The evidence against Boris Johnson’s team that reveals other parties in Downing Street during the confinement – most recently, a surprise birthday for the prime minister – has led the group of loyalists of the conservative politician to change their strategy. It is no longer about denying reality, but about trying to offer its most presentable version. The television network ITV has reported this Monday of an alleged new scandal.
Johnson’s wife, Carrie Symonds, bought a cake on June 19, 2020 and had about 30 people at the Cabinet Room (the room of the Council of Ministers with its oval table) to surprise the prime minister, who was turning 56 that day. Among the guests was Luly Lytle, the sought-after interior designer whom the Johnsons had commissioned to redecorate her private apartment at 11 Downing Street. The budget for furniture and wallpaper to redecorate the walls, in the organic and country style so demanded by British celebrities, involved spending more than 100,000 euros and an official investigation from which Johnson was saved by hiding some compromising WhatsApp messages .
“A group of staff who normally work at 10 Downing Street met briefly in the Cabinetroom, after a meeting, to wish the prime minister a happy birthday. He was not present for more than 10 minutes, ”said Johnson’s spokesmen in their official response to the new information. They no longer deny the surprise celebration, nor the cake, nor the 30 people summoned in an interior space, nor the fact that all this happened while the rules, for the rest of the British, prohibited meetings in closed places of individuals from different homes.
The outrage of the citizens of the United Kingdom regarding the scandal of the prohibited parties has caused a tweet from the police of Newham, a district of East London, published on April 4, to circulate like wildfire on social networks on Monday. 2020. Just over a month before Johnson’s surprise party, but when the social distancing rules were the same. A photo with balloons, drinks and cakes on the table of a home illustrated the last action of the police that same day: to prevent an 18th birthday party in a private home, with 25 guests.
“It is completely nauseating that the prime minister spent that afternoon sharing cake with 30 friends in an indoor space. Although nothing surprises us anymore, it still brings to mind a very vivid pain. While dozens of people sang happy birthday to him, some families could not even sing together in memory of their loved ones at a funeral, ”said Jo Goodman, the woman who helped found the association Justice for the Relatives of Victims of Covid -19. “If he had any decency, he would do what we and the rest of the country are asking him to do and resign,” Goodman demanded.
Waiting for the Gray Report
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In the week that Sue Gray, the permanent deputy secretary at the Cabinet Office, is due to publish her long-awaited report on banned parties in Downing Street, the pressure on Johnson from all quarters has continued unabated. “The prime minister has become a distraction for the nation. While millions of people are struggling to pay his bills, Boris Johnson and his government are spending all their time trying to clean his trail of deception, corruption and breach of the law,” said Labor Opposition Leader Keir Starmer. .
The Prime Minister’s team, which has not hesitated to take advantage of the crisis in Ukraine and the Russian military threat to this country to present a version of the statesman Johnson, assures those who want to listen that the conservative politician is not willing to throw in the towel. He will continue to fight to stay in office even though the senior official’s report, as it seems increasingly clear, casts harsh criticism against the culture of alcohol and lack of respect for the rules of decorum of Johnson’s team of advisers and faithful in Downing Street .
Gray was scheduled to interrogate Dominic Cummings on Monday, the prime minister’s former star adviser who has ended up becoming his worst enemy, after his rivalry with Johnson’s wife – also a reputed former Conservative Party communication adviser – resulted in his departure. humiliating, through the back door of Downing Street. Cummings, through his private blog, has leaked information about the parties, and has directed the investigations of the British media so that they would not be misled about which was the big game to shoot down: the Prime Minister himself. However, whoever was the main ideologue of Brexit has finally decided not to attend the meeting with Gray.
The official does not have the authority to request her presence as a witness, and Cummings has announced that he preferred to say everything he had to say in writing, to avoid “the prime minister making up some nonsense [sobre la conversación]“And circulate them through the media, so you and I get in trouble,” he told Gray in a new blog post. Apparently, the woman on whose investigation Johnson’s future depends has accepted that Cummings was responding in writing to her questions.
The controversial adviser has assured that, in any case, new compromising information for Johnson will not stop emerging in the coming weeks until he resigns from his post as prime minister. Many of the Conservative deputies who expressed their anger and weariness with everything that had happened last week chose to wait for the publication of Gray’s report before deciding whether to launch the internal censure motion mechanism that would entail, if it went ahead, the Johnson’s expulsion.
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