Boris Johnson, the scandal machine

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Thursday that he is stepping down as leader of the Conservative Party and will step down once his successor is chosen. A decision that comes following yet another scandal hits the British government. A look back at two years of diverse and varied affairs that will have marked the Boris Johnson era.

It took 57 resignations within the British government to convince Boris Johnson that his turn had come. The Prime Minister agreed, Thursday, June 7, to leave power. He first abandoned the head of the Conservative Party, then gave up his place as Prime Minister when the Tories agreed on his successor.

However, he still assured the day before that a Prime Minister “don’t leave in the middle of a crisis”. But perhaps Boris Johnson has finally realized that this is not a single crisis, but their multiplication or the “tsunami of scandals” that has marked his mandate since 2019.

Boris Johnson would therefore have ended up exhausting the nine lives that British political commentators have given him to describe his ability to get up following each new revelation.

Chris Pincher, the sex scandal too many. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. But what a drop. In February 2022, Boris Johnson appointed Chris Pincher as deputy chief “whip”, in charge of parliamentary discipline for Tory MPs.

This is not the most prominent position in the small British political world and Chris Pincher was almost unknown to the general public. We only just knew that he was a loyalist of the “Johnsonnian” cause.

Very quickly, the media realized that some knew that Chris Pincher dragged important pots. He had been repeatedly accused of sexual assault. The reminder of this heavy liability quickly prompted the brand new deputy “whip” to resign on June 30.

The big question then was: was Boris Johnson aware of this past when he brought in Chris Pincher? The Prime Minister first assured that he knew nothing regarding it… before admitting on Tuesday that he was well aware of “articles in the press which had mentioned accusations”.

Thus in a few days, the Pincher affair has become a concentrate of the great scandals that marked the “BoJo” era: sex affairs, and a Prime Minister who lies regarding what he knows or does not know.

The ubiquitous “Partygate”. More than an embarrassing affair for Boris Johnson, it has become the soap opera of his mandate. November 30, 2021, the Daily Mirrors reveals that at least one party took place at 10 Downing Street over Christmas 2020, when the rest of the country was in lockdown and Britons might barely see their loved ones for the holiday season.

But it was only the beginning of the revelations regarding this scandal that gave the image of a government that felt above the law. Over the weeks, the British media will discover that there have been more than 15 parties in different ministries, including a party for Boris Johnson’s birthday in June 2020.

Boris Johnson begins by ensuring that he was aware of nothing, before ensuring that the “meetings” he was able to attend were strictly professional. Finally, he promised to do everything possible to identify those who had broken the health rules.

Explanations that convinced (almost) no one and an official administrative inquiry has been launched to try to find out who participated and who knew regarding it. London police even launched their own investigation into 13 “meetings” – including three that Boris Johnson attended – to find out whether they complied with the then-current lockdown rules.

The two procedures – administrative and police – concluded that there were serious failings in the government, but without ever directly implicating Boris Johnson. Nevertheless, this scandal left a very bitter followingtaste in the mouths of many Britons, who witnessed the spectacle of a Prime Minister who changed his version of the facts many times to try to save his post. .

Owen Paterson, friend of the lobbies. Owen Paterson, a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the early 2010s and a prominent Conservative MP, was pressured into resigning in November 2021 over serious ethical failings.

His fault ? Having accepted money for several years from various lobbies – notably from the agricultural sector – to plead their case with the government in violation of the rules of Parliament.

What relationship with Boris Johnson? Owen Paterson was not only close to the Prime Minister, but the latter is, moreover, intervened to try to avoid being sanctioned. Boris Johnson had notably argued that the parliamentary inquiry was not fair and that it did not offer Owen Paterson enough opportunity to defend his case.

The works at 11 Downing Street. Who paid to redo Boris Johnson’s apartment at 11 Downing Street? In February 2021, a scandal breaks out in the United Kingdom when the press revealed that the Prime Minister had not paid for the renovation and decoration of his official apartment out of his own pocket.

Indeed, officially, the Prime Minister has an envelope of 30,000 pounds sterling (35,000 euros) to maintain his apartment… and that any additional expenditure must come from his own funds. The renovation of 11 Downing Street cost more than 100,000 pounds… and it was a generous Conservative Party donor who paid for the pain.

Boris Johnson, personally, got out of this case with a simple warning because he was able to claim that he was in the hospital, affected by the Covid-19, when the work in the apartment began. He was therefore, officially, not aware of this story of the bill to be paid. But the Electoral Commission – which regulates the accounts of political parties – has fined the Conservative Party for incorrectly recording details of the work carried out.

Free vacation. Another big money affair: how were the summer vacations that Boris Johnson spent in the sun in the summer of 2019 on the very opulent Mustique Island in the Caribbean archipelago financed?

It took several months for the British Prime Minister to explain that a luxury villa had been graciously made available to him by a wealthy Conservative Party donor.

A free holiday which is not illegal, but the Parliamentary Committee regretted in July 2021 that Boris Johnson had taken so long to clarify the situation.

Sex, sex and more sex. The sex scandals that erupted during Boris Johnson’s tenure are too numerous to list. In all, seven Conservative MPs were accused of multiple sexual assaults once morest women, men and minors.

Boris Johnson is not linked to any of the sordid cases, but he has been accused by the Labor opposition of keeping a low profile whenever new revelations have emerged. And one of the few times he intervened, it was to defend his party’s decision not to exclude one of its members accused of rape.