The fine, which Mr Johnson quickly paid, was the result of a birthday gathering for the Prime Minister himself in Downing Street’s cabinet room on June 19, 2020 – almost thee months into the first national lockdown he announced on March 23.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Mr Johnson’s wife, Carrie, were both also issued with fines – with Mr Sunak’s fine coming during a particularly tough time for him politically amid questions over his and his wife’s financial affairs.
Since paying the fine, Mr Johnson apologised over the debacle. However, he is thought to have been involved in at least five of the 11 further events inside Downing Street currently under investigation by the police – and it is therefore possible he could be fined again.
The Prime Minister is also facing claims he misled Parliament with his denials of Downing Street parties prior to being issued the fine. He has claimed he did not know he was breaking the rules by attending the party.
What’s more, once the police have concluded their investigations, a senior civil servant’s detailed report on the scandal – the Sue Gray report – will be published in full, which seems likely to increase the political pressure on Mr Johnson.
A new poll has found that almost two thirds of British people think Boris Johnson (centre) should resign if he is hit with more fines for parties in Downing StreetWere the Prime Minister to be fined again over the parties, 63 percent of the British public say they think he should resign, according to a YouGov poll conducted on behalf of The Times. The poll also found that 36 percent of people who voted for Johnson’s Conservative party in 2019 would want his resignation with more fines.
That is compared to 49 percent of Conservative voters who said he should stay on in his position regardless of whether he is fined more or not, The Times reported.
The 63 percent figure is higher than those who think he should resign after receiving the single fine this week, the newspaper noted, which stood at 56 percent.
Just one percent less – 55 percent – said they think Sunak should also resign, suggesting his efforts to distance himself from the on-going row have been unsuccessful, despite him reportedly only briefly being at the birthday party.
The poll also found that votes are not buying Johnson’s defences, with just 14 percent of those polled saying they think he is being truthful when he says he did not realise he was breaking his own rules by attending the party.
Currently, once-mutinous Conservative MPs have in recent weeks rallied around their leader as the war in Ukraine and the growing cost-of-living crisis diverted attention away from the scandal over the parties.
But commentators are questioning whether Johnson, 57, can maintain that support if he is repeatedly fined, his party fares poorly in the May 5 nationwide polls and further details of parties emerge.
‘A lot more fines and a lot more headlines might change the view of more voters and that in turn might change the mind of Conservative MPs if they do very badly in the elections,’ Anand Menon, a politics professor at King’s College London, told AFP.
‘He’s clearly willing and able to brazen some things out in a way other, earlier prime ministers probably weren’t… I don’t think he’s superhuman, though.’
Earlier this week, the embattled Prime Minister was issued with a £50 fine by London’s Metropolitan Police who decided he had broken his own lockdown rules
As a possible sign of things to come, Justice Minister Simon Wolfson resigned from the government on Wednesday, citing ‘the scale, context and nature’ of the rule breaches.
The peer concluded he had no option but to resign considering ‘my ministerial and professional obligations to support and uphold the rule of law’.
Conservative former cabinet minister Karen Bradley suggested Mr Johnson should quit.
The Staffordshire Moorlands MP said: ‘My constituents know that I have been clear that those that make the rules must not break them, whether intentionally or otherwise. The public are right to expect the highest standards of behaviour from their leaders.’
She said ‘law breaking in Downing Street is unforgivable’ but the war in Ukraine meant there was a need to ‘act responsibly so as to not make the situation worse’.
‘But I do wish to make it clear that if I had been a minister found to have broken the laws that I passed, I would be tendering my resignation now.’
Commons Defence Committee chairman Tobias Ellwood said Vladimir Putin would exploit Mr Johnson’s position
‘How can a lawmaker also be a law breaker? This is not a good look,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He suggested that Mr Johnson should trigger a confidence vote himself.
Mr Ellwood added: ‘I think the Prime Minister has made his intentions clear – he wants to stay – but this is bigger than the Prime Minister.
‘It’s about the reputation of the party for which all colleagues must defend, and I believe he owes it to the parliamentary party, once the reports have concluded and the local elections have allowed the public view to be factored in, to agree to hold his own vote of confidence if those elections go badly.’
After facing accusations of hypocrisy for not following the rules and allegations of lying to MPs, Mr Johnson told a press conference in Kent: ‘You are going to have to wait until I come to Parliament when of course I will set the record straight in any way that I can.’
A protester holds up a placard of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak outside Downing Street in London, Britain, 13 April 2022