FORMER Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has warned the Conservatives against any attempt to block Boris Johnson if he seeks to stand in another parliamentary constituency.
Rees-Mogg told the Mail on Sunday that to do so could plunge the party ‘into civil war’.
Johnson resigned as the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip on Friday over the investigation into Partygate – Rees-Mogg was knighted in Johnson’s resignation honours list earlier that day.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had ‘failed to end’ what he called ‘the Tory chaos’, and called for a snap election.
Johnson stepped down as an MP after he saw in advance a report by the Commons Privileges Committee investigating whether he deliberately misled the House of Commons over lockdown breaches in Downing Street.
In an explosive 1,000-word statement on Friday evening, Johnson said: ‘I have received a letter from the Privileges Committee making it clear – much to my amazement – that they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of Parliament.’
He continued the draft was ‘riddled with inaccuracies and reeks of prejudice’, calling the committee a ‘kangaroo court’ whose purpose ‘has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts’.
The BBC has been told that the sanction the committee recommended in the documents sent to Johnson was a suspension from the Commons lasting more than 10 days. This means that if the House of Commons approves the suspension of an MP for 10 sitting days or more, that MP then faces a recall petition in their constituency, which can lead to a by-election.
In fact, hours earlier one of Johnson’s allies, former Cabinet minister Nadine Dorries, stepped down from her mid-Bedfordshire seat, a seat that Johnson could yet fill.
Also on Saturday, another supporter, Nigel Adams, resigned, triggering a third by-election for the Tories.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Rees-Mogg said Johnson could ‘easily get back into Parliament at the next election’ – and he was ‘in pole position to return as Conservative leader if a vacancy should arise’.
The former business secretary went on: ‘I would most strongly warn Conservative Party managers against any attempt to block Boris if he seeks the party nomination in another seat. Any attempt to do so would shatter our fragile party unity and plunge the Conservatives into civil war.’
On the other side of the barricades, former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine has said Johnson should not be allowed to run to be a Tory MP again, saying: ‘To me it is inconceivable that in these circumstances he could stand as a Conservative member of Parliament again.’
Heseltine added that Johnson will leave Parliament and ‘have little to do with the reality of the mess he left behind’.
Elsewhere in the Sunday Mirror, Labour’s Starmer accused PM Sunak of failing to stand up to Johnson and agreeing ‘to hand gongs to a cast list of cronies’.
‘Rishi Sunak must finally find a backbone, call an election, and let the public have their say on 13 years of Tory failure,’ he added.
The reality is that as part of the developing world crisis of capitalism, British capitalism is going down the drain, taking with it the living standards of the entire working class.
The Labour Party under Starmer is moving rapidly to the right to the point where if British capitalism reaches breaking point, Sunak will be ready to form a national government along with Starmer, as the only way of making the working class pay the for bill for the crisis of capitalism. Starmer is getting ready for such a National Government.
The working class must rejoice at the deepening crisis of the Tory government, but must take notice of its plans for developing a civil war. The trade unions must reject a National Government led by Sunak and Starmer to unite the ruling class to make the working class pay for the crisis. The trade unions must take action to put an end to crisis ridden British capitalism.
The TUC trade unions must mobilise the millions of its members by calling an indefinite general strike to bring down the Tories and go forward to a workers government and socialism.
This is the only way out of the capitalist crisis for the working class and its youth.
A socialist nationalised and planned economy will work for the people, and bring in a system whose basic law will be ‘from each according to their ability to each according to their needs’. It will put an end to the anarchy of capitalist production.
