Source - Daily Telegraph - 30/06/23
Another day, another ministerial resignation. Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park quit today with a scathing rebuke of Rishi Sunak for being “uninterested” in the environment.
The Tory peer claimed that the Government was going to break its promise to spend £11.6 billion of the aid budget on green issues by 2026 but was keeping quiet about it.
He also criticised the Prime Minister for going to party with Rupert Murdoch rather than attending a Paris environment summit and accused him of walking back past agreements.
That was not the half of it, though. In a letter, Sunak confirmed Goldsmith had quit after being asked to apologise for remarks about the privileges committee’s investigation into Boris Johnson.
Sunak said Lord Goldsmith – a friend of Johnson whose family once lent him a holiday home in Marbella – was asked to apologise for his comments and had “decided to take a different course” by resigning.
What was Goldsmith's crime that prompted him to be named by the committee?
An annex in the privileges committee's report on the critics of its original investigation says: "In retweeting a tweet calling the inquiry a witch hunt and kangaroo court, [Goldsmith] stated: 'Exactly this. There was only ever going to be one outcome, and the evidence was totally irrelevant to it.'"
Is that it? Was commenting on a Commons investigation, which was the subject of a free vote, enough to lose him his job in the Foreign Office. It seems so.
Goldsmith was the only peer among eight parliamentarians singled out in a report on criticism of their investigation by the privileges committee.
Will the other seven MPs – including Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Sir Michael Fabricant – also be asked to apologise? Will they lose the Tory whip in the Commons if they don't?
The purge of Johnson's supporters looks set to continue with a Commons debate (on Government time) on the report on July 10. That could lead to more of the "Johnson seven" facing bans from the House of Commons.
Forcing out Goldsmith was ill-advised, to say the least, as it will just allow the sense that Sunak and his team are now trying to purge supporters of Johnson from top levels in the party.
We warn in our Daily Telegraph leader that MPs (and peers) must be allowed to speak freely.
We point out that "the report itself says, 'free speech is at the heart of parliamentary democracy. Unfortunately, this recognition is followed by the word 'However'. There can be no 'However' here; MPs must be able to freely criticise the committee."
It seems Sunak has forgotten this central principle. I think he will regret making martyrs of Johnson supporters like this.
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