CNN
On Friday afternoon, a small but heated demonstration took place outside the gates of Downing Street.
The protest was sparked by a finding in the long-awaited “Partygate” report, conducted by senior civil servant Sue Gray, that custodial staff — including cleaners and security guards in Downing Street — were treated poorly by people attending social gatherings while the UK was in varying degrees of Covid restrictions — including full lockdown. “I was made aware of multiple examples of a lack of respect and poor treatment of security and cleaning staff. This was unacceptable,” Gray wrote.
The report as a whole paints a damning assessment of the culture inside Downing Street and points the finger at Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who himself was found to have broken the law on one occasion for attending a gathering to celebrate his birthday.
Gray wrote that “the senior leadership at the centre” of Johnson’s administration “must bear responsibility” for a culture that allowed the parties to take place.
Despite the gory details of people vomiting on walls, brawling in the corridors of Downing Street and in many cases evidence that those inside the building knew what they were doing was wrong, Johnson’s job is not in immediate peril.
With the next general election not scheduled till 2024 and Johnson currently sitting on a hefty majority in parliament, it is only his own Conservative MPs that could sack the PM, something that in reality any potential rebels lack the numbers or power to do.
This sense that they are stuck with Johnson, whose personal approval ratings have been sinking since the start of the scandal last year, is freaking out Conservatives. They worry that Johnson has done irreversible damage to his own image in the eyes of most voters, who have finally seen “what he’s really like,” as one senior Conservative put it. The only thing left is for his reputation to now tarnish the rest of the party — something that opinion polls and recent election results suggest has started already.
