Truss must recover standards after Johnson legacy of ‘scandal and sleaze’ – MPs

Boris Johnson leaves a legacy of “scandal and sleaze” in Whitehall which Liz Truss must “clear up”, according to opposition party MPs.

Labour’s Angela Rayner, the SNP’s Ian Blackford and Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey blasted Mr Johnson’s “rosy” resignation speech as a far cry from reality and renewed calls for his successor to impose a windfall tax to combat the cost-of-living crisis.

The politicians spoke to the PA news agency on College Green in Westminster, central London, following Mr Johnson’s address outside Number 10.

Labour’s deputy leader Ms Rayner said he will be remembered for causing “scandal, sleaze and the highest inflation for decades”.

She said: “If you heard Boris Johnson’s speech this morning, you’d think everything was rosy and great.

“Actually, the legacy is scandal, sleaze, the highest inflation for decades, cost-of-living crisis, people’s standard of living going down.

“We’ve seen the highest tax burden on the UK and we’ve seen GP waiting lists going up, we’ve seen the NHS engulfed in a crisis, we’ve seen our public services really demoralised.

“But of course Liz Truss has propped up the prime minister and has voted with the prime minister to support him – whether it was the Owen Paterson scandal, or whether it was the situation that we saw with the billions of pounds of wasted contracts that were given out.

“I want to see a real clear-up, make sure we see standards again in public life, the Nolan Principles again, but also that we look at what people are facing.

“We need real help and investment for our UK businesses that are struggling and for our households at the moment – I want to see her rocket fuel that rather than these empty soundbites that we’ve heard from Boris Johnson.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed said the outgoing prime minister has “left the country devastated in his wake”.

“He’s failed the country on so many levels whether it’s our economy, where we’ve got the lowest growth of any industrialised country bar Russia that’s been sanctioned,” he said.

“We’ve got inflation going through the roof with rocketing fuel and energy and food prices.

“We have record NHS waiting lists and a crisis in our healthcare system.

“This is his legacy and it’s a dreadful one. It shows why he was unfit to be our prime minister in the first place.”

The SNP’s Westminster leader Mr Blackford said Mr Johnson’s government had “lurched from one crisis to another” and called for a general election.

He said: “I’m just glad that it’s over because this is a prime minister who, I think, has undermined the office he has held.

“I wish him and his family all the best but quite simply he wasn’t the right person to be prime minister of this country – so many things that he’s done.

“I mean the fact that he was a prime minister who broke the law while in office, disrespected the rules, the laws he put in place, and I think that many people just simply could not get over a prime minister who thought the rules weren’t for him.

“That’s over and we now move on.”