Dominic Raab somehow shoehorns in Brexit to defend Boris Johnson on sleaze

Dominic Raab has given his backing to Boris Johnson’s handling of the Tory sleaze scandal by managing to shoehorn the topic of Brexit to defend him.

The deputy prime minister was on BBC Breakfast this morning (November 18) when topical questions were broached with him on how he thinks the government has managed the recent sleaze row among the Conservative Party.

It comes after Tory MP, Owen Patterson was recently found guilty of breaching parliament’s lobbying rules, yet the government made MPs toe the line and vote against giving Patterson a 30-day suspension.

Though this then backfired after there was a public outcry in response, which consequently forced the government to make a U-turn, while Patterson resigned (though he denies any wrongdoing).

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On Tuesday night, Johnson’s amendment was passed in the Commons (297-0), which sees MPs banned from working as paid political consultants or lobbyists and there to be limits on how much time they could spend on second jobs.

Though Labour abstained from this and criticised the government’s amendment, calling it a “watered down” version of Labour’s proposal - which was defeated (231-282), the Independent reported.

During the interview, BBC Breakfast’s Naga Munchetty brought up to Raab the fact that Johnson had told Tory MPs yesterday that he “crashed the car” when it came to handling Paterson’s disciplinary case.

Munchetty then asked Raab: “Did you agree with how he was handling it up until now?”

“I’ve discussed this with him – of course, as a close colleague, I’m not going to divulge the nature of the conversation but I totally support him in fixing the problem,” Raab replied.

“We have got collective responsibility in government, we stand and fall together,” he added and said that they have all recognised they made a mistake.

“Do you have faith in the prime minister’s judgement?” Muchetty queried in a follow-up question, before commenting how there are “many, many people” from the Conservative party who believe that Johnson’s judgement is “lacking.”

“I’ve got total faith,” Raab insisted. He then decided to veer off-topic of the sleaze scandal and continued: “This is the prime minister who has successfully dealt with getting us through Brexit.

“He clearly won an unprecedented majority [in 2019], he’s led the way with a vaccine rollout which has been a real success both in Europe and globally.”

We have a feeling this won’t be the last time the Boris Brexit defence is used...