Downing Street staff possibly destroyed Partygate evidence: Reports

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
12 Feb 2023 10:44

Former UK PM Boris Johnson's staff have been possibly found to have destroyed evidence in relation to the Partygate scandal that ousted the former government.

Then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his then-Minister of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak (Reuters)

The authorities in Downing Street are being called on to re-open the books on Partygate after new information came to light about the scandal in which former Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government was embroiled in the midst of the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic saw high British officials illegally gathering and partying in Downing Street and Whitehall, drawing the ire of the public after they saw their own officials breaking the rules they themselves had imposed.

An image published by The Daily Mirror in December 2020 showed Johnson with his deputy principal private secretary, Stuart Glassborow, with an open bottle of prosecco, and a staff member wearing party decorations, in what later became known as Partygate. Downing Street said that the event was a virtual quiz.

Conservative members of the parliament, even loyalists, demanded that the PM be removed from his position if investigations reveal he committed a criminal offense. Nevertheless, Johnson is in denial that he has broken any law, calling the suggestion to add the "virtual quiz" to the events "completely in error."

London Assembly's Police and Crime Committee deputy chair Unmesh Desai wrote a letter to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley asking the latter whether he was "taking new information into account when making a decision regarding the reopening of the investigation," a British media outlet reported.

"You will no doubt be aware of the new evidence that directly contradicts the former prime minister’s claim that he was not aware of any rule breaking at 10 Downing Street," Desai wrote in the letter, as per a local paper.

Desai's decision came after one media outlet reported the findings of its own probe into Partygate in a podcast, including allegations that government staffers deliberately destroyed evidence and "corroborated their stories" before they filled out police questionnaires.

Police issued a statement revealing that they have been handed more than 300 photographs of Downing Street events, in addition to 500 pages of evidence.

The House of Commons passed a motion in April 2022 calling for the then-prime minister Boris Johnson to be investigated by the Commons Privileges Committee over allegations that he misled parliament in connection with the Partygate allegations.

Johnson had survived a confidence vote among Conservative MPs despite various issues that faced it, such as Partygate, but a scandal regarding his handling of sexual misconduct allegations against Tory MP Chris Pincher triggered domino-like resignations that culminated in the PM out of office.

Johnson announced that he would step down in July after a slew of resignations hit his government in protest of his leadership.