Boris Johnson released the cameras in the cabinet on Tuesday; perhaps he wished they had stayed out as the lens panned around a group of grim-faced ministers mulling over the self-inflicted fiasco threatening to topple the prime minister.
Johnson’s relationship with the truth has once again dominated the news after it emerged that the prime minister had been personally briefed on previous allegations of sexual misconduct by now-disgraced former Conservative deputy chief whip Chris Pincher.
Within hours, Health Secretary Sajid Javid left the cabinet, followed shortly afterwards by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, unable to serve any longer under a man whose values and judgment they no longer respected.
Number 10 has spent the past few days denying Johnson was aware of “specific allegations” about Pincher. So there were a number of ministers sent to hostile media interviews, armed by Johnson with incomplete or inaccurate versions of the truth.
“A picture is worth a thousand words,” said one senior Tory official, surveying the gloomy scene around the cabinet table. Therese Coffey, the Work and Pensions Secretary who was given the unenviable task of defending Johnson on Sunday, glared at the Prime Minister.
Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister, endured a stormy “media round” on Tuesday, insisting that Johnson had not been informed of Pincher’s allegations, only to discover shortly afterwards that this was not the case.
Time for Cabinet colleagues to recognize the appalling damage the Prime Minister is doing to the party, government and state
Johnson was later engaged in crisis talks with aides as rumors of government resignations circulated. “This is the moment of the end of the century,” said one former minister. “It’s the combination of incompetence and dishonesty that people can’t swallow.”
Johnson, like many embattled prime ministers before him, went to the House of Commons tea room to greet his depressed MPs, hoping to rally support. But during the day, support waned; Lawmakers said new letters were being drafted to be sent to conservative bigwigs expressing no confidence in Johnson.
Pincher resigned as deputy chief whip last Thursday after admitting he had “embarrassed” himself and others by getting drunk at a private members’ club in London; he was accused of groping two men. He was later suspended from the Conservative Party.
Michael Ellis, a cabinet minister, had to explain to MPs why Downing Street had repeatedly and incorrectly insisted the prime minister had not received “specific allegations” relating to Pincher before making him deputy chief whip in February.
Ellis said Johnson “didn’t immediately recall” being told in 2019 that the Cabinet had investigated and upheld a complaint of inappropriate behavior by Pincher, who was the Foreign Office secretary at the time. After he remembered, the Prime Minister told the Downing Street press office.
Johnson’s inability to recall the facts has once again put his official spokesman, a public servant funded by taxpayers to provide accurate information, in an awkward position.
At the start of Tuesday’s regular briefing of Westminster journalists, the first question to Johnson’s spokesman was: “Are you going to tell the truth?” The spokesman said he would always aim to “provide the information available to me in every meeting”.
Johnson’s knowledge of the truth is already under investigation by the House of Commons Privileges Committee, which is looking into whether the prime minister deliberately misled MPs over the partygate scandal.
He has been fired twice for lying in his career: the first time he was fired as a journalist at The Times for fabricating a quote. In the second, he was removed from the Conservative frontbench team for lying about an extramarital affair.
Tory minister Lord Nicholas True read a statement in the upper house on Tuesday defending the government’s commitment to high standards in public life, in which he appeared to be barely able to believe what he was saying. Baroness Natalie Evans, leader of the Conservatives in the House of Lords, joined in the laughter.
But for cabinet ministers, Johnson’s behavior is not funny. William Ragg, the Tory chairman of the House of Commons public administration committee and a critic of Johnson, urged them to “consider their positions”. “This is not a matter of systems, but of political judgement,” he said. “This policy judgment cannot be delegated.”
Caroline Johnson, a Tory MP not known for attacking Johnson, asked in the House of Commons why the police did not investigate Pincher’s allegations in 2019, why he was not sacked at the time and why Johnson then gave him another job as deputy chief whip.
Johnson’s admission that he was aware of Pincher’s allegations followed the intervention of Lord Simon Macdonald, a former senior civil servant at the Foreign Office, who accused Downing Street of covering up the truth.
Even among the prime minister’s supporters, McDonald’s stormy letter raised concerns about whether he could survive. One Tory MP said: “Even among the Prime Minister’s staunchest supporters there is now a feeling that he has missed out and needs to go now before he does more damage to the party.”
Some MPs have predicted next week’s election for the executive of the 1922 Tory backbench committee will result in a “purge” for candidates seeking to remove the prime minister through a vote of no confidence. This will require a change in party rules. “I can’t see there being a ‘Boris loyalist square,'” said one former cabinet minister. “Who will be involved in this?”
Tory MP Anthony Mangnall, another Johnson critic, said ministers should pull the plug on Johnson now. “It is time for Cabinet colleagues to recognize the appalling damage the Prime Minister is doing to the party, the government and the country,” he said.
The faces of these ministers, seated around the cabinet table, suggested that some were already grappling with this dilemma. By late Tuesday, Johnson’s cabinet was crumbling, and with it, perhaps, his power.
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