Despite lockdown
Escalation in Johnson’s party scandal: At 10 Downing Street, the corks popped every Friday
Boris Johnson says he didn’t know about the parties
© Kirsty O’connor/PA Wire / DPA
The scandal surrounding banned parties in Boris Johnson’s seat of government has another twist. Celebrating despite lockdowns was apparently no exception – but a weekly routine.
Just “let off steam” – that was the declared goal of parties in the British government headquarters at 10 Downing Street in London. This becomes a problem for Prime Minister Boris Johnson because the parties apparently took place every week despite the lockdown – and he also encouraged them with the sentence above.
The British “Mirror” claims to have learned this from insiders. Accordingly, “Wine-time Fridays” was a fixed date in the digital calendars of around 50 employees of the government seat – every Friday between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Another detail shows how merry it was. According to this, the employees took turns who had to fill up the alcohol supplies in the nearby supermarket every week – and filled a whole suitcase each time. In December 2020, an extra refrigerator was delivered to keep the numerous champagne and wine bottles cold. There are even photos of it in the British media.
Drinking without rules
What would hardly have caused a stir in normal times is becoming a huge scandal for Johnson’s government. Because: The parties also took place while the strictest contact restrictions applied in Great Britain. When the fridge was delivered through a back door of Downing Street, Britons were told not to meet more than one person from another household. And then only for valid work reasons.
Wine season has a long tradition in Downing Street, reports The Times. Accordingly, those involved often drank late into the night, then slept off their intoxication on sofas in the office. Employees regularly had to remove numerous bottles and glasses from the offices in the morning.
What did Boris Johnson know?
For Johnson, the revelation comes at the worst possible time. The government only had to apologize to Queen Elizabeth on Thursday after it became known that two parties had also taken place at government headquarters the night before her husband Prince Philip’s funeral last April. Due to the strict corona regulations, the queen was forced to survive the funeral all by herself.
Johnson had previously claimed not to have known about the parties. The new revelations leave that position on increasingly shaky ground. “Boris kept stopping by for a quick chat while they were drinking. It was on the way to his apartment and the door was usually open. He knew about it and encouraged it,” an employee told the Mirror. “He could see clearly that everyone was drinking,” agreed another. “Sometimes he’d come in and be like, ‘Hello everyone, have you had a rough week? Blow off some steam? Great.'”
Is the party over soon?
This becomes a problem for your own party. It is becoming increasingly difficult to stand behind your own leadership, even members of Johnson’s cabinet admitted to the “Daily Mail”. “If more parties come out and a local election is lost, the party will revolt,” one of them is convinced.
That has long been the case with the electorate. According to a recent survey, 70 percent of citizens do not believe Johnson that he did not want to have known about the parties. According to a survey, 63 percent of those questioned call for his resignation. The current revelations were not yet known.
Sources: Times, Mirror, Daily Mail