David Davis: Ex-Cabinet minister tells Boris Johnson to resign at PMQs saying ‘in the name of God, go!’

The veteran Tory MP urged the PM to “take responsibility” for the string of Downing Street party allegations

By Emily Ferguson

David Davis launched a scathing attack on Boris Johnson during PMQs telling the Prime Minister: “In the name of God, go.”

The veteran Tory MP told Mr Johnson he should quit as PM and urged him to “take responsibility” for his actions.

But the Prime Minister remained defiant and told the Commons he is not going anywhere.

“I haven’t sat here quite long enough, nothing like long enough in my view,” he said. 

Mr Davis said he has “spent weeks” defending the Prime Minister from “angry constituents” but said he was disappointed with Mr Johnson’s interview with broadcasters on Tuesday.

He said: “I expect my leaders to shoulder the responsibility for the actions they take. Yesterday he did the opposite of that. So, I will remind him of a quotation which may be familiar to his ear: Leo Amery to Neville Chamberlain.

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go.”

Mr Johnson responded and said: “I must say to him, I don’t know what he is talking about.

“What I can tell him – I don’t know what quotation he is alluding to – what I can tell him is and I think have told this House repeatedly, I take full responsibility for everything done in this Government and throughout the pandemic.”

Mr Davis’s attack on the PM means the former minister now finds himself on the same team as Mr Johnson’s former aide Dominic Cummings – despite clashes in the past.

‘In the name of God, go’

Mr Davis told the PM to “in the name of God, go” – a quote famously used by Oliver Cromwell and Leo Amery. 

The latter used the quote in the famous Norway debate of May 1940, when he urged then-PM Neville Chamberlain to resign.

In a lengthy speech made in the Commons on 7 May 1940, he said: “I have quoted certain words of Oliver Cromwell. I will quote certain other words. I do it with great reluctance, because I am speaking of those who are old friends and associates of mine, but they are words which, I think, are applicable to the present situation.

“This is what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation: ‘You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.’”

The speech by Mr Amery led to the PM being replaced by Winston Churchill. 

But the quote was first attributed to Cromwell in 1653 when he forcibly ejected the remaining members of the Long Parliament.

He said on 20 April 1653: “It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice… Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So!

“Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!”

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