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Sir Tony Blair has refused to call for Boris Johnson to resign over partygate, saying he could “understand how these things happen”.
The former Labour prime minister declined to join his successor Sir Keir Starmer in calling for Johnson to go over parties at Downing Street during lockdown.
It comes after Starmer dramatically upped his criticism of Johnson today, accusing him of breaking the law over the scandal.
But Blair told Times Radio he would leave questions of Johnson’s resignation to those in frontline politics today.
He said: “I don’t get into questions of resignation or not. I’ll leave that to the people in the frontline of politics today.
“If I’m absolutely blunt about it, in the end, what I care most about is not the presence of the parties but the absence of a plan for the country.
“I understand the people feeling enraged and very angry about it. I can also, from the perspective of Downing Street, understand how these things happen. You can explain it but not really excuse it.
“I’ve been prime minister for 10 years and I know how difficult it is. I don’t really want to get into the business of whether people should resign or not resign and so on.
“The people in Downing Street would have been working under the most enormous pressure, enormous difficulty. I understand how it happened.
“But as I say, the trouble is, you can give an explanation but you can’t really excuse it. People were obeying restrictions, often with massive personal cost and anguish and grief, and it just shouldn’t be allowed to happen, frankly. But I guess he knows that.”
Source: Huff Post
