BORIS Johnson has insisted he will return to frontline politics, despite a committee of MPs expected to report that the former prime minister deliberately misled parliament over Partygate. 

The ex-Tory leader has long said he was following the guidance of officials and civil servants, who had told him all Covid rules and guidance had been followed. 

However, according to the Times, the Privileges Committee will reject that defence in their report, due to be published tomorrow. 

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Mr Johnson – who resigned on Friday after receiving the group’s report – has already accused the committee of “bias” and likened it to a “kangaroo court.”

The panel, chaired by Labour MP Harriet Harman but with a Conservative majority, found that one of his most senior officials in fact warned him against claiming social distancing guidelines were followed at the gatherings.

According to the paper, Martin Reynolds, Mr Johnson’s principal private secretary at the time, advised him in December 2021 that he should remove a claim from a statement to the Commons that “all guidance had been followed at all times”.

The aide reportedly questioned “whether it was realistic to argue that all guidance had been followed at all times”.

Mr Johnson is said to have removed the line from his opening statement, but repeated the assertion during a debate later – which the committee reportedly views as evidence MPs were deliberately misled.

According to the paper, the committee would have recommended a suspension of more than 10 days – enough to trigger the recall petition. 

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Meanwhile, Mr Johnson has also escalated his war of words with Rishi Sunak over his resignation honours list, accusing the Prime Minister of “talking rubbish”. 

Former culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, the Cop26 president Sir Alok Sharma, and former minister Nigel Adams were all blocked from receiving peerages as they were sitting MPs. 

Mr Sunak claimed Mr Johnson had asked him to overrule the House of Lords Appointments Commission (Holac) to give four Tory MPs peerages. 

“Boris Johnson asked me to do something that I wasn’t prepared to do, because I didn’t think it was right,” the Prime Minister said.

Mr Johnson told the Express: “Rishi Sunak is talking rubbish. To honour these peerages it was not necessary to overrule Holac but simply to ask them to renew their vetting, which was a mere formality.”

Last night, Ms Dorries launched an outspoken attack on the Prime Minister, accusing him of using “weasel words” and “sophistry” during a meeting between the two men last week. 

She also told TalkTV that she believed that there had been a class element to the decision, saying that a woman who had been brought up on a council estate in Liverpool had been blocked from entering the House of Lords by “privileged posh boys”.

“I’m broken-hearted, not just for me but for everyone who comes from a background like mine,” she said.

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The Cabinet Office issued a statement last night saying that Johnson’s request to Sunak for MPs to be revetted would have been “unprecedented”.

A spokesman said: “Holac did not support the nominations of the MPs put forward by the former prime minister.

“It is unprecedented for a sitting prime minister to invite Holac to reconsider the vetting of individual nominees on a former prime minister’s resignation list. It is not therefore a formality.”

Meanwhile, in his brief chat with the Express, Mr Johnson also said he would keep pushing the Tory party “to fully deliver on Brexit and on the 2019 manifesto”.

He added: “We must fully deliver on Brexit and on the 2019 manifesto. We must smash Labour at the next election. Nothing less than absolute victory and total Brexit will do — and as the great Arnold Schwarzenegger said, I’ll be back.”