his resignation statement suggested was failing to deliver on his 2019 election manifesto, has yet to comment on his predecessor’s Westminster departure.
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