Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak have been issued fines over the partygate scandal, now MPs say they ‘must resign’ after PM said he wouldn’t.
Number 10 confirmed yesterday, Tuesday April 12, Metropolitan Police has issued a fixed-penalty notice to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the PM’s wife, Carrie, for attending the party thrown for his birthday in the Cabinet Room on June 19, 2020, – the same day that the coronavirus death toll rose to nearly 41,000.
On December 1, 2021, the Prime Minister insisted in Parliament and on national television there had been no parties – he then insisted later no rules have broken.
‘Britain deserves better’
Now MPs across all parties, including Conservatives, are calling for Johnson and Sunak to resign with the Scottish First Minister saying they ‘must resign’ as has Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who said ‘Britain deserves better’.
Starmer reiterated the PM ‘repeatedly lied to the British public’ when expressing his thoughts on social media.
Sturgeon shared this sentiment as she shared a BBC news story about the scandal and said not only should Johnson resign but she should ‘take his out of touch chancellor with him’.
Of course leaders of the Green Party, Adrian Ramsay, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Ed Davey, weren’t much kinder when sharing their opinions on the matter, but the biggest shock came when MPs from Johnson’s own party spoke out about the situation.
Although many of his MPs have rallied around him, Nigel Mills, the Tory MP for Amber Valley, was the first Tory to break ranks and call for the PMs resignation.
He told The Telegraph: ‘I don’t think the PM can survive or should survive breaking the rules he put in place…we have to have higher standards than that of people at the top. He’s been fined, I don’t think his position is tenable’
Anger From The Bereaved
However the biggest grievance comes from the families who lost loved ones during the pandemic. Lobby Akinnola, a spokeswoman for the Covid Bereaved Familes For Justice campaign, told the BBC that it was ‘unbelievably painful’ to find out that senior members of UK government attended parties while members of the public could not be with their dying loved ones.
Akinola continued: ‘The fact that the prime minister and his chancellor then lied about it, and would have continued to do so if the police hadn’t intervened, is truly shameless.
‘They broke the law. But even worse, they took us all for mugs.’