Former United Kingdom Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has announced his resignation as a member of parliament on Friday.
The 58-year-old populist politician claimed that he had been forced out in a stitch-up by his political opponents.
Johnson has been under investigation by a cross-party committee about whether he repeatedly lied to parliament over Covid lockdown-breaking parties when he was in office.
In evidence earlier this year he angrily insisted he had not.
But as the committee prepares to make public its findings, he said they had contacted him “making it clear… they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of parliament”.
The Privileges Committee, which has a majority of MPs from his own Conservative party, has powers to impose sanctions for misleading parliament, including suspension.
Ordinarily, suspension of more than 10 working days leads to a by-election in the MP’s constituency.
Johnson, though, pre-empted any finding or having to fight to remain an MP in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency in northwest London where he holds a slim majority of just over 7,000 — by quitting.
He denounced the committee, chaired by veteran opposition Labour MP Harriet Harman, as a “kangaroo court”.
“It is very sad to be leaving Parliament at least for now but above all I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out, anti-democratically… with such egregious bias,” he said.
Recall that Boris Johnson quit as prime minister and left office in September 2022.
Johnson, who was sacked from his first job at The Times newspaper for making up a quote, made his name as Brussels correspondent of the Daily Telegraph peddling euromyths.
He first became an MP in 2001 until 2008, then quit to serve two four-year terms as London’s mayor. He became an MP again in 2015, going on to be foreign secretary under Theresa May.