Boris Johnson is standing down immediately as a Conservative MP after an investigation into the Partygate scandal found he misled parliament and recommended a lengthy suspension from the House of Commons.
The disgraced former Prime Minister decided to jump before he was pushed after receiving the findings of a Commons probe into whether he lied to MPs about Partygate.
If the Commons Privileges Committee had found he did mislead Parliament, he could have been suspended from the Commons.
A ban of 10 days or more would have almost certainly triggered a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat, where Labour have been eying his 7,210-strong majority.
But brazen Mr Johnson left the door open to a comeback by saying he was leaving Parliament ‘at least for now’.
He also refused to rule out standing in a snap by-election in the safer seat of Mid Bedfordshire – vacated hours earlier by his close ally Nadine Dorries, who also quit Parliament yesterday.
The dramatic news comes only hours after his resignation honours were published, where he showered his cronies, allies and Partygate pals with gongs.
He handed handed a knighthood to Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Damehood to Priti Patel and a string of accolades to officials who were at the centre of lockdown-busting bashes in Downing Street.
In a bullish and lengthy statement, the deluded Tory claimed the Privileges Committee had ‘not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons’.
And he claimed the committee was ‘determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of Parliament’.
Mr Johnson said: ‘It is very sad to be leaving Parliament – at least for now – but above all I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out, anti-democratically, by a committee chaired and managed, by Harriet Harman, with such egregious bias.’
The ex-PM was handed the committee’s report earlier this week and was given two weeks to respond.
But yesterday, he ranted: ‘Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court.
‘The Privileges Committee has been examining whether Mr Johnson misled Parliament when he dismissed the Mirror’s reporting on Partygate.
Mr Johnson’s assertion to MPs on December 8 2021 that no rules or guidance had been broken in No10 is at the heart of the row which triggered the end of his premiership.
The Met Police and Whitehall enforcer Sue Gray both found that rules HAD been breached – with 126 fines issued to staff by police for attending bashes, including Mr Johnson himself.
The committee questioned what Mr Johnson said about his own knowledge of the gatherings where the rules or guidance had been broken – because there is evidence that he attended them.
MPs heard a string of excuses from Mr Johnson over hours of evidence on March 22.
He blamed ‘difficult’ days in the office for alcohol-pumped parties – as doctors, nurses and carers struggled in the early days of the pandemic.
In a bitter 1,200-word statement, he attacked Rishi Sunak’s government, blaming the current prime minister for rising taxes, not being Conservative enough and failing to make the most of Brexit.
His departure from political life comes less than four years after he won an 80-seat political majority and nine months after he stood down as prime minister after a police fine for breaking his own Covid rules.
