"Number 10 held two boozy parties the night before the Queen mourned Prince Philip alone".... Is this finally going to be the end for B.J. /Tories?

[HeadPain]

This thread!

mobile.twitter.com/Tony_Diver/status/1481741337951195136

EXCLUSIVE

"Number 10 held two boozy parties the night before the Queen mourned Prince Philip alone.

Staff drank and at points danced until the early hours of the night of April 16.

Hours later, the Queen went to a socially-distanced funeral for Philip.

We have spoken to eyewitnesses. At a leaving do for a No10 photographer it’s alleged:

🥂Staff partied in the basement of No10, to music DJd by a special adviser.

🥂One broke Wilf Johnson’s swing in the No10 garden.

🥂Another was sent to the Co-op with a suitcase to buy booze.

Another event held to mark the departure of James Slack, Mr Johnson’s chief spinner, saw:

🍻 Staff gathered for a speech from Slack, with others dialling in via Zoom.

🍻Booze drunk and attendees spilling into the garden.

🍻Chatting and drinking into the early hours.

At the time Britain was in Step 2 of lockdown easing - which banned indoor gatherings and imposed the rule of six outside.

But the celebrations in No10 meant around 30 people were gathered for what a source declares were definitely parties.

Can No10 claim they were work events?

This was the scene in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle the next day.

Prince Philip’s funeral was restricted to 30 people, and the PM declined to attend, to make more space for family.

The Queen did not participate in the service. "

"Betting" that Starmer and Labour were guilty of similar breaches is not evidence. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. I would expect the press to have been all over it by now if there was any evidence of this.

This is Cummings and other malcontents I suspect. I don't read about the white house parties can't believe they're perfect citizens in the USA.

I can only conclude they believed covid was not as dangerous as they told us day in day out

@justasking111

This is Cummings and other malcontents I suspect. I don't read about the white house parties can't believe they're perfect citizens in the USA.

I can only conclude they believed covid was not as dangerous as they told us day in day out

Cummings had left Downing Street by April 2021, so it will not be him in this case being a witness and whistleblower to the parties.

It may well be Cummings who is feeding this. To some extent, who can blame him. He was crucified in the press for breaking the rules, but it now turns out that he was immersed in a culture where they all believed that the rules didn't apply to them. Including his boss.

He is culpable for his part in it, of course, but the PM was responsible for that culture and the buck stops with him. It doesn't really matter why this is coming out now, if it's driven by Cummings' need for revenge or whatever. His motivations for sharing the information don't detract from the facts. And the facts don't look good.

Brexit showed the average comprehension levels and critical analysis abilities, plus emotional orientation, of England. Covid revealed another layer. That same mass of the ignorantly blinkered now voices it's views on partygate and this Government. We are sadly a nation of fools.

It was my birthday that day, a big one. Pubs and restaurants only opened in London a few days before after a 4 month lockdown - and only outdoor areas were open. I booked a table for 6, the maximum allowed for a 2 hour slot. It was freezing and all a bit grim but we were just pleased to have a drink served to us! Then my DH and I went home and had a takeaway and my friends went home.

I wouldn't have dreamed of inviting my friends back even though it should have been a special day for me because it was AGAINST THE LAW.

Yet these bastards were merrily partying indoors. Johnson may not have been there but it was a party for his Director of Communications and it was in his residence. He must have known about it.

[quote whenwillthemadnessend]@eleganz
Yes I clearly said it's awful
In the first paragraph I'm talking about the funeral of Prince Philip being irrelevant.

They still had parties and that was wrong regardless

Please absorb what you read [/quote]
Please don't be so rude!

My point was that it was a highly sensitive time in the public sector beyond just following the lockdown rules. We had extra guidance from government to stop or reduce some of our activities during those few days. I was there and that was what happened.

Yet, even during this sensitive period, those in No 10 and the senior offices of Whitehall partied away anyway doing things that would not have been tolerated across the wider public sector.

Therefore the death and funeral of Prince Philip is very much relevant here and perhaps you should absorb that rather than just repeating the party line.

Of course the symbolism of it being the night before Prince Philip's funeral is important, because we all saw the pictures of the Queen sat alone in mourning.

That doesn't mean that the Queen mourning alone is any more awful and sad than any other person mourning some, or that Prince Philip's funeral was any more important than the many other funerals that took place in that period. However, the juxtaposition of the photos of the Queen with stories of Downing Street parties the night before simply highlights the inappropriate nature of what happened. The Queen's isolation is representative of what so many people across the country had to face while the PM and his cronies were blithely partying as they pleased.

Mourning alone not some.

It doesn't help Johnson to say he didn't know about it. The fact is that there was a culture at no. 10 that the rules didn't apply to them, and that culture came from the top

Agree with this.

As a previous poster said, there was guidance on sensitive behaviour issued to public sector workers around the time of Prince Philip's funeral. It makes it even more abhorrent.

How much work is being done by the Number 10 staff? It seems as though they spend most of their time getting pissed.

@bakingbernie

Don't you think there are other things to worry about. I would rather our government focused 1) On getting the country back economically after the Pandemic. 2) Sorting out the looming energy crisis. 3) Try to do something about the very real threat of being involved in a war in Ukraine.

Are a few bottles of wine that important?

Yes they are important because the majority of us plebs stuck to the rules that they made. At that time a well respected colleague of mine retired and we would have loved to have given them a good send off after 30 years of service. All we were able to do was have a Teams call. They make me sick. It’s important because I do not want to be governed by hypocrites. As someone who works in law enforcement, of the law makers can’t operate within the law it gives those who want to break the law a licence to do so.

I think this has shown us very clearly that they think they are exempt from the laws that they set for us plebs.

I very much doubt that these are the only laws that they are happy to break.

We have a corrupt government and it's depressing that people think that that's ok.

@TokyoDreaming

How much work is being done by the Number 10 staff? It seems as though they spend most of their time getting pissed.

Yeah, not much apparently as the PM appears to find it hard to distinguish between when they're working and when they're socialising.

The Telegraph have so far always defended him. Until now.

If they’ve knifed him then the game is up for Johnson.

Blimey, had no idea so many of my twitter friends were royalists. Didn't see that one coming.

I have so many questions about all of this.

If Sue Gray's report is independent how are the 'findings' being leaked to The Times? Is that from government or from civil servants? She should come out and clarify how the preliminary results of a confidential enquiry have been leaked.

Why is Johnson self-isolating? I mean I know it's because he's hiding but why is this not being pursued more by the press?

What the fuck are the Met Police doing? How can they legitimately stand back and say that a potential criminal investigation (already admitted to in effect) should await the outcome of an internal enquiry? In any other walk of life it would be the other way around.

Do the staff at Number 10 seriously think they were working SO much harder than anyone else that they deserve to have work piss ups? Do they think doctors deserved piss ups at work?

I seem to remember a group of nurses being hauled over the coals by the press at a similar time for making a TikTok dancing video after work for a bit of light relief!

Get rid of the lot of them.

It’s not a few bottles of wine though, is it. It’s a culture of one-rule-for-the-proles-one-rule-for-us and then unashamedly lying about it. That culture has trickled down from the top. Johnson needs to go because he’s a liar who lies about everything, big and small, but that’s also true of much of his cabinet. Hopefully he goes, whoever replaces him calls an election for “a mandate” and then loses it.

The point about the Queen is that quite probably she could have played the funeral differently (sat with some family members, had a few more there in the very big church etc) and people would have been largely sympathetic but she followed the same rules as everyone because she recognises that not doing so at a time of public crisis is not acceptable.

Johnson et al operated in precisely the opposite way.

What is terrible is that people think that Boris should resign because the Queen was in mourning, instead that because the whole country was in lockdown seriously affecting normal people:

Families unable to attend funerals and say good bye to parents, children, siblings..

Women giving birth on their own without support

Cancer and chronic health patients unable to get treatment in time

Ambulances unable to be dispatched for hours for critical health issues

People unable to access GP services

...and on and on...

And while these was happening, the fucking arsehole was having a 100 people party.

Just fucking forget the Queen .

@NashvilleQueen

I have so many questions about all of this.

If Sue Gray's report is independent how are the 'findings' being leaked to The Times? Is that from government or from civil servants? She should come out and clarify how the preliminary results of a confidential enquiry have been leaked.

Why is Johnson self-isolating? I mean I know it's because he's hiding but why is this not being pursued more by the press?

What the fuck are the Met Police doing? How can they legitimately stand back and say that a potential criminal investigation (already admitted to in effect) should await the outcome of an internal enquiry? In any other walk of life it would be the other way around.

I wondered this about the “isolating”/hiding too @NashvilleQueen. Loads of talk about it on Twitter but very little in the mainstream press.

I work in the public sector. A few weeks after this bash, a well loved colleague retired after 30+ years service. At that point we were able to have an outdoor gathering of up to 30 people, which was really nice. But we were strictly limited on numbers and, as the organiser, I had to turn away a couple of long standing colleagues because we were at the limit. I also had to conduct a risk assessment and our Chief Executive made clear that no alcohol was to be consumed. We maintained two metre distancing and drank fruit juice from paper cups.

It was nice, but it was somewhat stressful to organise. And now I hear that a month earlier, when the rules were stricter, Downing Street had a DJ in the basement and a suitcase of wine.

They genuinely don't appear to have had a clue what was going on outside the four walls of that building. Or they didn't care. Or both. And that matters, because what they do affects everyone.

@MorrisZapp

Blimey, had no idea so many of my twitter friends were royalists. Didn't see that one coming.

I'm a republican, but I still think the timing of these parties was pretty crass. Whatever we think of the monarchy, the Queen is still our head of state and her husband's funeral was the next day. She sat at that funeral mourning alone, like so many thousands of other people did during that period, while our leaders partied on. The symbolism is important, whatever you think about the institution of the monarchy.