Boris Johnson, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, announced his resignation as a member of parliament on Friday.
The 58-year-old populist politician claimed that his political opponents forced him out in a ruse.
A cross-party committee has been looking into whether Johnson lied to parliament about Covid lockdown-breaking parties while he was in office.
He insisted angrily earlier this year that he had not.
But as the committee prepares to make public its findings, he said they had contacted him “making it clear… they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of parliament”.
The Privileges Committee, which has a majority of MPs from his own Conservative party, has powers to impose sanctions for misleading parliament, including suspension.
Ordinarily, suspension of more than 10 working days leads to a by-election in the MP’s constituency.
Johnson, though, pre-empted any finding — or having to fight to remain an MP in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency in northwest London where he holds a slim majority of just over 7,000 — by quitting.
He denounced the committee, chaired by veteran opposition Labour MP Harriet Harman, as a “kangaroo court”.
It is very sad to be leaving Parliament – at least for now — but above all I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out, anti-democratically… with such egregious bias, he said.
Recall that Boris Johnson quit as prime minister and left office in September 2022.
He first became an MP in 2001 until 2008, then quit to serve two four-year terms as London’s mayor. He became an MP again in 2015, going on to be foreign secretary under Theresa May.
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