An internal report on “partygate”, the scandal of parties in Downing Street during the confinement, concludes with “errors of leadership and judgment”. In it, senior civil servant Sue Gray, whose report was delivered to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday morning January 31, writes:
“There have been failures of leadership and judgment from different parts of Downing Street and the Cabinet Office at different times. Some events should not have been allowed. »
The publication of this report has kept the British press and politicians in suspense for several weeks.
An ongoing police investigation
Initially expected last week, the document was slow to be published, according to the press due to questions regarding what may appear in it. The police have indeed also opened an investigation, and asked that the report of Sue Gray does not include elements compromising this investigation.
“We can confirm that Sue Gray has provided an update on her inquiry to the Prime Minister,” commented on Monday in a terse press release a spokesman for the Cabinet Office, the interministerial agency from which the work of the senior civil servant stems.
Downing Street had pledged to publish the report, before Boris Johnson made a statement in the House of Commons. This will take place Monday at 3:30 p.m. (4:30 p.m. Paris time), according to the agenda of the lower house of Parliament.
According to the British news agency PA, ” a version “ of his investigation was handed over to Boris Johnson. Sky News says the document delivered on Monday does not constitute “the complete and final report”, suggesting that it might be once the police investigation is complete.
Boris Johnson in turmoil
Raising fears of the publication of a watered-down version, British police provoked outrage on Friday by asking that this internal report be redacted from key elements so as not to harm their own investigations into several of these parties, potentially the most damaging to Boris Johnson.
The opposition parties demand its publication in its entirety.
These parties shocked the United Kingdom, which was then subject to strict confinements, and plunged Boris Johnson into a serious crisis threatening his retention in his post, the calls for the resignation having multiplied even in the conservative majority. Many members of his camp are waiting for the publication of the internal report to decide whether or not to try to oust him by means of a vote of no confidence.
Saying he understood the anger of the public, Boris Johnson had apologized for his “poor judgements”, but he defended himself for having broken the rules, claiming in particular to have thought that a party, where he had briefly gone in May 2020, was a “work event”.
“We will have to wait and see the outcome of the investigations, but of course I absolutely stand by what I have said in the past,” he said Monday, interviewed on television on the sidelines of a visit to the south-east of England.
To forget the scandals, the 57-year-old leader launched a counter-offensive, announcing on Monday a bill called “Brexit Freedoms” (“Brexit freedoms”) which aims to facilitate the process already underway to modify or abandon and replace the laws inherited from the European Union.
