A POLITICIAN has given an emotional account of why Partygate matters to him after the Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fined for breaking lockdown rules he helped create.

Tim Farron, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, said Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak 'must resign' after being issued with fines for attending a birthday party for the PM in Downing Street June 19, 2020.

And now he has spoken to the Westmorland Gazette about why he thinks it's so important.

He said: "It seems absolutely obvious that they both should resign – you can't be a lawmaker and a lawbreaker.

"I was speaking to some elderly residents yesterday, lots of them who had been completely locked down for months on end, some of them had spent Christmas on their own or known people who didn’t even make it to Christmas.

"Those laws were set by the Government led by Johnson and Sunak. I don’t disagree with those laws, but they were there for a reason – to protect the NHS.

"The people who set those rules broke them habitually and then lied about it, pretending it hadn’t happened.

"We shouldn’t even have had the police investigation, integrity matters in politics and the Prime Minister thinks he’s better than they – and we - are.

"The fact that it happened so many times shows that it’s a failure of leadership.

"If they don’t go, what does that say about standards in public life?

"People protecting the PM have insulted the electorate and we can deliver judgement at the ballot box – the one language the Conservatives will understand.

"And now with the latest defences they are using the suffering of the Ukrainians as a political tool and it’s insulting."

Mr Johnson has paid the fine for attending his birthday bash in Downing Street and offered a "full apology" for the lockdown-busting event.

The Prime Minister said it "didn't occur" to him that the gathering in the Cabinet Room to mark his 56th birthday was a violation of coronavirus rules.