Seek, And Ye Shall Find

Here comes that former Member of Parliament again, the Prime Minister before last.

"We conclude that in deliberately misleading the House Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt. The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the prime minister, the most senior member of the government. There is no precedent for a prime minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House."

That is because you have never looked. Boris Johnson did this, of course, although of course this was also a kangaroo court. Those two things could both have been true, and they were.

But Tony Blair deliberately misled the House of Commons about Iraq on several occasions, and he was far from above campaigns of abuse and intimidation against that dishonesty's parliamentary critics. I doubt that Blair would care about his former MP's pass, any more than Johnson would. But you should at least take away any that he held, or ban him from acquiring one.

How hard is Rishi Sunak? Hard enough to withdraw the whip from any MP who did not vote for this report? Hard enough to withdraw the whip from any MP who did not then physically sign this report? Hard enough to refuse the Conservative Party's ticket to any parliamentary candidate who had not made that manual subscription? Hard enough to expel Johnson from that party tonight? He needs to be.

The Privileges Committee ought no longer to interact with Johnson, any more than with any other member of the general public. But yes, it was a kangaroo court. Yes, it was a witch hunt, even though there was indeed a witch to hunt. And yes, he has been stabbed in the back. He has done plenty of backstabbing of his own in his time. That's politics.