The National:

A TORY MP has been left with more than a little egg on his face after he suggested asking for Boris Johnson to resign over breaches of Covid rules was equivalent to asking him to step down for parking on a “red line”.

Mark Jenkinson, who won Workington his seat for the Tories in 2019 after having failed to do so for UKIP in 2015, has been widely criticised for the remarks he made in an attempt to defend Johnson from mounting calls for his resignation.

Speaking to ITV News, Jenkinson was asked if the Prime Minister’s position would be untenable if he was issued with a fixed penalty notice for breaking coronavirus laws following the Met’s partygate inquiry.

“Would you be asking me the same question if he had a speeding ticket, for example,” he replied.

“A fixed penalty notice for parking his car on a red line in London? I am not sure we would be having this conversation.”

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Kit Yates, the co-director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath, commented on the story to highlight the false equivalence Jenkinson had drawn.

“No @markjenkinsonmp,” Yates wrote, “breaking Covid rules is not the equivalent of getting a parking ticket”.

“You don't spread a deadly virus parking on a double yellow.

“You don't put the most vulnerable in our society in peril by parking on a double yellow.”

In a hostile response, Jenkinson berated Yates for saying he had drawn the comparison, insisting he had done “no such thing”.

In an impressive feat of mental gymnastics, the Tory MP went on: “As much as it suits the agenda of some, I didn’t ‘compare breaking Covid rules with getting a parking ticket’.

“I was asked if the Prime Minister should resign if he got a fixed penalty notice, and I turned the question round to the interviewer and asked if they’d be asking me that if the PM had got a speeding ticket or had parked on a red line - which of course they wouldn’t.”

The contradictory statements didn’t go unnoticed, with users pointing out that what Jenkinson had described was “literally a comparison”.

Unphased, the MP went on: “Fixed Penalty Notices are given out for prescribes [sic] minor breaches of law. They’re not fines, convictions or proof of guilt - all of which can only be handed out or determined by a court.

“I know we’ve descended into a political fake news cesspit, but facts matter.”

Unfortunately for Jenkinson, there were a wealth of legal experts on Twitter at the ready.

Adam Wagner, a barrister and leading expert on Covid laws, wrote: “This is wrong.

“A fixed penalty notice can only be given if the police *reasonably believe someone has committed a criminal offence* under the coronavirus regulations. They are not minor.

“On the contrary, the PM and government spent 2 years telling us they were deadly serious.”

“A reminder of how far we now are from ‘there were no parties, no rules were broken’,” The Mail’s Dan Hodges wrote.

Asked if he stood by his comments, Jenkinson accused The National of “making things up” and said that we had made many “assumptions”.

Asked if he could highlight one instance of what he meant, he twice declined.