I have received a number of emails recently regarding the parties held at Downing Street.

Thank you to everyone that has been in touch. I appreciate the strength of feeling over this. I also feel totally disgusted by the behaviour in Downing Street and dismayed that respect for the position of Britain’s Prime Minister is being dragged down like this.

Each time I’ve been about to respond a new party or another breach of covid rules has been exposed.

We now know the Police have started formal investigations, which means they’ve seen enough evidence to believe the criminal law was broken in Downing Street.

The Prime Minister may well have broken the law, He’s certainly broken the trust people need to have in leaders. Of course he should go, as should those around him. I can call for this as your Labour MP, but outside a General Election it is only Conservative MPs that can decide to remove Boris Johnson from office. No one else has a say.

For the good of the country, I hope they do this.

No one is above the law, least of all the Prime Minister who makes the laws the rest of us followed during the covid pandemic. We all suffered during those months but we genuinely felt everyone was in it together. At the same time, Boris Johnson clearly had total contempt for the rules – not a one-off but regular rule-breaking, as the Government’s own internal inquiry is investigating at least 17 parties.

The latest case was Boris Johnson’s own birthday party, held at the time it was illegal to meet anyone indoors for a ‘social gathering’. 40 000 people had already died with covid by this date in June 2020. Pubs, restaurants and hairdressers were all closed. It was another 11 months before I could get my elderly dad out of his care home in Rotherham and back to our house for tea.

The Prime Minister just lied to us – to the public and to Parliament – when he said ‘there were no parties at No 10’ and ‘all covid rules were followed in Downing Street’.

As well as being your MP, I lead for Labour on defence. I see Britain’s standing with other countries at a new low because Boris Johnson has been too busy fighting to save himself to help lead the top-level diplomacy needed to deal with Russia’s threat to invade Ukraine.

While ever Conservative MPs and Ministers are arguing about the future of Boris Johnson’s job, the Government is doing nothing to deal with the crises in energy costs, social care for the elderly, waits for NHS treatment or their own Tory tax rises coming down the track. These are the things that are worrying people most and the Government is failing on all fronts.

The report of the Government’s inquiry into the Downing Street parties – by the civil servant Sue Gray – is expected any day. Then Conservative MPs will no longer have any reason not to act to help the country by removing Boris Johnson from office.

With good wishes

John