Justice minister Lord Wolfson has resigned from the government, saying he could not back Boris Johnson’s response to his fine for breaking Covid laws.
The resignation deals a massive blow to the prime minister’s hopes that he had drawn a line under the fines with a public apology on Tuesday.
It came shortly afterTory backbencher Nigel Mills broke ranks to say that Mr Johnson’s position was “untenable” after police handed him a £50 fixed penalty for attending a lockdown-breaching birthday party in No 10 in June 2020, making him the first sitting PM to be found to have broken the law.
In a letter to the PM, David Wolfson said that it was clear that there was “repeated rule-breaking, and breaches of the criminal law” in No 10 at a time when people across the UK were subject to severe restrictions to limit the spread of Covid-19.
He said that he had “come to the conclusion that the scale, context and nature of those breaches mean that it would be inconsistent with the rule of law for that conduct to pass with constitutional impunity, especially when many in society complied with the rules at great personal cost, and others were fined or prosecuted for similar, and sometimes apparently more trivial, offences.”
But he added that it was the official response to the police findings – which yesterday saw both Mr Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak apologise but resist calls for their resignation – that forced him to leave the government.
“It is not just a question of what happened in Downing Street, or your own conduct,” said the Tory peer. “It is also, and perhaps more so, the official response to what took place.
“As we obviously do not share that view of these matters, I must ask you to accept my resignation.”
Making clear that his decision was driven by his position as an eminient barrister and QC as well as a minister in the justice department, he added: “I have concluded that, consistently with both my ministerial and professional obligations to support and uphold the rule of law, I have no option other than to tender my resignation”.
Lord Wolfson was the first minister to resign from government over the Partygate scandal. He was made a life peer by Mr Johnson in December 2020 on his appointment as an under-secretary of state in the Ministry of Justice.
Although his ministerial rank is junior, the resignation of such a high-flying commercial silk has added significance because of the suggestion that the prime minister’s determination to cling onto power is regarded as constitutionally improper amid the senior echelons of the legal system.
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