Nothing to see here, insists Johnson amid flat refurbishment probe
Boris Johnson has said he will comply with “whatever” the Electoral Commission wants after the watchdog launched an investigation into the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat.
The Prime Minister said on Thursday that “I don’t think there’s anything to see here” despite the commission saying there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect an offence as it launched a formal inquiry.
The probe will seek to establish who initially paid for the work and whether any donation was properly declared.
Investigators can demand documents and information, and could potentially seek a statutory interview with the Prime Minister as part of the process.
During a visit to a London school, Mr Johnson told broadcasters:
Read on...
We will comply with whatever they want, and I don’t think there is anything to see here, or worry about.
Mr Johnson insisted that newly-appointed ministerial standards adviser Lord Geidt will do an “outstanding job” in his separate review into whether any donations for the refurbishments in No 11 were properly declared.
Labour criticised the arrangement because the prime minister remains the “ultimate arbiter” of the code, meaning Mr Johnson “effectively marks his own homework”.
Mr Johnson argued, in a letter to chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life Lord Evans, that he “cannot and would not wish” to give up the power.
He added:
That vital responsibility is quite properly mine alone and, as an elected politician, one for which I am ultimately accountable to the electorate,
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Shocking how teflon BoJo gets away with it time & again. Peter Oborne’s Assault on Truth has done a great service in exposing an inveterate liar hiding behind an affable bumbling exterior.
How is it that a country can be so easily fooled into voting for someone & his party with so many snouts in so many troughs? ………and openly laugh about it all the way to their banks?
Power with zero accountability.
This is the proplem that rather spend on them self’s and not help people this govment sucks and thay need to go away how about we put them all on a boat and ship them some were elz there rotten to the core and don’t give a crap about anything other then there goles not voting ever as it never matters