Boris Johnson will have to quit if he is found to have attended or known about rule-breaking No 10 parties, a former Conservative attorney-general says.
Jeremy Wright heaped pressure on the prime minister by insisting he will then have no escape route – because he will have misled parliament when he claimed no rules were broken.
The warning comes as No 10 seeks to soften public opinion ahead of Mr Johnson receiving an expected fixed penalty notice from the Metropolitan police, which could be imposed within weeks.
His personal lawyer is expected to argue that – even if he attended gatherings found to be illegal parties – he broke no rules if he went back to work immediately afterwards and did not drink excessively.
But, in a letter to his constituents, Mr Wright, the attorney-general under both David Cameron and Theresa May, appears to impose a far simpler test of culpability.
He has written: “If the prime minister has attended events he knew broke the rules, or was aware of events he knew broke the rules, he should not have advised the House of Commons, on several occasions, that as far as he was aware, no rules were broken there.
“Doing so in those circumstances would be misleading the House and must in my view lead to his resignation or removal from office.”
In the letter, seen by The Times, Mr Wright says it is “frustrating” that the Met failed to take action sooner and argues there was no need for a “lengthy investigation” into the scandal.
“There is little in this episode or the handling of it of which the prime minister can be proud, and he may yet need to leave office because of it,” Mr Wright adds.
“But the decision to remove a sitting prime minister two years after his election with a large majority requires proper consideration of the relevant evidence, as my constituents are entitled to expect me to give it.”
Mr Johnson has hired a lawyer to help him draft a response to the legal questionnaire sent to him by the Met, which must be returned by the end of this week.
He will argue it was part of his working day when he attended as many as six different gatherings during lockdown, some of them leaving events for his staff.
The prime minister is in greatest danger over the ‘bring your own bottle’ party in the No 10 garden, in May 2020, which he has admitted attending – while claiming he did not realise it was a party.
Sue Gray, the civil servant investigating the affair, has seen an email warning Mr Johnson’s aide Martin Reynolds to cancel the event, a warning Dominic Cummings claimed was also given to Mr Johnson.
He has also not denied attending the ‘ABBA party’ in his flat in November 2020 – to celebrate Mr Cummings’ departure – and appears to be preparing to argue he was working while it went on.
