THE TORY Party civil war was ratcheted up yesterday as PM Rishi Sunak accused his predecessor Boris Johnson of asking him to overrule a parliamentary panel vetting his resignation honours list, saying it was something ‘I wasn’t prepared to do’.
Johnson responded by accusing Sunak of ‘talking rubbish’.
Speaking at ‘a tech conference’ in London, Sunak claimed Johnson had asked him ‘either to overrule the HOLAC (House of Lords Appointments Commission) committee or to make promises to people.
‘Now I wasn’t prepared to do that because I didn’t think it was right and if people don’t like that, then tough! Sunak said, pausing, for some gentle applause, before going on to claim: ‘When I got this job I said I was going to do things differently because I wanted to change politics and that’s what I’m doing.’
Johnson responded: ‘Rishi Sunak is talking rubbish. To honour these peerages it was not necessary to overrule HOLAC but simply to ask them to renew their vetting which would have been a mere formality.’
Sunak’s intervention marks a new high in the escalating Tory civil war.
Johnson announced he was quitting Parliament on Friday over a report from the Privileges Committee, who were investigating whether he had misled MPs about lockdown parties in Downing Street.
It came just hours after Downing Street published his resignation honours list without the names of key supporters, including Nadine Dorries, Sir Alok Sharma and Nigel Adams.
All three had been expecting to be appointed to the House of Lords.
As a departing Prime Minister, Johnson expected that his nominations for seats in the House of Lords and for other honours such as knighthoods would be nodded through according to convention.
However, on Sunday, a spokesman for the HOLAC vetting commission said it had rejected eight of Johnson’s nominations – but declined to name them or say why.
Downing Street claimed that Sunak passed on Johnson’s list of nominations unaltered.
But yesterday, the BBC said a ‘source’ describing themselves as an ally of Johnson, accused Sunak of ‘secretly’ blocking peerages for ‘Nadine and others’.
‘He refused to ask for them to undergo basic checks that could have taken only a few weeks or even days,’ the source added.
‘That is how he kept them off the list – without telling Boris Johnson.’
The Privileges Committee of MPs investigating whether Johnson misled Parliament about lockdown parties in Downing Street met yesterday to conclude its inquiry and is expected to publish its findings today as the Tory Party civil war escalates further.