Complaint lodged against former foreign secretary as he continues to refuse to apologise for burqa comments

The Conservative party is coming under intense pressure to decide whether to take disciplinary action against Boris Johnson following his continued refusal to apologise for his controversial descriptions of fully veiled Muslim women.

A complaint about Johnson has been lodged with Tory party chairman Brandon Lewis, who is responsible for the party’s code of conduct which says that Tory MPs and other holders of public office should “foster respect and tolerance” in their work.

Lewis has to decide whether to launch disciplinary proceedings following a day of intense criticism of Johnson, largely from the liberal wing of the party, after he used a column in the Telegraph to compare fully veiled women to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”.

MP Dominic Grieve said the former foreign secretary was “not a fit and proper person” to lead the party and said he would quit the Tories if Johnson was elected leader. Writing in the Guardian, Baroness Warsi said his language had made “hate crime more likely”.

The party’s code of conduct says that MPs and other holders of public office should “not use their position to bully, abuse, victimise, harass or unlawfully discriminate against others”. It promises that complaints will be investigated “in a timely and confidential manner”.

Lord Sheikh, founder of the Conservative Muslim Forum, set up to encourage British Muslims to get involved in political life, told the Guardian that he had written to Lewis demanding that “serious action” be taken against the former foreign secretary and was awaiting a reply. “I think he should look at the impact of what Boris has said, because it will inflame Islamophobic behaviour.”

The peer added that he had received 30 abusive emails, eight of which were particularly “vile, absolutely horrible”, after he had first raised concerns about Johnson on BBC’s Newsnight on Tuesday and called on the party to withdraw the whip.

Lewis refused to respond to questions from reporters on Wednesday on how he would deal with the Johnson row. Lewis had personally asked him on Tuesday to apologise but Johnson, who is on holiday, has refused to do so. Friends of Johnson said they were not aware of any further contact from the party since.

Labour accused the Conservatives of failing to act. Naz Shah, Labour’s minister for equalities, said: “Presented with obvious Islamophobia from Boris Johnson, both Theresa May and Brandon Lewis have done nothing.”

No 10 indicated it had nothing further to add after May had called on Johnson and other people writing about Islam to “think very carefully about the language that they use” on a visit to Edinburgh on Tuesday evening.

The prime minister urged him to apologise and said she agreed with Lewis that Johnson should say sorry for his remarks, which she acknowledged had caused offence in the Muslim community.

Play Video 0:32 'Boris has caused offence' over burqa remarks, says Theresa May – video

Grieve, a former attorney general from the party’s left wing, said Johnson was not a suitable candidate to be prime minister. “If he were to become leader of the party, I for one wouldn’t be in it. I don’t regard him as a fit and proper person to lead a political party and certainly not the Conservative party,” the MP told the BBC.

Friends of Johnson claimed that the row was politically motivated, and that other MPs, including the former chancellor Ken Clarke, had made similar remarks comparing the burqa to a bag without similar reproach. Conor Burns, Johnson’s former parliamentary private secretary, tweeted that colleagues criticising him had not read the piece in full.

However, they were outnumbered by party critics. Warsi accused Johnson of making “hate crime more likely” with indefensible “dog whistle” references to Muslim women.

“Well, this approach is not just offensive, it’s dangerous. Johnson’s words have once again validated the view of those that ‘other’ Muslims. They send out a message that Muslim women are fair game,” the former cabinet minister wrote.

Monitoring group Tell Mama said last month that a record number of anti-Muslim attacks and incidents of abuse were reported last year, with women disproportionately targeted.

What Muslim women ought not to wear isn’t a matter for Boris Johnson | Letters Read more

Its most recent data showed that there had been a rise of 26% in verified reports of Islamophobic attacks in the UK in 2017, a total of 1,201. Six out of 10 victims were women, and a third of the attacks had taken place online.

Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said Johnson had made a series of carefully calculated remarks. “I think that this wasn’t an off-the-cuff slip, he wrote a column, he knew exactly what he was doing and I think it crossed from being provocative and starting a debate and actually it became rude and gratuitous,” she said.

One cabinet minister, Jeremy Wright, said Johnson should have chosen his language more carefully and that he was “sure on reflection” that he would want to reconsider the language he had used. Eric Pickles, a former Tory chairman, also said it would be “very sensible” for him to apologise.