BORIS Johnson may have survived Partygate had he not bungled later on, a Tory powerbroker claims.
Lord Graham Brady — who ran the backbench 1922 Committee for 14 years — revealed letters of no confidence from Conservative MPs were withdrawn in February 2022 when Putin invaded Ukraine.
3
3
3
At the time BoJo was facing lockdown-breaking allegations — but his stalwart efforts during the war won over some critics.
Lord Brady said MPs were telling him: “We have a war in Europe, the PM is quite right to be standing up to Ukraine and he’s very vocal in that we should stand together.”
Promoting his book Kingmaker, Lord Brady said Partygate was “simmering down” but it was Johnson’s later errors that ended his premiership — when it emerged he had been briefed in 2019 about complaints over Chris Pincher‘s groping scandal.
Ex-PM BoJo is preparing to upend this week’s Tory conference with his own bombshell memoir Unleashed.
READ MORE ON BORIS JOHNSON
Brady said: “My sense was the so-called Partygate allegations had made some people very angry.
But it was as though the whole thing was starting to simmer down.
“It was his handling of the Pincher affair that brought him down.”
Brady said Johnson did not realise the game was up until “right to the end”.
“They were bound to change the rules to allow another confidence vote to happen, which he would lose.”