Can you imagine the tumultuous atmosphere in Parliament at the moment?  Personally, I cannot conceive of what is going through the heads of all of those innocent MPs who unwittingly enabled Boris Johnson to lie and manipulate his way through the political landscape for all that time…  I mean who would have thought that he was capable of such things?  To lie to the houses of parliament, to lie to MPs of all things?  After all, this is a man who had (up to that point) an impeccable track record of only lying in newspaper columns, conspiring to beat up a journalist, lying to the then Conservative Leader Michael Howard about an affair he had had and making racist comments about Muslim women and the President of the United States of America.  Who could argue with people putting their faith in this lily-white man who had broken the Ministerial Code on multiple occasions?  Who could have foretold that a man who said he would lie down in front of the bulldozers for the 3rd runway at Heathrow and yet who organised to be out of the country when the time came for a vote on it in Parliament would be capable of breaking his word?  Who could legitimately question the integrity of a man who after a NATO meeting ditched his security detail and spent a weekend with an ex-KGB spy and his son?

The shock that must be running through the corridors of power following the dramatic reveal from the Privileges Committee report that Boris Johnson had lied to them… I mean sure, lying to the public is one thing…  they all do that, this is standard fare for a sitting MP; but to lie to Parliament – Oh! the Horror.  I pity them for having been taken in so completely by such a man.  How could they possibly have known..?  It isn’t as if he tried to Prorogue Parliament to avoid scrutiny of his Brexit bill for goodness’ sake!!!

Of course, it is gratifying to know that fully 55% of the MPs in Parliament felt it appropriate to vote on the report, and to restore the integrity of this august institution.  It is especially comforting that the current Prime Minister took the opportunity to reaffirm his disgust at his predecessor’s behaviour and to set-out in no uncertain terms the disdain he feels for the man who duped him so convincingly – a man alongside whom he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer for more than 2 years… thank goodness that Rishi Sunak is too a man of his word and that we now have “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level” in government.  Oh wait, no he didn’t did he?

Important as the vote last night was, on a personal level I hold every single sitting MP in the House of Commons responsible as an enabler to Boris Johnson, and the culture he has engendered. Yes, this includes opposition MPs who remained seated; MPs who, rather than stand and refuse to engage with a liar, followed protocol and who validated his premiership through their presence.  We saw yesterday, the very public hand-wringing begin: the ex-Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday said, “but when something is said that is wrong and misleads this house, we are all, not just ministers, we are all under an obligation not to repeat it and to correct it at the first opportunity”.  Well… she didn’t, and neither did any of the others.  The 2 MPs who actually did stand up in Parliament and call Boris Johnson out for lying (Dawn Butler and Ian Blackford) were ejected from the House at the time and were roundly jeered and booed by the very Conservative MPs who are now hanging their heads in shame and muttering to themselves that this cannot possibly be allowed to happen again.

Please don’t try to tell me that you didn’t know what he was like…  you knew..  and what is more, you let it happen.

To those that say that recent events show that the Parliamentary processes function I call ‘bullshit’.  Boris Johnson remained Prime Minister for 3 years, and even considering the principle that one is innocent until proven guilty, the current system allowed Boris Johnson (and still allows others to this day) to stand up in the House of Commons and lie.  This is compounded by the fact that such egregious acts can go unpunished in law; which serves to underline the persistent belief that ‘Westminster’ stands apart from the country and the people.

The question for the future of course, is whether or not the following government will do anything to change all of this…  because if they don’t, then they become as complicit as those currently occupying the House.  Inaction is a decision in itself, and anyone who decides not to seek to limit the chances that this can happen again, is actively allowing it to happen again.