The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-29)

6

NEWS

Unseen text messages hint at

Carrie’s second party at No 10

passed to the Met. Following

the publication of Gray’s

report on Wednesday, which

made only one passing

reference to Carrie Johnson,

the aide has written to Case

offering to share the

messages with him.

In the letter, the aide said

they had decided to come

forward after reading reports

questioning the “integrity” of

both Gray and the Met’s

investigations, “particularly

in relation to an alleged event

in the prime minister’s flat on

November 13, 2020”.

The aide wanted to raise

with Case “some evidence I

provided to the Gray report

and the Met that I feel is

important”, which related to

the cabinet room gathering

the evening of June 19.

The aide went on to attach

excerpts of written evidence

provided to Gray in January

in an email, including a

passage stating that they had

“messages that indicate there

was a social gathering in the

PM’s flat on that evening”.

Last night a spokeswoman

for Carrie Johnson said: “Sue

Gray was aware of these

exchanges as part of her

exhaustive inquiry into

alleged breaches.

“Staff were given ample

opportunity to present

evidence including these

messages and all relevant

information was passed to

the Metropolitan Police for

investigation.

“The lunchtime gathering

in the cabinet room on 19

June 2020 was subsequently

found to be in breach and a

fixed penalty notice was

issued to Mrs Johnson among

others for which she

apologised unreservedly and

promptly paid the fine.”

No 10 did not deny that

Carrie Johnson had a

gathering or that the prime

minister had entered the flat.

However, a spokesman said

that any relevant findings

would have been covered in

Gray’s final report.

The two friends believed to

have been in the flat did not

respond to requests for

comment.

Lord King of Lothbury

In a ten-year stretch as governor of the

Bank of England, which concluded in

2013, King was at the heart of the

financial crisis of 2007–2008. He was

critical of the Bank’s willingness to keep

printing money last year, which he

blamed for the spike in inflation.

Gerard Lyons

Chief economic adviser to Johnson

when he was mayor of London, Lyons

played a key role in convincing him

there could be economic benefits from

Brexit. He is chief economic strategist at

Netwealth and a senior fellow at the

think tank Policy Exchange.

Rupert Harrison

He was chief economist and right-hand

man to George Osborne during his six

years as chancellor. An Old Etonian, he

was blocked from becoming a Tory MP

in 2019 by Johnson’s team. Now an

investment manager with BlackRock, he

is back in favour.

Baroness Shafik

The most left-wing economist on the

panel, the Egyptian-born British-

American economist has been director

of the London School of Economics

since 2017. She was previously a deputy

governor of the Bank of England, and

also served at the IMF.

PM’S NEW

GANG OF FOUR

W

hen Boris Johnson got Sue

Gray’s final report on the

parties scandal, the paper

was still warm from the

printer. It was Wednesday

morning and the prime

minister was in his office

with Steve Barclay, his

chief of staff, and Guto Harri, his director

of communications. Samantha Jones, the

permanent secretary at No 10, rushed the

report in, pages still loose.

They had expected the document at

8am. It was now 10am and they had just

an hour to prepare Johnson’s statement

to the Commons and pass it to Sir Lindsay

Hoyle, the Speaker, and Sir Keir Starmer,

the leader of the opposition. Johnson and

Barclay began to read while Harri flicked

to the end to read the conclusions. Then

the silence was shattered as Johnson’s

dog, Dilyn, began to bark in the Downing

Street garden — “going absolutely ape-

shit”, as one witness put it. Johnson

could not concentrate. “Can someone

deal with that f***ing dog?” he snapped.

Ben Gascoigne, Johnson’s deputy

chief of staff, was sent to calm the recalci-

trant pooch. No sooner had he returned

than Dilyn began yapping again. Johnson

repeated his outburst. The third time it

happened, an irate PM yelled: “Will

someone put that dog down!”

In what might be a pivotal week for the

prime minister, the episode was emblem-

atic of much of Johnson’s premiership:

moments of great seriousness and high

tension shot through with comedy and

low farce. It is fitting that the report —

along with the £15 billion spending

splurge to combat the cost-of-living cri-

sis, which followed on Wednesday — will

do much to shape the outcome of the

next general election.

It was a week that marked the culmina-

tion of months of turmoil in No 10, and

one that laid bare a chaotic culture that

flows from the personality of the prime

minister — both things that have hit his

personal ratings and led to a slowly grow-

ing pool of Tory MPs calling for him to go.

No 10 officials insist that moment on

Wednesday morning was the first time

Johnson, Barclay or Harri had seen the

final Gray report. But the full story is

more complicated and murkier. It calls

into question the independence of the

Gray report and lifts the lid on the lengths

those in power were prepared to revive

the so-called Operation Save Big Dog —

the name given to the plan to shore up

Johnson when the scandal threatened

him in the new year.

Partial drafts of Gray’s report were cir-

culating in No 10 the day before, and

Downing Street officials confirm that

Jones discussed with Gray’s team the

names of those who would be publicly

revealed as having broken lockdown

rules. Sources, both political and in the

civil service, say Gray was lobbied on

Tuesday evening to make changes by

three senior civil servants: Jones, Simon

Case, the cabinet secretary, and Alex

Chisholm, the permanent secretary in

the Cabinet Office.

They urged her not to publish the

names of some of those who had

attended the 12 law-breaking parties.

Among the names they wanted removed

was Case’s own. Other changes were also

requested to passages in the report that

made reference to Carrie Johnson, the

prime minister’s wife.

Gray told them to “instruct” her to

make the changes — a move that would

have required a senior minister to sign off

amendments, signalling publicly that the

revisions had been made against her will.

Boris Johnson is back off the leash after

neutering Sue Gray’s report on the No 10

parties. Now his team are ignoring lingering

resentment in Westminster and among

voters to talk up an early election, write Tim

Shipman, Caroline Wheeler and Harry Yorke

A Whitehall source said: “On Tuesday

night, one last attempt was made to per-

suade her [Gray] to omit names from the

report, but she made it plain to them that

the only way that was going to happen

was if they issued her with an instruc-

tion.”

A senior figure in Downing Street

revealed that Barclay, Gray’s political

boss in the Cabinet Office, was

approached and, after discussions with

Harri, refused to issue the instruction.

Michael Ellis, the Cabinet Office minister,

said he would carry out the request only

if ordered to do so by Barclay.

The result of the standoff was that a

number of names were removed,

because by then the key pressure had

already been brought to bear. As many as

30 people had been contacted by Gray,

who informed them she intended to

name them. She sent them extracts and

they were given until 5pm last Sunday to

complain. This part of the Maxwellisa-

tion process, under which those criti-

cised in a official report are given the

right of reply.

In the end, only 15 people were named

in the final report. Those who did not

want to be named used a variety of

excuses, and some employed lawyers or

union officials to plead their case.

Sources who saw a draft of the report

before it was published insist changes to

the text were also made, including details

about a leaving party for Hannah Young,

a No 10 private secretary, on June 18,

2020. Helen MacNamara, the former gov-
      ernment ethics boss, who received a
      fixed-penalty notice, brought a karaoke
      machine to the party in a room close to
      the cabinet secretary’s office at No 70
      Whitehall.
      In the earlier draft, emails were
      included that showed staff discussed the
      gathering in advance and were warned
      that it could break the rules. A ministerial
      adviser said: “After Sue made clear that
      she wanted to print WhatsApp messages
      and emails, the entire machine fought
      her.”

A

nother key passage that was

altered concerned the “Abba

night” party, which, it is claimed,

was held in the prime minister’s

flat on November 13, 2020. An ear-

lier draft of the report referred to music

being played and stated at what time it

came to an end. Two sources close to the

process say Barclay tweaked the relevant

section on the eve of publication — a

claim flatly denied by Downing Street but

one that has already been raised in the

Commons by Labour, which has tabled a

series of parliamentary questions.

Gray has told allies that she felt iso-

lated by the civil service. At least two

other permanent secretaries are under-

stood to have tried to pressure her to pro-

tect colleagues caught up in the scandal.

Despite the excisions, Gray’s report,

detailing 4am drinking, brawls, vomiting

and red wine up the walls, was damning.

Even Johnson appears to have been

shocked to read that security guards,

known as custodians, and cleaners who

tried to stop the parties were abused.

“That was the only time he was really

angry,” an aide said.

When Johnson returned to No 10 from

the Commons, aides took him to apolo-

gise to the custodians, who sit in a room

off the foyer behind the famous black

door. “They said they were battered and

bruised by it all and [that] they got criti-

cism from friends who assumed they

were partying as well,” a source said. One

custodian, who had to clean up the mess

Davis warns removing PM could

take some time despite poll fears

Discontent is growing among

Conservative MPs who fear

they may lose their seats over

the Downing Street parties

fallout, a former cabinet

minister has said.

David Davis, the former

Brexit secretary, said his

colleagues “see their own

seats disappearing” as Tory

popularity languishes. But

Davis also admitted that it

could take a long time to

remove Boris Johnson, as he

recalled the lengthy rows

over the troubled leaderships

of John Major and Theresa

May.

A poll for The Times

yesterday revealed that Boris

Johnson would lose his seat if

an election were held

tomorrow and Conservatives

would face mass defeats in

the red wall constituencies

they won in 2019. The

YouGov MRP poll, which used

the model that predicted the

outcome of the general

election in 2019, shows that

the Tories would lose all but

three of the 88 battleground

seats that they hold by a slim

margin over Labour.

There have been further

calls for the prime minister to

resign following publication

of the senior civil servant Sue

Gray’s investigation into

Covid rule-breaking in No 10

and Whitehall during the

lockdowns in England.

Yesterday, Anne Marie

Morris became the eighth

Tory MP to publicly call on

Johnson to quit since the

publication of the report.

She is understood to be

Caroline Wheeler

and Harry Yorke

among 27 to have submitted

letters to Sir Graham Brady,

chairman of the 1922

Committee of backbench

Tories. He will be obliged to

order a confidence vote if he

receives 54 letters.

Davis, an arch critic of

Johnson, told Today on BBC

Radio 4 that potential Tory

losses and the “distraction” of

questions about the No 10

parties was focusing minds.

Asked whether discontent

was spreading in the Tory

party, Davis said: “There is no

doubt about that.”

6

POLITICS

Carrie

Johnson:

mentioned

just once in

Gray report

Harry Yorke
Deputy Political Editor

Simon Case, the cabinet
secretary, has been told of
previously unseen messages
suggesting that Carrie
Johnson held a law-breaking
gathering in the No 10 flat.
The head of the civil
service has been sent a letter
indicating that there was
another event in the Downing
Street flat that has not been
made public.
The disclosure, just days
after the publication of the
Sue Gray report, threatens to
reignite the partygate
scandal. Boris Johnson has
spent much of the past week
trying to draw a line under it
and shore up his leadership
with an extensive economic
package.
Messages sent by the prime
minister’s wife on June 19,
2020, appear to show that she
was in the flat with several
friends on the evening of her
husband’s 56th birthday.
They also suggest that the
prime minister went up to the
flat, at a time when events of
two or more people indoors
were banned except for work
purposes.
The messages were sent
several hours after Johnson
attended a staff gathering in
the cabinet room to mark his
birthday — the event for
which he received a fine. At
some point that evening he
also held a gathering
outside with members of
his family, in line with the
rule of six at the time.
The messages flagged
up to Case show that at
6.15pm, a Downing
Street aide told the
prime minister’s wife
that her husband was
on his way up to the flat.
She replied that she was
already there and
suggested that she was
with an unspecified
number of male
friends.
The Gray inquiry
was told in January this
year by the aide that
these texts existed. The
aide claimed to have told

Gray’s investigators that

while they did not want to

forward the messages, they

were prepared to come into

the Cabinet Office to show the

messages to inquiry officials

in person. The aide also

agreed to supply them to the

Metropolitan police’s inquiry.

However, the aide claimed

that Gray’s investigation team

failed to follow up on the

offer. Two weeks ago, once

the Met inquiry had finished,

the aide renewed the offer to

the Gray team but this went

unheeded.

It is the second gathering

that the prime minister’s wife

is alleged to have hosted in

the flat while Covid

restrictions were in place,

although the other one — the

so-called Abba party on

November 13, 2020 — was

cleared by both Gray and the

Met.

Last night the Cabinet

Office said Gray disputed that

her team had been offered

the opportunity to view

the messages in January,

and that the aide had

been told they needed

to submit copies of the

messages as evidence,

but had refused.

By the time the

second offer was

made in May, the

Gray

investigation

had already

concluded, a

spokesman

said.

The

suggestion that

the inquiry had

failed to look

into crucial

evidence was

strongly

disputed and

the

spokesman

said the

exchanges

with the aide

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