Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologised and his adviser resigned on Wednesday after a video surfaced showing his staff laughing and joking about a party in Downing Street during a Christmas COVID-19 lockdown last year when such festivities were banned.
In leaked footage aired by ITV on Tuesday, Allegra Stratton – who was then Johnson’s press secretary – was shown at a 2020 Downing Street rehearsal for a daily briefing laughing and joking about a reported gathering.
In the video, a Johnson adviser asked Stratton, “I’ve just seen reports on Twitter that there was a Downing Street Christmas party on Friday night – do you recognise those reports?”
Stratton, standing before British flags at an official Downing Street lectern, said, “I went home.” She then laughed and smiled. “Hold on. Hold on. Um. Er. Arh.” She appears lost for words and looks up.
The PM said he shared people’s anger and had ordered an inquiry into whether rules had been broken.
At a noisy prime minister’s questions, Johnson said he had been repeatedly assured that no party took place and that he had been “shocked” by the emergence of the video.
He promised that Simon Case, the cabinet secretary and the UK’s most senior civil servant, would investigate the circumstances surrounding the video and the facts surrounding what happened on 18 December last year.
But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he was taking people for fools and the PM should just admit what had happened.
It is the latest misstep by an administration that has been criticised for its handling of a sleaze scandal, the awarding of COVID contracts, the refurbishment of Johnson’s Downing Street flat and the chaotic evacuations from Afghanistan.
With reports that the government could implement tougher COVID-19 measures as early as Thursday to try to slow the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant of the coronavirus, it could also persuade many people to ignore any new rules.
“I apologise unreservedly for the offence that it has caused up and down the country and I apologise for the impression that it gives,” Johnson told parliament.
Disciplinary action would be taken if it was found that rules were broken, he said.
“But I repeat … that I have been repeatedly assured since these allegations emerged, that there was no party and that no COVID rules were broken.”
He also pledged to “get on with the job”, accusing the opposition of trying to “muddy the waters about events or non-events of a year ago”.
Stratton, who was most recently the government’s COP26 climate summit spokesperson, tendered her resignation on Wednesday.
In a tearful statement, Stratton acknowledged that her comments “seemed to make light of the rules” and said she would “regret those remarks for the rest of my days”.
“I understand the anger and frustration that people feel,” she said, while not specifying whether a party took place.
