The committee of MPs, which has Tory, Labour and SNP members, is believed to have recommended his suspension for more than 10 days, which could have led to a recall petition and byelection in his constituency.

In the wake of Johnson’s attacks, a committee spokesperson said it had “followed the procedures and the mandate of the House at all times and will continue to do so”.

They hit back, saying Johnson has “departed from the processes of the House and has impugned the integrity of the House by his statement”.

The committee will “meet on Monday to conclude the inquiry and to publish its report promptly”, the spokesperson added.

We may still be waiting to hear from Tory MPs, but Will Walden, a former Johnson spokesman, has now added his voice to the mix.

He has said his former boss saw “the writing on the wall” that he could be ousted in a potential byelection triggered by the privileges committee’s sanction.

Speaking to the Today programme, Walden, who does not think Johnson’s decision to quit as an MP has marked the end of his political career, added:

I think the most important thing that people need to understand this morning is there is only one thing driving Boris and that is that he likes to win, or at least not to lose.

And he hasn’t lost an election for 26 years, when the voters of Clwyd South decided he wasn’t their man in 1997.

I think the first thing to understand is this report clearly threatened to change all that.

He had seen the writing on the wall, he knew he probably would lose a by-election in his marginal seat. His primary motivation here, as it has been for the last year or so, is protecting his version of the narrative.

So by going, as he has, all guns blazing, he is able to avoid defeat, he is able to blame pretty much everyone else, including it seems anyone that voted Remain in 2016.

There is no plan but he is preparing himself for what might be next without the humiliation of being kicked out.

But it is so Boris. He told the committee that if they found against him, he wouldn’t respect the outcome – and so it has proved, there is no great surprise here.

We reported earlier on Chris Bryant and his views on Johnson’s resignation.

He has since added that what really surprises him is why, if Sunak knew Johnson was likely to step down, he approved his resignation honours list.

Speaking to BBC News, Bryant said:

One of the things that really surprises me is that Rishi Sunak must have known this was coming, so why on earth did he allow a man who was about to be a disgraced former prime minister to have a resignation honours list which is full of some of the most discredited people in British politics.

All of this just stinks.

On Johnson’s honours list, my colleague Hugh Muir has this to say:

If nothing became Boris Johnson more than the manner of his leaving No 10, nothing says more about the political rot he accelerated than the honours list that trails behind him and his announcement on Friday night that he will quit parliament having been told he faces ignominious suspension.

To scan the list that was perhaps his final act in frontline politics is to relive the era of cronyism and maladministration that he inflicted on the country. It redefined the very idea of honours as a reward for public service, replacing it with the sort of cheap favour you bestow on friends by buying them a seaside hat or a round in the pub.

Priti Patel, who took the Tory hostile environment badge of shame and wore it as a badge of honour, who as home secretary presided over a degradation of policing that has become a crisis of public trust, becomes a dame. Jacob Rees-Mogg, chief apologist for the chaos and deficiencies of the Johnson years in government, gets a knighthood.

Amid the continuing search for answers as to why the response of his administration to Covid was so poor, Johnson unveils a list containing honours and preferment for some of his aides who allegedly joined him at No 10 in ignoring the safety rules they had imposed on the rest of the population. If they partied then, they will party even harder now.

Read more here:

Johnson’s dramatic move came on the same day Sunak cleared a resignation honours list for him, including more than 40 peerages and other rewards, for some of his closest allies from the time of the Partygate scandal.

These include Martin Reynolds, who oversaw a Downing Street garden party during lockdown restrictions in 2020, and Jack Doyle, his former director of communications, who had discussed how to downplay the story.

Labour said the list amounted to “rewards for those who tried to cover up rule-breaking”, while the Lib Dems said it was “gongs for Johnson’s Partygate pals” and described it as “corruption pure and simple”.

Sunak had faced criticism for clearing the list while the privileges committee inquiry into Partygate was continuing, but Johnson’s resignation means their report will not have the same power as it would towards a sitting MP.

You can see who’s on Johnson’s honours list here:

More from deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner now.

She has said it is “tosh” for Boris Johnson to argue that the Commons’ privileges committee’s Partygate inquiry had not been fairly conducted.

She added it was “highly respected” and pointed to it having a Conservative majority.

Their report is also subject to a vote in the Commons where the Tories currently have a 66-seat majority, so this idea that he hasn’t been given a fair hearing is absolutely for the birds.

It is absolute rubbish and tosh, as he would say. It is just another way of Boris Johnson not accepting responsibility for his actions.

He thinks he can run fast and loose, and this time it has caught up with him.

He is trying to play the victim when the real victims in this is the people that he tried to gaslight, those that couldn’t see their relatives during Covid, who sadly passed away while they were in Downing Street having parties.

Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey has said there should be a general election following the resignation of Boris Johnson as an MP.

Speaking to the Today programme, he said:

I think there should actually be a general election.

I think the chaos and division in the Conservative party, the fact that they’re so out of touch on the cost of living, on the NHS, it means we’ve got to put the country out of its misery with these Conservatives.

I doubt they’ll do it, because I don’t think they’ve got the courage to do it. But Rishi Sunak should call a general election and, on the back of Boris Johnson’s resignation, let’s get rid of them.

When Boris Johnson sat down to draft his resignation statement after learning the privileges committee had concluded that he lied to MPs over Partygate, he was determined to leave his enemies – on both sides of the Commons – a clear message.

“It is very sad to be leaving parliament,” he wrote. “At least for now …” That he still harbours hopes of a comeback – despite the damage that he has done to his own reputation, the Conservative party brand and to the country more widely – should surprise nobody.

Since he announced in July 2022 that he was quitting as prime minister, Johnson has made no secret of the fact that he felt he had done nothing wrong and so had been treated unfairly. “I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out,” he said.

Yet despite much speculation about the outcome of the privileges committee inquiry, few expected Johnson to go so quickly.

Read more here:

Labour MP Chris Bryant, the chair of the Commons standards committee, has been on BBC Breakfast this morning.

He says that Johnson has been forced out by a report from a committee that had a Tory majority, and during a period where the Commons also has a Tory majority, shows he is leaving as a “disgraced” former prime minister.

In all the breathlessness of this it’s easy to forget quite how significant a moment this is.

I presume he’s resigned because he, being the only person who has seen the draft copy of the report from the privileges committee, knows that the house is going to decide that he has lied to parliament and that that is a serious contempt of parliament, therefore he should be suspended from the house.

That has never ever happened to a prime minister. So he was not only ousted as prime minister but then thrown out of the House of Commons… by a committee that had a conservative majority and by a house that has a significant majority.

So he is leaving as a disgraced prime minister.

Boris Johnson’s departure from life as an MP ahead of the publication of the Partygate report plays out across Saturday’s front pages, which are filled with a mixture of acrimony, triumph and predictions of further “Tory bloodletting”.

The Guardian focuses on the reason for his decision to resign as MP, noting that the privileges committee found he misled parliament and recommended a lengthy suspension from the House of Commons. It finds a spot lower down for the reaction to Rishi Sunak approving Johnson’s honours list, regarded as rewarding those involved in the Partygate scandal.

The Times is among a few that go with the “party’s over” angle in their headline. It gives its main picture to a Johnson ally, Donald Trump, who is facing his own troubles over the retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home.

The Daily Record says: “Party’s over, Boris,” and says he resigned over a “damning Partygate probe report into his lockdown antics”. It says he refused to take blame for his own downfall.

The Telegraph plays it relatively straight with the headline “Johnson quits as MP over Partygate” but notes his accusations of a “kangaroo court” and biased investigation in its subhead and intro.

Read more here:

Here is the full text of Boris Johnson’s resignation statement:

I have received a letter from the privileges committee making it clear – much to my amazement – that they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of parliament.

They have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons.

They know perfectly well that when I spoke in the Commons I was saying what I believed sincerely to be true and what I had been briefed to say, like any other minister.

They know that I corrected the record as soon as possible; and they know that I and every other senior official and minister – including the current prime minister and then occupant of the same building, Rishi Sunak – believed that we were working lawfully together.

I have been an MP since 2001. I take my responsibilities seriously.

I did not lie, and I believe that in their hearts the Committee know it.

But they have wilfully chosen to ignore the truth because from the outset their purpose has not been to discover the truth, or genuinely to understand what was in my mind when I spoke in the Commons.

Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court.

Most members of the Committee – especially the chair – had already expressed deeply prejudicial remarks about my guilt before they had even seen the evidence. They should have recused themselves.

In retrospect it was naive and trusting of me to think that these proceedings could be remotely useful or fair. But I was determined to believe in the system, and in justice, and to vindicate what I knew to be the truth.

It was the same faith in the impartiality of our systems that led me to commission Sue Gray. It is clear that my faith has been misplaced. Of course, it suits the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats, and the SNP to do whatever they can to remove me from parliament.

Sadly, as we saw in July last year, there are currently some Tory MPs who share that view. I am not alone in thinking that there is a witch-hunt under way, to take revenge for Brexit and ultimately to reverse the 2016 referendum result.

My removal is the necessary first step, and I believe there has been a concerted attempt to bring it about. I am afraid I no longer believe that it is any coincidence that Sue Gray – who investigated gatherings in Number 10 – is now the chief of staff designate of the Labour leader.

Nor do I believe that it is any coincidence that her supposedly impartial chief counsel, Daniel Stilitz KC, turned out to be a strong Labour supporter who repeatedly tweeted personal attacks on me and the government.

When I left office last year the government was only a handful of points behind in the polls. That gap has now massively widened.

Just a few years after winning the biggest majority in almost half a century, that majority is now clearly at risk.

Our party needs urgently to recapture its sense of momentum and its belief in what this country can do.

We need to show how we are making the most of Brexit and we need in the next months to be setting out a pro-growth and pro-investment agenda. We need to cut business and personal taxes – and not just as pre-election gimmicks – rather than endlessly putting them up.

We must not be afraid to be a properly Conservative government.

Why have we so passively abandoned the prospect of a Free Trade Deal with the US? Why have we junked measures to help people into housing or to scrap EU directives or to promote animal welfare?

We need to deliver on the 2019 manifesto, which was endorsed by 14 million people. We should remember that more than 17 million voted for Brexit.

I am now being forced out of parliament by a tiny handful of people, with no evidence to back up their assertions, and without the approval even of Conservative party members let alone the wider electorate.

I believe that a dangerous and unsettling precedent is being set.

The Conservative party has the time to recover its mojo and its ambition and to win the next election.

I had looked forward to providing enthusiastic support as a backbench MP. Harriet Harman’s committee has set out to make that objective completely untenable.

The Committee’s report is riddled with inaccuracies and reeks of prejudice but under their absurd and unjust process I have no formal ability to challenge anything they say.

The Privileges Committee is there to protect the privileges of parliament. That is a very important job. They should not be using their powers – which have only been very recently designed – to mount what is plainly a political hit-job on someone they oppose.

It is in no one’s interest, however, that the process the Committee has launched should continue for a single day further.

So I have today written to my Association in Uxbridge and South Ruislip to say that I am stepping down forthwith and triggering an immediate byelection.

I am very sorry to leave my wonderful constituency. It has been a huge honour to serve them, both as Mayor and MP.

But I am proud that after what is cumulatively a 15-year stint I have helped to deliver among other things a vast new railway in the Elizabeth Line and full funding for a wonderful new state of the art hospital for Hillingdon, where enabling works have already begun.

I also remain hugely proud of all that we achieved in my time in office as prime minister: getting Brexit done, winning the biggest majority for 40 years and delivering the fastest vaccine rollout of any major European country, as well as leading global support for Ukraine.

It is very sad to be leaving parliament – at least for now – but above all I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out, anti-democratically, by a committee chaired and managed, by Harriet Harman, with such egregious bias.

Good morning. Just four years after his landslide general election victory, Boris Johnson has resigned as an MP and a byelection in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat is now imminent.

The former prime minister’s decision to step down comes after an investigation into the Partygate scandal found he misled parliament and recommended a lengthy suspension from the House of Commons.

In a bitter 1,000-word statement, he attacked Rishi Sunak’s government, blaming the current prime minister for rising taxes, not being Conservative enough and failing to make the most of Brexit.

Johnson hinted that he may try to make a return to politics, saying he was “very sad to be leaving parliament – at least for now”.

You can read the the full report on Johnson’s resignation here from my colleagues Rowena Mason and Aubrey Allegretti.

You can also read analysis from our political editor, Pippa Crerar, here:

We’ll bring you all the latest updates and reaction through the day.