Boris Johnson misled UK parliament over lockdown parties: Report | News

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Report finds former UK prime minister Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament over boozy parties during lockdown.

Boris Johnson, the United Kingdom’s former prime minister who was in power during the pandemic, deliberately misled Parliament over lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street, a UK parliamentary committee ruled on Thursday.

After a year-long investigation, the committee said Johnson would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for “repeated” contempt of parliament had he not angrily resigned last week.

Johnson, 58, called the report a “protracted political assassination”.

The parties in 2020 and 2021, which were reportedly boozy affairs and in contravention of social distances measures in place at the time, undermined his credibility and contributed to his downfall, the committee of lawmakers said on Thursday.

A majority of the panel’s seven members of the House of Commons Privileges Committee come from Johnson’s Conservative Party.

The full House of Commons will now debate the committee’s report and decide whether it concurs with the panel’s findings and recommended sanctions.

Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego, reporting from London, said the implications of the report “are too serious to ignore”.

She described the report as a “damning response” to Johnson’s behaviour during the health crisis.

“A lot of people in Westminster are saying this this does in effect draw a line under the Johnson era – and his political career,” Gallego said.