Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I want to open by acknowledging what I thought was the fair, measured spirit in which the Leader of the Opposition opened this debate. I thought he spoke in a fair-minded way, as have many other hon. and right hon. Members on all sides, including those friends of mine who have, sadly, decided that they can no longer support the Prime Minister, but I want to speak in his defence today, because somebody has to.

I acknowledge, in all seriousness, how big a mistake the Prime Minister made. Of course, he should apologise for it, take responsibility and accept the verdict of the police, whether or not he was surprised by that verdict. If he lied to this House, of course he should resign, but he did not—patently he did not. Patently he did not break the law deliberately, so patently he did not deliberately mislead this House, any more than the Leader of the Opposition deliberately misled the House when he said that the PM had slandered the BBC. I welcome the sort of apology that he made earlier. We can now all move on from that mistake and remember that only those who are without sin should be casting stones.

I do not minimise the importance of this scandal. Many people are outraged by what has gone on and have written to me to that effect. Many are just the usual haters who always despised the Prime Minister, but many are the respectable tendency of our country—often Conservative voters—who just want a steady, decent, respectable Government. I think particularly of my councillors in Devizes and party members who have written to me in despair at what the Prime Minister has done. They are right to want a steady, decent, responsible Government; we do not have to have a soap opera in Downing Street. But we do need a Government and a Prime Minister who can see the big picture and make the big calls—one who does not always play for safety, does not always do the conventional thing that officials suggest and does not always think, “What would John Major do?”

Let me finish with a word about the character of the Prime Minister, who I have known a little for many years, and with whom I had the privilege of working closely in Downing Street in those crazy months in the second half of 2019, when he and my other old friend Dominic Cummings drove through the strategy that finally got Brexit done. There was a lot of smoke and noise in those months, but in the midst of it all I saw the Prime Minister in relentless pursuit of the mission, with total flexibility about the methods to be used, including a proportionate response to the tactics taken by the other side in its attempts to subvert the democratic process. The European Union saw how serious he was at that time, and it is because of that that it finally accepted a deal that we could also accept. The country saw it, and it responded with a landslide election victory for our party, and I do not believe that any other leader would have done it.

None of this would justify lying to this House, but I do not believe that the Prime Minister did lie, and those are the reasons I follow him in spite of everything—in spite of his accepting a slice of birthday cake when he should not have, in spite of overseeing a No. 10 operation that let the country down, in spite of some policies that I am unhappy with. I support him because he was anointed by the people in 2019 to deliver a great mission to unite and level up the country, and because he can make the big calls that are needed at this time.