Winston Churchill’s resignation speech has been making the rounds on social media – and it makes for pretty unpleasant reading for his biographer!
Boris Johnson launched a scathing attack on the Privileges Committee after he was forced to resign on Friday night.
The former prime minister accused the MPs of producing a report “riddled with inaccuracies and reeks of prejudice” while providing him with “no formal ability to challenge anything they say”.
“They know that I corrected the record as soon as possible; and they know that I and every other senior official and minister – including the current Prime Minister and then occupant of the same building, Rishi Sunak – believed that we were working lawfully together,” he said.
But a letter written by his wartime hero Churchill has produced the perfect response to Johnson’s outburst, which is so riddled in self-interest it’s untrue!
Speaking at the opening of the Sir James Hawkey Hall in Essex, Churchill said:
“The first duty of a member of Parliament is to do what he thinks in his faithful and disinterested judgement is right and necessary for the honour and safety of Great Britain. His second duty is to his constituents, of whom he is the representative but not the delegate. Burke’s famous declaration on this subject is well known. It is only in the third place that his duty to party organization or programme takes rank. All these three loyalties should be observed, but there is no doubt of the order in which they stand under any healthy manifestation of democracy.”
As Peter Kay says, “representative democracy only works if elected representatives put the interests of the country first.”
Churchill did it, Johnson did not!
Related: Nadine Dorries says her peerage was blocked… because she’s too working class