THE Partygate row is like the one over the Iraq war 19 years ago, a minister has claimed.
In an attempt to defend the PM, Welsh Secretary Simon Hart compared it to the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
His bungling came as Boris Johnson vowed to set the record straight on lockdown-busting parties in No10. He has been accused of misleading Parliament after being fined by police for attending his own 56th birthday bash.
In 2003, the then-Labour PM Tony Blair faced a row over claims Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein had deadly weapons.
Mr Hart said: “There is a difference between misleading and deliberately misleading. We heard all of that with Tony Blair and the Iraq war, if you remember?
“Weapons of mass destruction. And the suggestion was at the time that he had misled parliament. The argument was around whether it was deliberate or whether it was accidental.”
Read More on Boris Johnson
In January, the PM told MPs he was unaware of any No10 rule-breaking gatherings.
The Met Police has issued fixed penalty notices to Mr Johnson, his wife Carrie and Chancellor Rishi Sunak.
The PM is expected to apologise to MPs next Tuesday, but he will insist he did not know the gathering broke any rules.
The next day, they are set to vote on a probe into whether he misled Parliament. If found guilty by the Privileges Committee, Mr Johnson could be booted out of the Commons.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has branded the PM a “lawbreaker and a liar”.
Read More on Trending In The News
A handful of Tory MPs also urged him to go. Ex-cabinet minister Karen Bradley said: “Those that make the rules must not break them, whether intentionally or otherwise.
“The public are right to expect the highest standards of behaviour from their leaders.”
