How Sir Keir Starmer set a trap for Boris Johnson over Partygate scandal

Partygate: Boris Johnson's repeated denials and excuses

Sir Keir Starmer has set out for the first time how he laid a trap for Boris Johnson over Partygate, luring the former prime minister into the lies that saw him forced out of parliament.

The Labour leader, and Britain’s former chief prosecutor, said he knew Mr Johnson’s instinct under pressure was to lie and detailed how he “forensically” led the then prime minister into misleading the House of Commons.

Mr Johnson sensationally quit as an MP last summer before facing the verdict of parliament’s privileges committee, which was to rule he lied about the scandal of lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street.

Branding him the first former PM to have lied to the Commons, the privileges committee found Mr Johnson committed “repeated contempt” of parliament by deliberately misleading MPs over lockdown-busting parties before being complicit in a campaign of abuse and intimidation.

Sanctions against Mr Johnson included banning him from having a pass to access parliament, which is usually available to former MPs. He would also have faced a 90-day suspension if he had not already quit.

In an interview with The Guardian, Sir Keir lashed out at Mr Johnson as “a guy who is detached from the truth”.

“Whether he’s lying or not, it doesn’t matter to him,” Sir Keir said.

And he laid out the specific and intentional way he set a trap for Mr Johnson over the Partygate saga.

He told the paper: “When I first asked him, ‘Did you apply all the rules?’ I hadn’t seen the video of Allegra [Stratton, Johnson’s director of strategic communications]. But he was told about her laughing in response to being asked, ‘What do we say about the parties?’

“So I said [to my team], ‘I think there’s something here. Let’s get him on record. Because his instinct will be to lie.’ It was a thread that we pulled over months. I was less bothered by what he was saying to me than trying to be forensic and getting him on the record.

“It paid dividends in the end. He had to leave parliament – because he’d lied.”

A report into Downing Street parties by former top civil servant Sue Gray laid bare a shock culture of repeated violations of the Covid restrictions by senior officials in No10.

It contained multiple photographs of ex-PM Mr Johnson and one of his successor Rishi Sunak attending a birthday gathering with his old boss.

Mr Sunak and Mr Johnson both received Met Police fines for the event, which took place on 19 June, 2020.

Britain’s top polling guru Professor Sir John Curtice has said one of the main reasons for the Tories’ electoral woes, with Mr Sunak’s party on course for a 1997-style wipeout, is because of the legacy left by Partygate.