Brighton MP calls on Boris Johnson to resign over party scandal
Caroline Lucas says the Prime Minister "wouldn't know integrity if it bumped into him in the street"
Last updated 13th Jan 2022
Caroline Lucas has called on Boris Johnson to resign as Prime Minister, after he admitted attending a drinks party at Number 10 at the height of lockdown in 2020.
Mr Johnson apologised during PMQs in the House of Commons yesterday (12 January) and claimed he thought the event was work related.
Speaking exclusively to Greatest Hits Radio, Mrs Lucas said: "The sense that I got certainly was somebody who was sorry that he'd been found out rather than sorry that he had done anything wrong, and indeed his defence, such as it was, was so ridiculous. The idea that he hadn't realised it was a party when people were out in his garden with bottles of wine. I think he's treating the public with real contempt.
"One of the things that made people most angry is when you hear the stories about what other people were doing on the 20th of May that year. When people were unable to be with their loved ones, at times of death or childbirth or key moments in people's lives where people did follow the rules and suffered significantly.
"I think looking at at his track record, this is not a person who would probably recognise integrity if it bumped into him in the street. So I don't think he's going to resign out of a sense of duty to do that. He might do it if he realises that there's enough pressure growing in the Conservative Party on him to do that.
"I think if that pressure rises sufficiently, then he may well go and I think that would be my message to conservative MPs right now is that they have the power to make sure that our country is in better hands than it is right now."
"I think he's treating the public with real contempt"
The Brighton MP's comments come on a day in which Boris Johnson has had to cancel a planned trip to Lancashire, with a Downing Street statement saying a member of the Prime Minister's family has tested positive for coronavirus.
Mrs Lucas thinks that's convenient timing. She said: "I think if I were Boris Johnson, I would certainly be trying to stay out of the spotlight today, because the truth is that he has no answer to the questions that are being put to him. The spectacle of him at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday was was actually really terrible. I mean in terms of the way in which he insulted the intelligence of the public with every single utterance that he made.
"The idea that we have to wait for Sue Grey, the independent investigator, to know whether or not he was in that garden, whether he broke the rules, just beggars belief, he could just tell us what we need to know if he chose to.
"I think he probably realises that he has run out of road, that he has no credible answers to these questions and that probably his best hope is to keep out of the spotlight for a while."