The leader of the Scottish wing of the Conservative Party has spoken out against Prime Minister Boris Johnson on vaccine passports and said he should go if he misled Parliament about an alleged lockdown-breaking Christmas party at Downing Street.
“If the Prime Minister knew about this party last December, knew about this party last week, and was still denying it, then that is the most serious allegation,” said Douglas Ross, who leads the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, or Scottish Tories, of the alleged party, said to have been thrown at Downing Street at a time when Christmas gatherings were largely banned for ordinary Londoners and much of the rest of England.
“There is absolutely no way you can mislead Parliament and think you would be able to get off with that,” continued Ross, who sits in both the House of Commons in London and the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh — roughly equivalent to a state legislature in the United States — in comments reported by The Scotsman.
“Misleading Parliament in that way is completely unacceptable and no one should continue in their post if they mislead Parliament in that way,” he added, in a seemingly unambiguous call for the Prime Minister to step down if his account of last year’s supposed non-party is found to be untrue.
Mr Ross also vowed to oppose the Johnson administration’s plans to impose vaccine passports in England, signalling that the Scottish Tories — or at least their leader — are willing to defy the national government’s policy line in some areas.
“There is no evidence that vaccine passports stop the spread of Covid,” the Scotsman insisted.
“I didn’t vote for them at Holyrood and I won’t be voting for them at Westminster,” he added, using the common metonyms for the Scottish and British parliaments, respectively.
Scotland’s government, led by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her left-separatist Scottish National Party (SNP), has already imposed vaccine passports on the Scottish people, having broad control over lockdown policy in their part of the United Kingdom.
The Scottish Hospitality Group (SHG) condemned the SNP’s vaccine passport as an “unmitigated disaster” for businesses in their sector in late October.