Partygate: Johnson ‘joked about being at most unsocially distanced party in UK’
Johnson has repeatedly asserted that he was unaware of lockdown parties
When the UK was facing one of its tough crises during the COVID-19 outbreak, the then prime minister Boris Johnson, who was part of the infamous partygate saga, had reportedly joked about being at “the most unsocially distanced party in the UK right now”, an explosive new podcast by the ITV has revealed.
The claims came to the fore during the podcast aired titled ‘Partygate: The Inside Story’, which delves into Johnson’s long-held assertion that he was unaware rules had been broken within Number 10 during the lockdown.
It reports that a source said, “I was working late … I heard the prime minister speaking and that’s when I heard the quote: ‘This is the most unsocially distanced party in the UK right now’ and everyone was laughing about it.”
According to ITV, the whistleblowers told them that the staff shredded key documents and evidence about parties before senior bureaucrat Sue Gray was to probe the matter.
“There was a sense, and an implication, that we should start deleting evidence before there is an investigation. And a lot of people started shredding things. Any proof of the events started disappearing,” they said.
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“[Awards from a Christmas party were] basically taken down, kept away, shredded, evidence destroyed. So there was an aspect of getting rid of evidence – just keeping yourself in the clear before an investigation would happen.”
The podcast further claims, quoting a senior Cabinet official, that Gray’s team probed half of the parties that occurred in the Downing Street.
The revelations come at a time when Johnson is due to appear before MPs on the Commons privileges committee about whether he misled the lawmakers about his awareness of the partygate. Inquiry hearings are expected to begin in February.
The partygate scandal was one of the major blots of Johnson’s political carrier, who had to eventually go after much hue and cry from the public following its revelation.
The Metropolitan Police had even fined the former PM for attending the parties while social distancing restrictions were in place.
(With inputs from agencies)
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