On 9 June 2023, Boris Johnson announced that he was resigning as an MP. He did so having been sent a draft of a report in which the House of Commons Committee of Privileges concluded that Johnson had deliberately misled the House and the Committee in relation to the so-called Partygate affair. Had Johnson not resigned, the Committee would have recommended that Johnson be suspended from the House of Commons for a period of 90 days.
Since Johnson’s decision to resign as an MP and the subsequent publication of the report, a narrative has been advanced by Johnson and certain others to the effect that he was hounded out of Parliament in an undemocratic manner. Johnson himself said that he was ‘being forced out of Parliament by a tiny handful of people, with no evidence to back up their assertions, and without the approval even of Conservative party members, let alone the wider electorate’. He went on to contend that ‘a dangerous and unsettling precedent is being set’, describing the Committee as a ‘kangaroo court’ and the process adopted by it as part of a ‘witch hunt … to take revenge for Brexit and ultimately to reverse the 2016 referendum result’. Some of his supporters have put forward a similar view. Simon Clarke MP, for instance, said that Johnson was ‘effectively removed’ from Parliament, while Brendan Clarke-Smith MP described Johnson’s resignation as ‘the end result of a parliamentary witch-hunt which would put a banana republic to shame’. The general thrust of these comments is as consistent as it is clear, the argument being that Johnson was removed from Parliament in a manner that was not merely improper but undemocratic.
That argument is wrong. By resigning, Johnson effectively short-circuited a set of legal and constitutional processes of which the Committee’s inquiry and report were merely the first part. It was entirely his prerogative to resign: but, having done so, it is not open to him or to his supporters credibly to maintain that he was undemocratically ‘forced out’. This can be demonstrated quite simply, by considering the remaining parts of the process that would have taken place had Johnson not resigned as an MP.
First, it is abundantly clear that the Committee cannot itself eject anyone from Parliament. All it can do is to issue a report for consideration by the House of Commons. The report can — and, in this case, did — make recommendations concerning sanctions. But it is for the House of Commons to receive and consider the report, and to decide whether to accept the Committee’s recommendation as to any sanctions. Had Johnson not resigned, that is precisely what would have happened; by resigning, he rendered the issue of suspension moot. It follows that it is straightforwardly wrong for Johnson to assert that he was ‘forced out’ by a ‘tiny handful of people’ and ‘without the approval even of Conservative party members’. Had he not resigned, Conservative MPs, along with the rest of the House of Commons, would have had the opportunity to decide whether to endorse the Committee’s recommendation of a 90-day suspension.
Second, even if that recommendation had been endorsed and Johnson had been suspended for the relevant period, this would not have ejected him from the House of Commons: it would merely have involved suspension. Because, however, of the length of the suspension, it would have opened up the possibility of a ‘recall petition’ under the Recall of MPs Act 2015. That Act makes an MP subject to a recall petition in limited circumstances, including conviction of criminal offences in certain circumstances. In addition, the Act makes an MP subject to a recall petition if they are suspended for at least 10 sitting days (that is, days on which the House of Commons meets). Since the latter condition was clearly satisfied in relation to Johnson, it would have been open to his constituents sign a recall petition. Section 14(3) of the Act says that a petition succeeds if it is signed by at least 10 per cent of eligible registered voters, and section section 15(1) says that ‘the MP’s seat becomes vacant’ as soon as the Speaker of the House of Commons is formally notified that the petition has succeeded. This means that if Johnson had not resigned, and if the House of Commons had suspended him for 90 (or at least 10) days, he would not automatically have lost his seat as an MP: he would have done so only if at least 10 per cent of his own constituents had signed a recall petition.
Third, even if that had happened, a by-election would have taken place in Johnson’s constituency in which he would have been free to stand. Whether he would have been able to do so as the official Conservative Party candidate would have been a matter for the Party, but there would have been no legal or constitutional bar to him standing, whether as a Conservative or otherwise. In this sense, then, the ultimate democratic mechanism for determining whether an MP who has committed serious misconduct may remain an MP lies in the electoral process itself.
We can see, then, that although Johnson chose to avail himself of no part of it, there is a clear and carefully constructed system for dealing with situations in which MPs are found to have engaged in certain forms of misconduct that sound either in criminal conviction or suspension from the House of Commons for a period that signals the seriousness of the wrongdoing that has been established. We can also see that this system is not undemocratic. That is so for two reasons. First, the system is rooted in both the processes of the House of Commons and in legislation enacted by Parliament, and which therefore necessarily enjoys a democratic imprimatur. Second, not only is the system underpinnedby arrangements that were put in place democratically; the system also exhibits several democratic characteristics: the Committee cannot suspend, let alone remove, an MP; suspension can occur only if supported by a majority of MPs in the House of Commons; a recall petition is subject to the requirement of the support of 10 per of voters in the MP’s constituency; and the MP is free to stand in the resulting by-election should the recall petition succeed.
That Johnson was not undemocratically or otherwise improperly ‘forced out’ of Parliament is thus an argument that can be made out quite straightforwardly and without taking any position on the egregiousness or otherwise of Johnson’s conduct — whether in terms of the acknowledged rule-breaking at the heart of Partygate or his subsequent statements to the House of Commons and the Committee of Privileges. The contrary narrative, according to which Johnson was undemocratically ejected from Parliament, is both deeply flawed and highly corrosive. Indeed, its post-truth character means that it can be described as Trumpian without any risk of hyperbole.
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