LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday denied breaching the UK government’s ministerial code of conduct, as he bids to head off a growing Conservative revolt over the “Partygate” scandal.
Former Conservative leader William Hague said Johnson could face a no-confidence vote among his own MPs as soon as next week, following numerous lockdown-breaching parties held in Downing Street.
Johnson became the first serving UK prime minister found to have broken the law while in office when he was fined by police for attending a birthday party in June 2020.
Although he has apologized, he has repeatedly refused to resign, and doubled down on his defense in a letter to his independent adviser on ministerial interests, Christopher Geidt.
Lord Geidt issued an annual report laying out the need for Johnson to explain why he had not breached the ministerial code, in light of the police fine.
Under previous governments, violations of the code were considered a resigning offense, but Johnson has already stood by others in his ministerial team found to have been in breach.
Responding to Geidt, Johnson said “I did not breach the code.”
There was “no intent to break the law,” he said, insisting he had been “fully accountable” to parliament “and rightly apologized for the mistake.”
However, dozens of Tory MPs have now publicly criticized their embattled leader over the parties under his watch, which happened when the government was ordering the public to respect Covid lockdowns.
If 54 of them write a letter of no confidence in Johnson to a powerful backbench committee of Tory MPs, that will trigger a vote of all 359 Conservatives lawmakers on whether he should continue as leader and thereby prime minister.
Nearly 30 MPs are publicly known to have submitted such a letter but the process is shrouded in secrecy and the real tally is impossible to gauge.
Parliament is not sitting this week and with four days of celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee beginning on Thursday, any announcement about a possible vote would not come until next week at the earliest.
The latest heavyweight Tories to express doubts about Johnson include former attorney general Jeremy Wright, who on Monday urged him to resign, and ex-cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom.
Hague said the intervention of Leadsom — a prominent “Brexiteer” who campaigned alongside Johnson in Britain’s 2016 EU referendum — had lit a “slow fuse” on a no-confidence vote.
“The fuse is getting closer to the dynamite here and it’s speeding up,” Hague told Times Radio, adding it was “just another indication the Conservative Party is moving faster toward a vote.”
Support for Johnson among Conservatives has ebbed further away following last week’s publication of an internal inquiry.
The probe by senior civil servant Sue Gray found that he presided over a culture of parties that ran late into the night and even featured a drunken fight among staff.
Johnson secured an 80-seat majority at the last general election in December 2019, on a promise to take the UK out of the European Union.
But despite that, an increasing number of Tory MPs have come forward to say they do not believe the party can win the next election, which is due by 2024, under his leadership.
Opinion polls have shown deep public disapproval over the scandal, with large majorities of people saying Johnson knowingly lied about “Partygate” and that he should resign.
The Tories have suffered several electoral setbacks during his tenure, including losing traditionally safe seats to the Liberal Democrats in by-elections and hundreds of councillors in local elections in early May.
The party is also predicted to lose two more by-elections in June, in southwest and northern England.
UK’s PM launches new ‘Partygate’ defense as rebels mobilize
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UK’s PM launches new ‘Partygate’ defense as rebels mobilize
- Former Conservative leader William Hague said Johnson could face a no-confidence vote among his own MPs as soon as next week
- Although he has apologised, the PM has repeatedly refused to resign
US Vice President Vance heads to Armenia, Azerbaijan to push peace, trade
- Vance is promoting TRIPP, a proposed 43-km corridor across southern Armenia linking Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave and ally Turkiye
TBILISI: US Vice President JD Vance will visit Armenia and Azerbaijan this week to push a Washington-brokered peace agreement that could transform energy and trade routes in the strategic South Caucasus region.
His two-day trip to Armenia, which begins later on Monday, comes just six months after the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders signed an agreement at the White House seen as the first step toward peace after nearly 40 years of war.
Vance, the first US vice president to visit Armenia, is seeking to advance the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a proposed 43-kilometer (27-mile) corridor that would run across southern Armenia and give Azerbaijan a direct route to its exclave of Nakhchivan and in turn to Turkiye, Baku’s close ally.
“Vance’s visit should serve to reaffirm the US’s commitment to seeing the Trump Route through,” said Joshua Kucera, a senior South Caucasus analyst at Crisis Group.
“In a region like the Caucasus, even a small amount of attention from the US can make a significant impact.”
The Armenian government said on Monday that Vance would hold talks with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and that both men would then make statements, without elaborating.
Vance will then visit Azerbaijan on Wednesday and Thursday, the White House has said.
Under the agreement signed last year, a private US firm, the TRIPP Development Company, has been granted exclusive rights to develop the proposed corridor, with Yerevan retaining full sovereignty over its borders, customs, taxation and security. The route would better connect Asia to Europe while — crucially for Washington — bypassing Russia and Iran at a time when Western countries are keen on diversifying energy and trade routes away from Russia due to its war in Ukraine. Russia has traditionally viewed the South Caucasus as part of its sphere of influence but has seen its clout there diminish as it is distracted by the war in Ukraine. Securing US access to supplies of critical minerals is also likely to be a key focus of Vance’s visit. TRIPP could prove a key transit corridor for the vast mineral wealth of Central Asia — including uranium, copper, gold and rare earths — to Western markets.
CLOSED BORDERS, BITTER RIVALS
In Soviet times the South Caucasus was criss-crossed by railways and oil pipelines until a series of wars beginning in the 1980s disrupted energy routes and shuttered the border between Armenia and Turkiye, Azerbaijan’s key regional ally.
Armenia and Azerbaijan were locked in bitter conflict for nearly four decades, primarily over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, an internationally recognized part of Azerbaijan that broke away from Baku’s control as the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991.
Azerbaijan and Armenia fought two wars over Karabakh before Baku finally took it back in 2023. Karabakh’s entire ethnic Armenian population of around 100,000 people fled to Armenia. The two neighbors have made progress in recent months on normalizing relations, including restarting some energy shipments.
But major hurdles remain to full and lasting peace, including a demand by Azerbaijan that Armenia change its constitution to remove what Baku says contains implicit claims on Azerbaijani territory.
