British police are investigating a gathering in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of 12 events held at the heart of the UK government that are being probed for possible violations of lockdown rules.
Gray’s team has passed to the police hundreds of documents and photographs in relation to the 12 events in 2020 and 2021 held while England was under COVID-19 restrictions.
According to Gray’s report, which was published on Monday, these include two gatherings held in Downing Street on Nov. 13, 2020, one of which took place in the flat shared by the prime minister and his wife Carrie Johnson, to mark “the departure of a special adviser.”
The “special adviser” almost certainly refers to Dominic Cummings, who used to be Johnson’s right-hand man in Number 10 but has since become one of his fiercest critics.
At the time, Johnson’s government had put England under its second national lockdown, which prohibited gatherings with people from other households except for permitted exceptions, including for work purposes.
The Metropolitan Police are also investigating a June 19, 2020 event in the Cabinet Room at Number 10 to mark Johnson’s 56th birthday.
The May 20, 2020 “bring your own booze” event in the Number 10 garden that Johnson attended for 25 minutes, apparently believing it was a work event, is also under investigation.
Gray said her team interviewed over 70 individuals, some more than once, and examined emails, WhatsApp messages, text messages, photographs, and building entry and exit logs.
Facing MPs in the House of Commons on Monday following the publication of the report, Johnson apologised again and insisted “I get it and I will fix it.”
He promised to make major changes to the way he runs the government, including by creating an Office of the Prime Minister with a permanent secretary to lead Number 10.
He also committed to publishing a fuller version of Gray’s report once the police investigation has concluded.
But the prime minister repeatedly refused to say whether he was present at the gathering held in his own flat on Nov. 13, 2020.
On Tuesday, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer repeated his call for Johnson to quit.
“The prime minister broke the rules, the prime minister lied about having broken the rules,” he told the BBC.
“There’s one person at the centre of this who has caused all of those problems and is subject to a criminal investigation because of his own behaviour. That’s why I genuinely think that the time has come for him to go.”
Conservative former Cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell, who publicly told Johnson in the Commons that he longer supports him, told the BBC that Number 10 is being run like a “medieval court” and the crisis is “doing very great damage” to the Conservative Party.
