Boris Johnson raises a glass at Lee Cain’s leaving party, surrounded by glasses and bottles of alcohol: he says he didn’t know it was a party at the time.
Boris Johnson wants us to believe he did not “intentionally or recklessly” mislead Parliament about the parties he attended in Downing Street while the UK was in Covid-19 lockdown. Why should we?
The inquiry into what happened has a threefold purpose. It intends to find out:
What Boris Johnson said to the House of Commons
Whether what he said was correct or whether it was misleading
How quickly and comprehensively any misleading statement to the House was corrected
We know he said no parties took place and that this was not true.
So the question is about how quick he was to correct his misleading statements.
He says he did this at the earliest opportunity, which was after Sue Grey’s report was published and a police investigation into the parties had ended (and he had been fined). He says he didn’t want to give a “half-baked account, before the facts had been fully and properly established”.
But he knew the facts, didn’t he – after having participated in what happened?
I’m listening to Politics Live while I’m writing this, and have just been reminded of his words at one such event – that it was “the least socially-distanced” event at the time. He knew the rules because he announced them. Is it credible for him to claim innocence?
This is what the inquiry will have to decide.
More booze on the table, and no social distancing: Boris Johnson reckons he didn’t realise this was a Christmas party at the time.
More sinister is Johnson’s attempt to impugn the motives of the Commons Privileges Committee, stating that he considers it to be “partisan” and not to have done all it could to ensure “fairness”.
This is nothing but a smear.
It makes him look like a guilty man, flailing, trying to find anything that could call a verdict against him into question.
In that sense, it seems highly ill-advised.
He doesn’t know what the inquiry’s decision will be. But now he has already turned public opinion against him.
Boris Johnson: his evidence to the Partygate inquiry might be quite short – after all, his inquisitors really have only to show him this image of himself at a party he said he never attended and ask him if he was there.
This is one to put in your diary:
Boris Johnson will give public evidence about whether he misled MPs over Partygate on [Wednesday] March 22, the Privileges Committee has confirmed.
The former prime minister will be questioned by the cross-party committee from 14:00 GMT in a televised session.
But Mr Johnson has rejected this and said he believes the process will “vindicate” him.
I’m looking forward to this one, very much!
In fact, I might have a ‘Partygate party’ and invite friends to watch it with me. Wanna come along?
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Boris Johnson (right): apparently he wasn’t at a Christmas Party in this image – notwithstanding the bottle of bubbly and the tinsel.
MPs investigating whether Boris Johnson knowingly misled Parliament over the so-called ‘Partygate’ scandal have said he may have done so on four occasions, and breaches of Covid-19 rules should have been “obvious” to him.
An initial report by the Commons’ Privileges Committee stated that Johnson “did not correct” misleading statements he made in the Commons at the “earliest opportunity”, as would have been expected from an MP.
He had “personal knowledge” about lockdown gatherings in No 10 which he could have disclosed to MPs, the committee said.
“Evidence strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Mr Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings,” the report stated.
And there was “evidence that those who were advising Mr Johnson about what to say to the press and in the House were themselves struggling to contend that some gatherings were within the rules”.
Furthermore, the inquiry had been held up by a “reluctance” from Mr Johnson’s government “to provide unredacted evidence”. Some material “had been redacted even though it was already in the public domain”.
The unredacted disclosure of all relevant material was finally made by Rishi Sunak’s government on November 18 last year.
Johnson himself is still saying there is no evidence that he knowingly misled Parliament or failed to update Parliament in a timely manner. He’s sticking to his story that when he said the rules and guidance had been followed, that was his honest belief.
But he is also saying that the findings of an investigation by former Cabinet Office civil servant Sue Gray should not be trusted because she has now joined the Labour Party as its chief of staff. There is no evidence to support his claim that she was politically biased.
Johnson is due to give evidence to MPs later this month – and the session is likely to be televised.
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Boris Johnson is pictured toasting departing Downing Street comms chief Lee Cain at a leaving party on November 13, 2020, that the prime minister told Parliament he never attended: the Metropolitan Police never fined him for attending this event. Why?
This is highly interesting!
The High Court will hear the first stage of a challenge against the Metropolitan Police over the force’s investigation into former prime minister Boris Johnson’s attendance at Number 10 parties during lockdown.
Mr Johnson received a fixed penalty notice (FPN) over a birthday party in the Cabinet Room in June 2020, but faced no further action over other gatherings covered by the Met’s Operation Hillman inquiry into events in No 10 and Whitehall.
Legal campaign group the Good Law Project (GLP) has launched a legal challenge, alongside former deputy assistant commissioner of the Met Lord Paddick, against the force over its investigation.
The GLP says the Met failed to send questionnaires to Mr Johnson, and has since failed to explain why, or how the force concluded his attendance at other events was lawful.
The group will ask Mr Justice Swift to grant permission for a judicial review of the Met’s handling of the investigation at a hearing in London at 10.30am on Wednesday.
It seems the issue is why Boris Johnson (and others?) seem to have avoided being penalised for attending other parties, besides those for which they have been fined:
Jo Maugham, GLP director, said: “We can’t understand – and the Met won’t disclose – how Boris Johnson dodged fines for going to parties that junior civil servants were fined for attending.
“But what it looks like is special treatment for the powerful.”
I’m hoping a judicial review is granted, and can happen before the Partygate inquiry takes place. I wonder how any decision here would impact on what happens there?
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This is more for information than any other reason.
Buy popcorn.
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Boris Johnson not participating in a Downing Street party.
Boris Johnson is to give evidence to the Parliamentary inquiry into whether he knowingly misled MPs about parties at 10 Downing Street during Covid-19 lockdown, in a few weeks.
The inquiry has finally received all the documentary evidence it requested from Number 10 (apparently staff started shredding information and discussing the stories they would tell as soon as the story broke that parties had been happening, so it will be interesting to see what has been received).
ITV’s Paul Brand, who broke the Partygate story back in late 2021, has launched a podcast discussing what happened – and what will happen – and discussed it with the hosts of Good Morning Britain.
It features interviews with people who were directly involved in what was happening and will include new revelations, as he revealed:
It’s interesting that it’s said Theresa May would have been shocked if she had been PM and parties were found to have been going on downstairs.
But Theresa May’s opinions are now notoriously changeable: as PM she forbade ministers from visiting Saudi Arabia because of world events at the time, but as a backbencher she has been happy to rake in the money by giving a speech there.
Also interesting is the revelation that people in Downing Street were shocked that Johnson denied knowledge of the parties – and “started shredding evidence immediately – as soon as those claims started coming out; corroborating their stories; preparing for the Metropolitan Police investigation and Sue Gray’s investigation”.
The podcast – Partygate: The Inside Story – is available (for example) here.
The pundits point out that the investigation could have Johnson removed from Parliament for good – if he’s suspended there could be a by-election. And he won’t come back as PM (to replace Rishi Sunak) because if he does, Partygate comes back with him.
Phil Moorhouse expands on these points on his A Different Bias channel, here:
The really interesting part of this one is that Johnson supporters like Nadine Dorries and the Conservative Democratic Organisation may actually turn other Tories against him with their agitating for him to replace Sunak.
Their timetable is likely to be that, after a major Conservative loss of council seats at the elections in May, they will launch a “confidence” vote against Sunak as soon as they can, which is a year after he became PM – some time in November, most likely.
Sunak would win this vote, but not overwhelmingly, which is fatal for a sitting prime minister. He’d be on his way out, paving the way for Johnson to return…
Unless he is found guilty of at least not correcting the record or of knowingly lying to Parliament and the Privileges Committee (in charge of the inquiry) recommends a punishment.
If that’s a suspension of at least 10 days, there will be a recall petition in his constituency which will be successful. He will lose his Parliamentary seat and there will be a by-election in which he may stand – but will lose.
And then he won’t be able to stand against Sunak because he won’t be a member of Parliament.
I love the part of this clip where Phil says Johnson’s defence is “that he is monumentally stupid and cannot recognise a party when he sees one”!
Whatever happens, it’s looking bad for Boris Johnson.
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Rishi Sunak’s third Prime Minister’s Questions started badly for the struggling new prime minister, when he was asked to deny peerages to any Tory who received a fine for partying during Covid-19 lockdown.
This Writer doesn’t like the questioner – Neil Coyle is a far-right Labour MP who was once suspended from the party for alleged racism against a British-Chinese journalist, and who has been accused of anti-Semitism.
None of what he did today (November 9, 2022) should excuse him of those transgressions if he committed them.
But the point he raised was good and deserves to be amplified at a time when there are concerns that former prime minister Boris Johnson is trying to use the honours system to give perks to political friends who don’t deserve them.
Shaun Bailey, the former London mayoral candidate who faced a backlash for attending a mid-lockdown Christmas party (and who also happens to belong to an ethnic minority – I mention this with reference to the allegations against Coyle but would merely observe that it was probably unwise for him to raise this question, considering his history), was also said to be on the former prime minister’s list.
And his line that Tories who jeered at him could “all go to Australia and eat kangaroo testicles for all I care”, in recognition of Matt Hancock’s imminent appearance on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, is a good one.
Sunak proved once again that he is a weak prime minister; he didn’t answer the question and instead fell back on a list of what he says the Tory government did – a list that many may find objectionable:
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Not a party? This shot was taken during a Christmas quiz at Downing Street – note the tinsel around one person’s neck and the open bottle of alcoholic beverage. Johnson later said all Covid-19 rules were followed at these events – including those for which he and others were fined. Was he lying? That’s what the current inquiry is tasked with determining.
Why is a Cabinet Office lawyer advising a private individual – Boris Johnson – on Partygate?
Apparently a decision by the Commons Privileges committee, that is investigating whether Johnson misled Parliament over the Partygate scandal, that it does not have to prove that he intended to do so, to prove contempt of Parliament.
But Lord Pannick, the legal eagle hired by the government to examine the committee’s approach, said the inquiry needs to establish “that Mr Johnson intended to mislead the House [of Commons] – that is that he knew that what he told the House was incorrect”.
He added that that “the threat of contempt proceedings for unintentional mistakes would have a seriously chilling effect” on MPs.
He said the committee’s approach is inconsistent with past cases where intent was taken into account and the process would be deemed “unlawful” if it was tested in a court.
And he criticised the committee for taking evidence anonymously and said Mr Johnson should be told the detail of the case against him.
The committee’s own lawyer, former judge Sir Ernest Ryder, has already said potential witnesses may not be prepared to give evidence if their identity is made public.
The committee’s spokesperson said it will respond to the other criticisms in due course.
But the fact that Pannick was commissioned to act on Johnson’s behalf suggests that the government is still trying to interfere with Parliamentary process and has learned nothing from the results of – for example – the Owen Paterson scandal.
It seems we won’t be free of the stench of corruption around Boris Johnson – even after he has stopped being prime minister.
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Boris Johnson: regarding his honesty, public opinion tends to go against him, as this graphic shows.
Isn’t it scandalous that some Conservative MPs are trying to use their position and influence to pre-judge an investigation into whether Boris Johnson misled Parliament?
According to the BBC,
allies of the outgoing PM dismissed the investigation by the Commons Privileges Committee as a “witch hunt” and “rigged”.
The inquiry will examine whether he obstructed Parliament by telling it that pandemic rules had been followed [when in fact more than a dozen rule-breaking parties are known to have happened, with many more suspected].
The probe could lead to Mr Johnson facing a by-election to remain an MP, if it leads to his suspension from the Commons for more than 10 days.
Apparently the comments started flying after the committee said it would not have to prove that Johnson deliberately misled MPs to show he committed a “contempt of Parliament” by obstructing its work.
Johnson loyalist and Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said the “Machiavellian” inquiry was “the means to a by-election” and called on Tory MPs to “have no part in it”.
Environment Minister Lord Goldsmith, whom Mr Johnson made a peer in December 2019, said the inquiry was “clearly rigged” and an “obscene abuse of power”.
Backbench Tory MP Michael Fabricant also accused the committee of wanting to “get rid of Boris Johnson” and “changing the rules”.
In response,
one of the Tory MPs on the committee, Sir Bernard Jenkin, said the committee had a “duty” to carry out the inquiry and accused Ms Dorries of waging a “terrorist campaign to try and discredit the committee”.
So now, in a move to halt this internecine fighting within the Tory Party, chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris has demanded decorum:
“May I urge caution against any further comments in the media about the Privileges Committee and especially its Clerk and Members,” wrote Mr Heaton-Harris, who is in charge of party discipline.
“Invariably these comments will be misinterpreted by those who do not wish to help us.”
Johnson has denied deliberately misleading MPs. The committee – with a majority of Conservative MPs – has said it has not “prejudged” any aspect of its inquiry, and the parliamentary officials advising it are politically impartial.
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How will the Met Police justify this? Boris Johnson is pictured toasting departing Downing Street comms chief Lee Cain at a leaving party on November 13, 2020, that the prime minister told Parliament he never attended.
We are, today, issuing formal proceedings against the Met Police for their apparent continued failure to properly investigate Boris Johnson’s attendance at three lockdown gatherings, in November and December 2020 and January 2021, and their refusal to answer our legitimate questions about how they reached this decision.
The public have a right to know what really went on inside the Partygate investigation. The Met’s actions have raised grave concerns about the deferential way in which they are policing those in power. It stands in stark contrast to how ordinary people were policed during lockdown.
It was only after we threatened to sue the Met in January 2022 that they agreed to investigate at all and the Prime Minister was eventually fined for attending a lockdown gathering in June 2020.
We’ve given the Met multiple opportunities to explain why he was reportedly not sent questionnaires regarding these three other gatherings, nor issued with fixed penalty notices for attending them, when a number of civil servants and officials who did received both.
On 15 June, we wrote to the Met, giving them a week to finally live up to their duty to be honest and upfront with the public.
Rather than work with us in a spirit of transparency, or address to the substantive issues raised in our case, their response focuses on our right to bring this action at all (known as ‘standing’). Yet even here, they haven’t properly explained themselves. We asked them who, if not us, would have standing and they refused to answer.
We strongly believe that Good Law Project and our co-claimant, former senior Met Officer Lord Paddick, have standing to represent the public interest in this matter. If we aren’t allowed to bring this claim, we don’t believe anyone else will be in a position to do so.
So now we’re forced to sue the Met for a second time.
Lord Paddick: “Members of the public will have seen Boris Johnson raising a glass at a party that he was apparently not even questioned about, and thought ‘If that had been me, I would have been fined.’ We are determined that the Prime Minister should be held to the same standard as the rest of us.”
From its failure to hold the Prime Minister and those around him to account for their lockdown breaches, to shocking reports of institutional misogyny, discrimination and sexual harassment, the public’s faith in the Met has been shaken to the core this year. This is their moment to finally begin repairing the damage their inaction has done.
Our challenge is grounded in a single, simple idea: for the law to have any meaning, it must apply equally to us all. The Met must explain their seeming lack of action in this matter. We won’t stop until the full story is uncovered.
The Met have until 22 July to respond. We will keep you updated.
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