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Analysis: The Tories Are Wrong If They Think Voters Have ‘Moved On’ From Partygate

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Analysis: The Tories Are Wrong If They Think Voters Have 'Moved On' From Partygate


“And throughout all of this saga of the Downing Street parties they have said one thing very clearly, and in a vast majority they say they want contrition and they want an apology, but they don’t want a resignation.”

He added: “The idea that it might be appropriate to have a six-week, self-indulgent leadership contest – frankly, I don’t think that’s very sensible.

″We all make judgements that we’ve had time to reflect on and wish we’d made differently. For me personally, I think the world has moved on a considerable distance.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg, meanwhile, told LBC he stood by his previous assessment that the whole row was simply “fluff”.

He said: “We have a war going on in Ukraine, we have atrocities being carried out, we have pictures coming through which show the enormous brutality of Putin’s army, and what I was saying was that in the context of what is going on, not just with Ukraine but with the cost of living crisis, this is not the most important issue in the world.”

Partygate is back in the headlines because the Metropolitan Police have started handing out fines to those who attended the lockdown-busting parties.

They include, remarkably, Whitehall’s former head of ethics, Helen McNamara, who was among those at a leaving do held in the No.10 garden the night before Prince Philip’s funeral.

This brings the scandal right back into the public eye – and also to Boris Johnson’s front door.

And while Hart and Rees-Mogg are right to think it has fallen down the list of voters’ priorities – the soaring cost of living is now firmly in top spot – it hasn’t gone away entirely. If the prime minister himself is found to have broken the law, public anger will return and could well be enough to sweep Johnson from office.

As one Tory MP told HuffPost UK: “If he doesn’t get fined, he’s got away with it. But if he does, then all bets are off.

“I think there will be resignations from government. If the prime minister breaks the law, then consequences must flow.”

“We recognise the strength of feeling around this issue, which is why the prime minister came to the House to apologise and has talked about the mistakes made,” Johnson’s spokesman said this morning.

At the moment, the PM’s main focus is rightly the war in Ukraine, but his more thoughtful allies realise that partygate still has the potential to plunge his leadership into a fresh crisis – regardless of what Simon Hart and Jacob Rees-Mogg say.





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