BORIS Johnson and Rishi Sunak have both received fixed-penalty notices from the police and have been fined for breaking lockdown rules.

As the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford pointed out in a tweet: "Boris Johnson misled parliament, lied to the public and broke the law. He must resign or be removed from office. The Prime Minister’s position is completely untenable. There simply cannot be one rule for the Tories and another for the rest of us."

Meanwhile, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: "Boris Johnson must resign. He broke the law and repeatedly lied to parliament about it. The basic values of integrity and decency - essential to the proper working of any parliamentary democracy - demand that he go. And he should take his out of touch chancellor with him."

Still, at least they could have a leaving party now without being fined for it.

READ MORE: Douglas Ross not standing up for communities - but for his own interests

It's not just Johnson who appears to have misled the House of Commons. On December 7, 2021 Rishi Sunak told MPs in the chamber: "No, I did not attend any parties." Given that the police have fined him for attending an illegal gathering it now looks as though this statement was either misleading or an outright lie, unless Sunak is going to tell us that it couldn't have been a party because he was wearing a suit. Still, he can afford to pay the fine out of all the money his wife has saved on her tax bill. The fine is a whole £100, which is less than Sunak pays every few days for artisanal breads for the various members of his household, and some Mother's Pride for the staff.

In a statement on December 13, 2021 on the lockdown parties, Johnson said: "I can tell you once again that I certainly broke no rules … all that is being looked into." Well now it has been looked into, and it has been determined that Johnson broke the law - not rules - the law. But this will be just fine with the spineless wonders of the Scottish Conservative Party, who will avoid the press. Douglas Ross called for the First Minister to quit before the Holyrood inquiry report was even published. But now that Johnson and Sunak have been found to have broken the actual law, never mind the ministerial code, will Ross call for them to go? I think we all know the answer to that question.

What Ian Blackford and Nicola Sturgeon said is of course true, but there is as much chance of either of this pair of shysters doing the honourable thing and resigning as there is of Douglas Ross discovering a vertebra. 

READ MORE: The REAL Scottish Politics: Rishi Sunak and the 18th century

Every week we see a scandal involving Tory MPs. They have been awarding millions of pounds worth of Covid-19 contracts to donors and friends, and this week a Tory MP was convicted of the sexual abuse of a minor. There is tax avoidance, entitlement, lies, and donations from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin's regime. And now the PM is shown to have broken the law and lied about it repeatedly. But I'm sure Douglas Ross and BBC Scotland can find a ferry to complain about.

This entire episode stinks to high heaven. For the Prime Minister and Chancellor to be fined by the Met Police while parliament is in recess and so cannot be held to account by MPs is extraordinarily "convenient", just as it was "convenient" that the Met announced a police investigation just as the Sue Grey report was about to conclude, leading its most damaging findings about the Prime Minister to be redacted. 

We have always been told that the police exist to protect the public, but this sorry episode smells like the police existing in order to protect the powerful.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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