Boris Johnson confirms he attended a party in Downing Street during lockdown last May. And he presented his “apologies” on Wednesday during a question-and-answer session in front of Parliament under extreme tension. From his statements, he believed “implicitly” that it was a working meeting.
In front of the deputies, he explained that he believed that the event respected the sanitary rules then in force, assuming the “responsibility” of the “errors” which were made.
Labor opposition leader Keir Starmer has called for the resignation of the British Prime Minister. “His defense of saying he didn’t know he was at a party is so ridiculous it’s actually insulting to the British public,” Keir Starmer said at the weekly government questioning session. “Will he now have the decency to resign?” “, He added, accusing the conservative leader of” lying like a tooth puller “.
Faced with a series of revelations at the end of last year on parties organized in circles of power in defiance of health rules to fight once morest the coronavirus in 2020, the government of Boris Johnson and circles of power are singled out for a ten parties organized in the midst of the pandemic when the British had to drastically reduce their contacts.
A video released in early December shows the Prime Minister’s then press secretary Allegra Stratton, along with other advisers, preparing answers to hypothetical questions from journalists on December 22, 2020, regarding an alleged Christmas party in Downing Street four days earlier. A colleague then asks him if there was indeed a “Christmas party” on December 18, to which Allegra Stratton responds, jokingly: “I have returned home”. And the counselor, baffled, to kick in touch: “Wait, wait, uh … What’s the answer?” »She asks her colleague, between hesitation and embarrassed smiles. “This fictitious party was a business meeting… And there was no social distancing,” she finally laughs.
The ITV channel once more revealed Monday evening the existence of an email sent to a hundred people by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, Martin Reynolds, on May 20, 2020. “Bring your bottles”, launched the invitation which called to “take advantage of the good weather” during a drink “with social distancing” in the gardens of the Prime Minister’s residence. About thirty or forty people had responded to the invitation, according to the press, including the head of government and his fiancée Carrie whom he married shortly following.
A vote of no confidence within the party?
In front of the deputies, Boris Johnson explained that he should have estimated that if the event might “technically” be considered as returning in the rules, the perception of the British, prevented from meeting their relatives, might be quite different. “I apologize from the bottom of my heart,” he said. He claimed to take “responsibility” for the “mistakes” that were made.
If he continues to refuse to leave, a vote of no confidence within the party, requiring 54 letters to be triggered, would be enough to overthrow him. Unlikely in the immediate future, this option is however no longer taboo among the conservatives, reluctant to bother with leaders in turmoil and who might prefer the Minister of Finance Rishi Sunak or the head of diplomacy Liz Truss.
If this crisis around respect for the rules appears to be the most serious for Boris Johnson, it is far from being the first. He has already been confronted with the storms caused by the displacement through England in full confinement of his ex-adviser Dominic Cummings and his ex-Minister of Health Matt Hancock had to resign following being filmed kissing a collaborator, in defiance of the anti-Covid rules.
