
Conservative MP for Wycombe, Steve Baker, has called on the Prime Minister to resign after he was fined last week by the police for attending his birthday party during lockdown in June 2020.
Mr Baker made his plea for the PM to go during a Parliamentary debate yesterday on whether Boris Johnson should face a Privileges Committee inquiry into his alleged misleading of Parliament regarding his knowledge of lockdown rule-breaking in Downing Street.
He said: “I have to say, that for not obeying the letter and the spirit, and I think we have heard that the Prime Minister did know what the letter was, the Prime Minister now should be long gone. Madam Deputy Speaker, I will certainly vote for this motion but really the Prime Minister should just know the gig’s up.”
The Wycombe MP, a passionate supporter of Brexit and former Chair of the European Research Group (ERG), has until now been a staunch ally of the PM.
But yesterday, despite multiple references to the Bible, an expressed belief in redemption and a desire to forgive, Mr Baker said the Prime Minister appeared to have only showed contrition “for as long as it took to get out of the headmaster’s study,” adding, “and that’s not good enough for me, and it’s not good enough for my voters – I’m sorry, it’s not.”
[VIDEO: Watch Steve Baker call for the PM to resign]
In the end, a vote was deemed unnecessary due to the overwhelming support for the motion in the House of Commons and so the Prime Minister will now face an inquiry.
However, it will not take place until the conclusion of the police investigation into Covid lockdown rule-breaking in Downing Street and Whitehall, and after the release of Sue Gray’s report into the same matter.