The dangerous undermining of parliament by Boris Johnson’s cronies has been rightly condemned

If the Commons can’t bring itself to discipline them, then the Conservative Party should sanction them for bringing the party into disrepute

Having destroyed Boris Johnson, rightly, for deliberately lying to parliament, and thus committing the most serious possible contempt of the institution, the Commons Privileges Committee has now delivered further body blows to several of Johnson’s most fanatical allies. About time.

In a rare move for a sedate Commons committee, they have been named and indeed shamed: Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nadine Dorries, Priti Patel, Michael Fabricant, Zac (Lord) Goldsmith, Brendan Clarke-Smith, and various other, less prominent but no less fanatical, high priests and priestesses in the Cult of Johnson have been found to have been part of a “campaign waged outside Parliament…to undermine the Committee”.

Of the various miscreants identified, all of whom might be termed “the usual suspects” who treat Johnson like a Demi-god, it is Dorries and Rees-Mogg who stand out as the most prominent, using their status as former cabinet ministers, the TV shows they host and their friends in the press to attack the committee and mobilise people to intimidate the Tories who serve on it. Frankly, they are not fit and proper persons to be members of parliament.

We should be perfectly plain about what is at stake here. Although this is a supplementary report, a sequel if you will, the issue is, once again, the protection of parliamentary democracy: nothing less.

Free speech is one thing; intimidating and impugning MPs as they fulfil their duties is quite another, and itself endangers free speech and the freedom of a group of MPs to form a judgment entirely on the merits and evidence of a case placed before them.

Free speech, in other words, is not the freedom to bully, and, in contrast to his faux-toff manners Rees-Mogg is also unscrupulous. He was, we may recall, accused of misleading the late Queen about the prorogation of parliament in 2019, later ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court.

Rees-Mogg also tried to rig a vote on a Standards Committee report into the conduct of Owen Paterson, a botched plot that contributed to the eventual fall of Johnson. This former leader of the House, so apparently reverential to its traditions and prerogatives, has proved himself to be anything but a staunch parliamentarian in practice.

Dorries is less polished than Rees-Mogg, but no less feral, and the pair may be fairly said to be ringleaders of the doomed but energetic effort to save Johnson, by using dirty tricks. When the vote comes on 10 July, there should be at least a token suspension from the Commons, and, in truth, a sanction lengthy enough to trigger a by-election.

Perhaps, like Johnson, they might skip before they are effectively expelled, but it would be the right level of punishment, given the seriousness of what they have done.

It is not arcane procedure; it is about democracy. If the Commons can’t bring itself to discipline them, then the Conservative Party should sanction them for bringing the party into disrepute. They have no business as MPs seeking to undermine the authority of parliament.

It is outrageous that MPs on the Privileges Committee needed additional security because of the campaign of hate and intimidation they were subjected to. Actions have consequences, and incitement is a dangerous weapon.

As the Committee asserts: “What Members have no right to do, however, is attempt to undermine an inquiry or bring pressure to bear on the members of the Privileges Committee during the inquiry. An attack on the procedures of the House and on the impartial officers and advisers who support those processes is an attack on the legitimacy of Parliament itself.”

Of all the anti-democratic and thuggish threats that can be made against an MP, that of deselection as an official candidate is surely the most potent and insidious of all. It was explicitly deployed by Dorries when she urged her colleagues to vote down the Committee’s finalised report.

Technically, she issued her threat after they’d finished their work, but the effect was still chilling: “Any Conservative MP who would vote for this report is fundamentally not a Conservative and will be held to account by members and the public,” she warned. “Deselections may follow. It’s serious.” It’s intimidation of every Tory MP, too.

It is also clear what is happening here more broadly: the Trump-isation of the Conservative Party. Bodies such as the misnomered Conservative Democratic Organisation are using the normal processes of candidate selection and party procedures to purge the party of anyone who questions their hard-right orthodoxies and fealty to Johnson, because they are “not Conservative”.

They are turning the Tory party into a sect, not unlike the way in which the Bennites and the Corbynistas tried to run the Labour Party into an ideologically-driven personality cult. Just as in America with Donald Trump, Tory MPs and candidates are to be asked to pledge allegiance not to King and country, still less parliamentary democracy, but to the dictatorial personage of Johnson, and to hand over control of the party to punk populists.

If and when that happens, then the UKIP reverse takeover of the Conservative Party will be complete. When will the Tory party come to its senses? The risk is, even if it does, it might already be too late.