Thursday, March 28

UK: Downing Street celebrated two more banned parties amid official mourning for Philip of Edinburgh | International



Employees of the Downing Street government complex held two more parties, drenched in alcohol, on April 16, when the United Kingdom was still immersed in severe social restrictions due to the pandemic, and the country was officially mourning the death of Elizabeth II’s husband, Prince Philip of Edinburgh, six days earlier. The news has been told in exclusive The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper that can be considered the Bible of the conservatives, especially of the hard wing. Defender of Brexit, and promoter of the political career of Boris Johnson – it was his task as a correspondent for that newspaper in Brussels that catapulted him to fame – the tone of extreme harshness that he uses to reveal the existence of these two new forbidden parties gives an idea of ​​the cornering to the prime minister.

On this occasion, the newspaper says, Johnson was not in the garden with the rest of the guests. He had gone to the official residence of rest, in Checkers. But it was once again under his jurisdiction and mandate that Downing Street staff broke the rules that were rigorously imposed on the rest of the country. Meetings inside of people from different homes were still forbidden then. The British were asked not to come to deposit flowers in Buckingham or Windsor to avoid crowds that violated the rules of social distancing.

The way the newspaper recounts what happened gives an idea of ​​the intensity of the anger unleashed, in the press and among Conservative deputies, against Johnson: “In a private chapel at Windsor Castle, the Prince’s coffin lay alone during the night. The next day the queen, with her face covered by a black mask, said goodbye to her husband of 73 years. Due to the imposition of the rules of social distancing, she sat alone. The atmosphere in Downing Street that afternoon was very different. Advisors and officials met, in two separate events, to celebrate the farewell of two colleagues, “says the newspaper’s political correspondent, Tony Diver.

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One of those who was leaving was James Slack, until then the Prime Minister’s Communications Director. An inheritance from the era of her predecessor, Theresa May. The other was one of Johnson’s official photographers. Alcohol ran in abundance, as they have narrated to the Telegraph some witnesses. There was laughter and dancing. The revelry went on until dawn. Some started in the offices and ended in the garden. Others, in the Downing Street basement, where even a loud laptop provided the music. Someone even went to the nearby supermarket with an empty briefcase that he filled with bottles of wine. In the end, the 30 or so people who made up the two parties ended up in the garden together.

The permanent deputy secretary of Johnson’s Cabinet Office, Sue Gray, is due to conclude in a few days her internal investigation into prohibited parties held in government agencies, including the one in which Johnson has admitted his presence. Two more parties are now joining his investigations. And the prime minister’s nightmare may not end here. In a country accustomed to watering alcohol at the end of each working day, the vast Downing Street garden was the perfect excuse to turn long work meetings into a party with a clear conscience. This is how many of the participants saw it at that time, without understanding that they profoundly altered the norms that were severely required of the rest of the country. One rule for them, another for the rest. Every new piece of information about the outrages of Downing Street during lockdown sinks Johnson’s popularity further to the ground and brings closer the possibility of a rebellion among Conservative MPs that will end his leadership and his career as prime minister.

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