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 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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Christmas party: the fines announced today were for an event Boris Johnson was said not to have attended. Here’s an image of him from one he did.
The Metropolitan Police have fined 50 Downing Street employees for taking part in an illegal Christmas party there in 2020.
Prime minister Boris Johnson is not among those being fined this time, as it is understood he did not attend – but the new fines illustrate the scale of lawbreaking in Whitehall while the rest of us were being forced to observe strict social distancing rules that kept us from our loved ones while they were dying – and afterwards.
It is now clear that staff at Downing Street and Whitehall enjoyed a culture of lawbreaking that lasted for months on end – possibly more than a year – under the noses of Boris Johnson and his senior government ministers.
Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak have already been served with fines, and with the prime minister believed to have attended at least three of the 12 gatherings under Met Police investigation. Also fined was Johnson’s wife Carrie, who had no reason to be anywhere near Downing Street employees under any circumstances at the time.
The announcement of the new fines must be like a noose tightening around Johnson’s throat; the police investigation is not close to being over – and a second, more detailed report from Cabinet Office civil servant Sue Gray, set to follow once the last fine has been served, threatens to be more damning than all of the penalty notices put together.
Johnson says he will have “plenty to say” about the scale of the lawbreaking “when the thing’s finished”.
But why won’t he say anything about it now?
He knows what happened and whether he took part in it.
But he has refused to provide any information himself, leaving it to investigators to discover the damning evidence – such as that which led to his first fine. If you are a UK citizen, your prime minister is a criminal.
And the decision to force others to drag out the incriminating information simply makes him look worse. We know he is a habitual liar so his determination to hide the facts should be no surprise – but if he is found to have lied to Parliament, he will have broken the Ministerial Code, and the refusal to apologise for doing so, plus the failure to admit his crimes, will make any such offence worse.
So it seems to This Writer that, at the end of the day, Boris Johnson won’t need to say “plenty”. His only option will be summed up in two words: “I resign.”
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Keir Starmer: he has absolutely no intention of quitting as Labour Party leader – but that’s exactly what he has promised to do if the police find him to have broken lockdown rules. What if his bluff is called?
It’s a big show of bravado but it could backfire badly for the most right-wing leader Labour has ever had.
Keir Starmer has said he will stand down as Labour Party leader if the police find him guilty of breaching Covid-19 lockdown rules in April 2021.
This Site has discussed the circumstances and the various claims here and here.
Culture Minister Chris Philp has accused the Labour leader trying to “pressure the police into clearing him”, which he called “deeply inappropriate”.
But that is not Starmer’s problem.
He has painted himself into a corner.
What are voters going to do if the police don’t clear him – and he decides not to quit after all?
You can be sure that he has absolutely no intention of going, no matter what happens.
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All in it together: neither Boris Johnson nor Keir Starmer fared well in the local government elections, and both may have broken Covid-19 lockdown laws. So it may be appropriate for both their jobs to be in danger.
There’s no doubt about it: the local elections have been a disaster for the Conservatives – and far from a victory for the Labour Party.
The Tories have lost 490 council seats in England, Wales and Scotland, with blame being placed squarely on the shoulders of Boris Johnson for his Partygate scandal and his failure to keep the cost of living within reasonable levels.
Conservative MPs are certain to be discussing whether Johnson has a future as prime minister over the next few days, before starting to make decisions about it after the new Parliamentary session begins.
They will also discuss the policy direction of Johnson’s government, with Yeovil MP Marcus Fysh quoted by the BBC as saying, “I do think radical change in the policy is required and, if it doesn’t happen, there really isn’t an electoral future for the party, because I think it will get crucified at the next election having bombed the economy.
“And if the team [running the government] is not able to adapt to reality, then the team needs to make way for someone else.”
But Labour – or at least Keir Starmer’s side of it – is in an equally precarious situation after voters gave a lukewarm response to his offer.
His party made some gains in London – and crowed about taking over Westminster, Wandsworth and Barnet councils from the Tories – but lost Harrow council to the Tories, while the mayoralties of Croydon and Tower Hamlets also went to a Tory and to Lutfur Rahman and his Aspire organisation respectively.
Labour gains outside London were hardly worth mentioning. It took the new Cumberland unitary authority, and Southampton – but failed to take authorities where it had been expected to make gains, including Hartlepool, Peterborough, Redditch and Ipswich.
While the Tories have lost support in the south of England, Labour lost more in the north. It seems to have drained from both parties to the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.
Of all Labour’s net gains – 137 seats, 65 of them were in Wales where the party is led by “continuity Corbyn” First Minister Mark Drakeford. The contrast is made more clear if we compare Labour’s gains with those of the Greens.
In England, Labour gained 52 seats while the Greens gained 60.
In Scotland, Labour won 20 seats with the Greens close behind on 16.
But in Wales, Labour was boosted by 65 seats, while the Greens could only muster up an extra eight.
The message is clear: the voting public doesn’t want Starmer’s tepid Tory policies; we want a genuine alternative to the Conservative nightmare that has engulfed the UK for more than 12 years, and we won’t be told his party of empty suits is the only alternative.
Indeed, as Skwawkboxquoted a left-winger in Harrow: “Despite expelling their best activists, despite purging all the left who wanted to stand despite disenfranchising in a most brutal persistent fashion, [Labour has] shown a talent for catastrophe with all [its] handpicked candidates.”
But you won’t hear that from Starmer himself! He’s living in a fantasy England where Labour is on the crest of a wave: “From the depths in 2019 we are back on track now for the general election, showing what the change that we’ve done, the hard change that we’ve done in the last two years, what a difference it has made.”
He actually claimed the results marked a “massive turning-point for the Labour Party”.
So perhaps it is just as well that he is about to have his attention occupied by a police investigation into whether he broke the law by having a beer in a Labour MP’s office during Covid-19 lockdown.
Durham Police had said it would not re-open an investigation into the incident in April last year, when Starmer was taking part in an online event ahead of a by-election in neighbouring Hartlepool.
But immediately after the local elections took place, the service changed its story, saying it had received “significant new information” but had delayed an announcement until after the vote.
If the finding is that the Labour leader did break the law, he will face calls from Tory MPs demanding that he resign. Sauce for the goose; he has demanded Boris Johnson’s resignation after the prime minister was fined for the same offence, after all. And if Starmer is fined, both leaders will be said to have lied about it.
But there is a significant difference between them: Johnson drew up the rules by which he demanded the rest of us should live, and it was on his behalf that police forces across the UK enforced those rules. He then deliberately broke those rules. And then he lied about having broken them to Parliament, which is an offence for which an MP may be expelled.
Starmer may have merely broken the rules while believing he was following them.
Ultimately, the difference may be irrelevant; Starmer has failed to win convincingly in a midterm election and is therefore unlikely to win a general election, so his party’s “grey suits” may use the so-called “BeerGate” affair as an excuse to remove him.
Either way, it seems clear that neither the Tory nor Labour leader should feel secure in their jobs.
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Boris Johnson: “Drunk? At a party? Me? How would anybody know the difference?”
Should we be grateful to former Tory attorney-general Jeremy Wright for reminding us that, if Boris Johnson is found to have attended or known about rule-breaking No 10 parties, he’ll have to resign?
This Writer reckons so; it’s important to keep the facts in mind because otherwise, one of Johnson’s cronies will slither in and pretend they’re different – which is what they’re trying to do.
Mr Wright’s reminder is that Johnson will have no escape route, because he will have misled Parliament when he said no rules were broken.
Meanwhile, here comes Johnson’s personal lawyer to claim – desperately – that – even if he attended gatherings found to be illegal parties – he broke no rules if he went back to work immediately afterwards and did not drink excessively.
The biggest problem with this argument is that it is clearly nonsense. If he drank anything at all, or came into contact with anyone at all in a social setting, then he broke the rules.
Mr Wright’s test of culpability is much simpler – and therefore, far more believable. In a letter to his own constituents, he states:
“If the prime minister has attended events he knew broke the rules, or was aware of events he knew broke the rules, he should not have advised the House of Commons, on several occasions, that as far as he was aware, no rules were broken there.
“Doing so in those circumstances would be misleading the House and must in my view lead to his resignation or removal from office.”
That’s good to know, at a time when Johnson is expected to receive a fixed-penalty notice from the Metropolitan Police – for attending rule-breaking parties at 10 Downing Street.
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Boris Johnson: his self-inflicted troubles are piling up.
The revelations are coming out thick and fast now, and all Boris Johnson can do now is react with an apology.
It’s the worst possible situation for him because he doesn’t know what’s coming next and cannot prepare; he can only take the rap and hope the public get outrage fatigue.
And we’re not getting tired of being angry at all.
The latest revelation is that the former head of the civil service Covid taskforce – the team responsible for drawing up Covid restrictions – held a leaving party during lockdown in 2020.
Kate Josephs, now chief executive of Sheffield City Council, has tweeted a statement in which she says she had drinks with colleagues on the evening of 17 December.
It does seem odd that she has decided to make this statement unilaterally.
Perhaps she feared the consequences if it came to light from another source.
While it doesn’t seem to involve Boris Johnson directly, it is still hugely damaging to his administration because it means the person who designed the lockdown restrictions that the rest of us had to observe or face the wrath of the law was happy to break them herself.
The implication is that this assumption runs across Johnson’s government; they all thought they could do what they liked.
That’s the kind of attitude that only spreads from the top downward.
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The UK’s leaders – on both sides of the political divide – are insane.
With millions of people infected with the Omicron variant (and other variants) of Covid-19 over the Christmas period, many thousands hospitalised, and the National Health Service pushed beyond its limits in attempting to cope, hindsight tells us there should have been a lockdown the instant Omicron was discovered.
But Tory education secretary Nadhim Zahawi – the Tory who infamously claimed public money as expenses so he could heat his stables, interviewed by the BBC’s Sophie Raworth on Sunday morning, attacked Labour’s Wes Streeting for advocating just such an approach!
And – worse still – Streeting then insisted on correcting the record, pointing out that he did not call for a lockdown and posting video evidence to prove it:
How does this make Labour look better?
Streeting just admitted he supported a plan that has killed hundreds of people, hospitalised thousands, and may force millions to live with Long Covid for years to come, while crippling the National Health Service that was created by a previous Labour government.
And Zahawi just admitted that it was Tory policy to cause those hundreds of deaths, hospitalise those thousands of people, infect millions with Long Covid and attack the NHS.
Both the Tories and Labour have disgraced themselves.
Zahawi made matters worse for the Tory government by lying about investment in the NHS, repeating claims about the recruitment of nurses and doctors that were proved to be false, long ago.
I’ll hand you over to Peter Stefanovic for those facts:
How can UK news shows still be allowing Government Ministers to repeat, unchallenged, statements made by the Prime Minister long since proven to be barefaced lies?
After what we have witnessed in the first week of Parliament they need to step up
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Time of her life: Therese Coffey danced (badly) and sang (off-key) as her government removed the Universal Credit uplift that has been a lifeline for millions of people. Then she went back to work after the Tory conference and carried right on partying, according to the Mirror.
We all knew Therese Coffey likes to party hard…
5.5 million families woke up £1040-a-year worse off as their universal credit was cut.
While they were sleeping, the secretary of state for work and pensions was doing karaoke. pic.twitter.com/8OSEN5lwNc
… but it turns out that she doesn’t confine these activities to the Conservative Party conference.
While the rest of us were in Covid-19 lockdown, and hospitality and office parties were banned, she and political staff at the Department for Work and Pensions in Caxton House, London, were raving it up into the early hours of the morning.
And yes – this does include an event last Christmas, according to the Mirror:
The Mirror has been told ‘gatherings’ in Ms Coffey’s office throughout the pandemic were an open secret, with one source saying “even during lockdown, there were parties all the time.”
Bottles of wine and beer were routinely found between staff members’ salads and sandwiches in fridges at the department, to be drunk at the informal, late-night soirees.
A DWP insider said: “There is a constant flow of booze in the office.”
At one such occasion during last year’s festive season, Ms Coffey handed out Christmas presents to her team.
Challenged about these events a DWP spokesperson didn’t deny them. Instead, it was insisted that “DWP officials followed government guidance” while it was also admitted that a core team “regularly worked late into the evening and on a number of occasions they ate takeaway food and drank some alcohol”.
You’ll like the next bit: “No karaoke took place.”
Maybe not, but an occasion in which staff stayed late into the night drinking alcohol and the Secretary of State handed out presents to them is clearly a social event that was clearly banned, according to government guidance.
Unless the government had different guidance for itself than for the rest of us?
The DWP’s constant bingeing can be added to an ever-growing list which includes Downing Street events on November 13 and possibly 20, December 15 and 18, plus one at the Department for Education while Tier 2 rules were in place, and a “boozy celebration” in November 2020 to mark Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spending review.
Sunak, Johnson, Gavin Williamson and now Therese Coffey: these Tory ministers are turning into a regular Rogues’ Gallery.
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