Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will testify on March 22 before a parliamentary inquiry into Downing Street parties held during the pandemic in breach of anti-covid rules, which are jeopardizing his political future, the committee announced on Tuesday.
Pushed to resign this summer by a succession of scandals, foremost among which is "
partygate
", Boris Johnson is under investigation which, if it concludes that the former head of government misled Parliament, risks cost him his parliamentary seat.
The investigation must determine whether Boris Johnson lied to the House of Commons, in particular when he affirmed before the deputies in December 2021 that “
the rules were respected all the time
”.
Unfavorable interim report
In an interim report published on March 3, where it detailed the explanations it intended to obtain from the former prime minister, the commission stressed that the elements it had collected "strongly suggest" that the violations of
the
rules anticovid had to be “
obvious
” to Boris Johnson.
The latter replied that there was “
no evidence in the report
” that he “
knowingly
” deceived Parliament.
"
I believed that implicitly these events (which took place in Downing Street) were in the rules, and no one told me otherwise, either before or after
", defended Boris Johnson a little later in an interview with television channels.
After the flash passage of Liz Truss in Downing Street, Boris Johnson had finally given up seeking power again, leaving the way open to Rishi Sunak.