LABOUR blasted “tinpot despot” Boris Johnson today as the party vows to force a vote on the “sinister” watering down of the ministerial code.

An opposition day in Parliament will be tabled this week to debate ministerial standards after the PM published a watered-down version of the ministerial code while he himself faces a standards committee investigation into deliberately misleading MPs over industrial-scale rule-breaking.

The Prime Minister announced last week that investigations by the Independent Commissioner for Standards, Lord Geidt would require approval by him and that he would also retain a power to veto investigations. 

Mr Johnson ended the long-standing principle that breaking the ministerial code should be an automatic resigning offence, setting a dangerous precedent in which ministers who commit offences such as bullying, sexual assault or bribery would not automatically have to resign. 

A government policy statement said it was “disproportionate” to expect ministers to resign or face the sack for “minor” violations of the code.

The update gives the Prime Minister the option of ordering a lesser sanction such as “some form of public apology, remedial action or removal of ministerial salary for a period.”

And the PM rewrote the foreword to the code, removing all references to integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, honesty and leadership in the public interest. 

In its opposition day debate, Labour will ask MPs to agree that ministers who commit serious breaches of the ministerial code will have to resign.  

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis denied that the PM was attempting to “water down standards” when interviewed on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme.

“People still have to resign if they mislead the House or something serious,” he said.

But Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “Boris Johnson is behaving like a tinpot despot and is trampling all over the principles of public life.

“Many decent Conservative MPs are deeply uncomfortable with Johnson’s behaviour, and they now have the chance to stop his sinister attempts at watering down standards and integrity in our democracy.

“This Prime Minister simply cannot be trusted to uphold standards in government while his conduct sinks further into the gutter, and he gives the green light to corruption.

“It’s time to stop the rot that this Prime Minister has created at the heart of government and restore standards in public life.”