UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he accepts “full responsibility” for the “partygate” scandal after an official inquiry blamed the “senior leadership” in his government for the culture that led to the COVID-19 breaches.
The widely anticipated report by senior civil servant Sue Gray, which was published on May 25, condemns the wider culture that had been allowed to develop under Johnson’s leadership.
“The events that I investigated were attended by leaders in government. Many of these events should not have been allowed to happen,” she said.
Gray said some of the more junior officials who attended the rule-breaking parties “believed that their involvement in some of these events was permitted given the attendance of senior leaders.”
“The senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for this culture,” she wrote.
Gray also said there were “multiple examples of a lack of respect and poor treatment of security and cleaning staff” during the events, which was “unacceptable.”
“Many will be dismayed that behaviour of this kind took place on this scale at the heart of government,” she said. “The public have a right to expect the very highest standards of behaviour in such places and clearly what happened fell well short of this.”
In a statement to the House of Commons shortly after the report was published, Johnson said he takes “full responsibility for everything that took place on [his] watch.”
But he sought to “set out the context” by stressing that No. 10 staff were working “extremely long hours” and “doing their best” to help the country during the pandemic, and therefore, it was “appropriate” for him “to recognise and to thank them for the work they had done” when he “briefly attended such gatherings.”
Johnson also reiterated he didn’t knowingly mislead the House of Commons when he said COVID-19 rules had been “followed at all times” in Downing Street, emphasising that what he told MPs was “what I believed to be true.”
But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the Sue Gray report “lays bare the rot” of the government and shows how people in No. 10 “treated the sacrifice of the British people with utter contempt.”
The report is “a monument to the hubris and arrogance” of a government that believed there was one rule for them and another rule for everyone else, he said.
Starmer urged Conservative MPs to oust the prime minister, saying: “The game is up. You cannot be a lawmaker and a lawbreaker.”
In response, Johnson accused Starmer of having a “sanctimonious obsession” with partygate and failing to hold himself to the same “high standards” that he demanded of the prime minister.
The leader of the opposition is currently being investigated by Durham Police over a curry-and-beer dinner with others at the end of a visit to Labour MP Mary Foy’s office in Durham on April 30, 2021, during an election campaign.
Starmer has vowed to resign as the Labour Party leader if police find that he broke lockdown rules.
