Dailymail
Boris Johnson today insisted he takes ‘full responsibility’ for Partygate after Sue Gray gave a grim account of drunken antics at the heart of government.
The PM told MPs that the government had ‘learned our lesson’ and he personally was ‘humbled’ after being issued a fine – saying he ‘renewed my apology’.
But Mr Johnson also denied lying to Parliament about the breaches, arguing that leaving dos were needed to keep up ‘morale’ while people were ‘working hard’ and he was ‘proud’ of the efforts of staff.
Saying he wanted to ‘move on’, the premier told the House: ‘I take full responsibility for everything that took place on my watch.’
Mr Johnson was heckled as he said ‘the entire senior management has changed’, and Keir Starmer accused him of treating the country ‘with contempt’. But the Labour leader was forced to deny he had broken the law as he was barracked over the ‘Beergate’ police investigation into an election campaign visit to Durham last year.
In her 37-page verdict, Ms Gray slammed ‘excessive’ drinking at a slew of bashes in Downing Street and Whitehall – many of which broke lockdown rules.
She describes how officials enjoyed karaoke, were sick in offices and even got into fights while the rest of the country was under harsh restrictions.
Ms Gray was particularly scathing about a raucous leaving party in Downing Street on the eve of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral, when a child’s swing was broken by revellers. Mr Johnson was not present.
And former No10 principal secretary Martin Reynolds was warned by colleagues that a notorious ‘BYOB’ bash in May 2020 was a bad idea – but remarked afterwards that they had ‘got away with’ the event.
However, there was limited direct criticism of Mr Johnson himself, with Dominic Cummings complaining that Ms Gray had let him off the hook by failing to investigate an alleged ‘Abba Party’ in his grace-and-favour flat.
Mr Johnson said staff had been working ‘extremely long hours’ and ‘doing their best’ to help the country in the pandemic, adding to MPs: ‘I appreciate this is no mitigation but it’s important to set out.’
He added: ‘I’m trying to set out the context, not to mitigate or to absolve myself in any way.
‘The exemption under which they were present in Downing Street includes those circumstances where officials and advisers were leaving the Government and it was appropriate to recognise and to thank them for the work they had done.
‘I briefly attended such gatherings to thank them for their service, which I believe is one of the essential duties of leadership and particularly important when people need to feel that their contributions have been appreciated and to keep morale as high as possible.’
As he was heckled, the PM said: ‘I’m trying to explain the reasons I was there. It’s clear from what Sue Gray had to say that some of these gatherings then went on far longer than was necessary and they were clearly in breach of the rules and they fell foul of the rules.’
