Jacob Rees-Mogg says Partygate is 'disproportionate' and 'not serious politics'

Jacob Rees-Mogg has dismissed the response to the Partygate scandal as "disproportionate" and "not serious politics".

So, we guess we can move on and forget the whole thing then...

The latest Partygate developments last month saw Boris Johnson hand in his legal questionnaire regarding claims that lockdown-busting parties were held in Downing Street.

Officers involved with Operation Hillman, which is examining whether Covid restrictions were broken in Downing Street and across Whitehall, sent formal questionnaires to approximately 50 people as they looked into the details of alleged Covid rule-breaking.

The public outcry to Partygate has been vociferous over recent weeks and months – but Rees-Mogg doesn’t think it’s “serious politics”.

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Appearing on The Telegraph's Choppers Politics podcastwith Christopher Hope, Rees-Mogg was asked: “If [Boris Johnson] gets a fixed penalty notice for partying during lockdown, should he resign?”

After seemingly disingenuously asking what Partygate was, he replied: “We’ve got to be serious. We’ve got to think about a global crisis. We have got to be thinking about a cost of living crisis.

Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn't think Partygate is serious politics Getty Images

“We’ve got to think about what is happening both in this country and across the world. We cannot be distracted by things that may or may not have happened a couple of years ago for a few minutes.”

He added: “This is not serious politics. It never was. It was always disproportionate.”

The MP went on to say: “It’s interesting. You get a lot of discussion that quite a lot of the ‘woke’ stuff is going too, because we’re being serious again and we are stopping navel-gazing.”

It comes after Rees-Mogg claimed that the “big wins” of Brexit are “coming soon” – a whole six years after the EU referendum took place.

The newly appointed minister for Brexit opportunities claimed that his position will “give him the opportunity to put into practice what I argued in 2016" as he spoke about Britain's future outside the EU.

"There is a lot in the legislative pipeline that will deliver a Brexit dividend whether this is the Procurement Bill, services reform, gene editing. The Bill for freeports has almost completed its passage," he told the Express.

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