Boris Johnson must resign in national interest, says Keir Starmer

LONDON: Keir Starmer ramped up pressure on Saturday on Boris Johnson as the prime minister fights to save his job, arguing that it is in the “national interest” that he steps down as he is “unable to lead”.

In a speech to the Fabian Society conference, the Labour leader accused the Conservatives of running the NHS into the ground because they are “too preoccupied defending his rule breaking”.

Stressing that “waiting times were the shortest on record” when Labour left government 12 years ago, he said: “Rather than concentrating on getting through the pandemic and bringing down waiting lists, this self-indulgent Tory party is instead having a fight about a leader who they should have known from the start is not fit for office.”

“We are witnessing the broken spectacle of a prime minister mired in deceit and deception, unable to lead,” Starmer said, adding that it was “very important that the Tory party does what it needs to do and gets rid of him”.

Responding to questions after his speech, Starmer said the revelations about coronavirus rule breaches in Downing Street had exacerbated issues people were facing with their mental wellbeing.

He said: “I think, by the way, the scandal of partygate, for want of a better word … what’s happened in recent weeks, where it has become obvious that while the vast majority of the British public were obeying the laws the government made, the government and the prime minister were partying in Downing Street. I think that has added to mental health stress because so many people are now asking themselves: ‘Why on earth did I do that then, while they were doing what they were doing?’”

The opposition is not alone in calling for Johnson to step down over rule-breaking following his public apology to the Queen on Friday for the parties that took place on the eve of her husband’s funeral.

On Saturday Tobias Ellwood, the chair of the defence select committee, , said that “we need leadership” and Johnson must “lead or step aside”.The Daily Mirror published a photograph of the wine cooler being delivered to a back door in Downing Street in December 2020, and said staff would regularly stock it with suitcase-loads of alcohol.

"Wine-time Fridays" were scheduled into the electronic calendars of around 50 staff at Number 10, in apparent violation of a ban on indoor socialising during the pandemic, it reported.

Johnson would often drop by for a chat at the end of the working day, the newspaper said, quoting one source as saying: "The idea that he didn’t know there were drinks is total nonsense.

"If the PM tells you to ‘let off steam’, he’s basically saying this is fine."

In response, a Downing Street spokesperson said the government was awaiting Gray’s inquiry "to establish the facts around the nature of gatherings" during the pandemic.