the times | Wednesday January 26 2022 2GM 9News
Voters observed the rules
and sacrificed celebrations
Will HumphriesPeople forced to cancel family celebra-
tions during lockdown have called for
Boris Johnson to resign for attending a
birthday party inside No 10 in June 2020
when indoor socialising was prohibited.
Sons and daughters who kept their
distance from parents and grandpar-
ents who have since died have told
The Times how they stuck to the coro-
navirus regulations.
Laura O’Driscoll, 34, managing
director of a recruitment company,
from Bridgwater, Somerset, said her
son’s 13th birthday at an arcade had to
be cancelled in March 2020 and her
grandfather had to spend the final days
of his life alone in hospital in December
2020, when illegal parties were alle-
gedly held in Downing Street and
Whitehall. “If I had turned up with 30 of
his friends, my son would have told me
I was breaking the rules,” she said. “He
has a better moral standing than a 57-
year-old who was privately educated.Boris Johnson has proven time and
time again that the rules don’t apply to
him and I have never heard a proper
apology come out of that man’s mouth.”
Tom Paine, 44, a copywriter from
Bristol, said his daughter, who will be
three in June, had never had a birthday
party. “A week before she turned one,
we now know Boris Johnson had his
own birthday party with food and
cake,” he said. “She didn’t have a birth-
day party with 30 guests. There was no
gathering, and she saw her grandpar-
ents over the garden fence.”
Peter Reeve, 41, a live events business
owner from Horsham, West Sussex,
whose father died in June 2020, said the
family had to have a restricted funeral.
“We had to have less than 15 mourn-
ers, which was very difficult because we
are quite a large family,” he said. “I feel
incredibly angry.” Reeve added that he
had written to Jeremy Quin, his Con-
servative MP, on January 12 asking him
to call for Johnson’s resignation but had
not received a reply.universal. Mark Harper (Forest of
Dean) wondered if Johnson would be
“a potential suspect in this criminal
investigation”. Whips will enter that
in their scorebook as Unhelpful.
Philip Hollobone (C, Kettering)
and Mike Wood (C, Dudley South)
may have gone down as Not Entirely
Helpful. But unlike previous
occasions there were Helpfuls. Sir
Edward Leigh (C, Gainsborough):
“When Europe stands on the brink
of war and there is a cost of living
crisis, can we please have a sense of
proportion over the prime minister’s
being given a piece of cake in his
own office by his own staff ?” Ellis
did not point out that the birthday
gathering is but one of several
Inspector Japp will be investigating.
Giles Watling (C, Clacton) said
that the session was “a vexatious
waste of time”. Speaker Hoyle didn’t
like that, given that he approved it.
Watling was obliged to withdraw his
atrocious slander.
Barry Sheerman (Lab,
Huddersfield) said that the PM
should not be hiding but should be
showing leadership on the Ukraine.
Alison Thewliss (SNP, Glasgow C)spoke of the PM leading “a lush life
of champagne and party nibbles”.
She said “nibbles” with delicious
briskness. Martin Docherty-
Hughes (SNP, West
Dunbartonshire) quoted an
American gastronome’s adage that
“a party without cake is just a
meeting”, ergo the PM’s event had
been an illegal party. Ellis said that
in his world “ten minutes of eating
cake and wishing someone a happy
birthday would not a party make
but it is a matter for police
investigation” — one of the more
surreal sentences I have heard in
parliament.
Immediately after all this,
Johnson swept into the chamber to
make an hour-long lunchtime
statement on Ukraine. Sheerman’s
wish had been granted, even if the
old boy was not there to appreciate
it. Suspect Johnson, as we should
possibly call the prime minister, did
not seem greatly discombobulated.
He has seldom sounded more on
top of a foreign emergency. Sir Keir
Starmer, in his contribution, did
not mention the police
investigation once.pocket and a look of blithe
innocence on his bespectacled broad
bean, lamp-beams bouncing off his
bald brow.
Each time opposition MPs hurl
themselves at his barricades,
drumming their pommels, working
themselves into a froth. Each time
Ellis creaks to the dispatch box,
inspects the slice of paper in his
slender file, and thanks
Hon. Members for their interest.
With lawyerly regret he explains
that the matters are solely for the
investigating authorities and not
something on which any minister of
the Crown can comment.
This time, however, a difference:
Johnson’s allies had organised
themselves. For once, Ellis had not
been deserted on the front bench
while colleagues hid behind the
nearest sofa.
He was accompanied by friends of
the PM, among them the chief whip,
leader of the House, Welsh secretary
and Conor Burns, a Northern
Ireland minister.
At three of the chamber’s
entrances, Tory whips stood sentry.
Conservative support was notBoris Johnson did not tell his cabinet
ministers that the Metropolitan Police
had decided to investigate Downing
Street parties, leaving them to be
among the last at Westminster to find
out.
The prime minister is understood to
have been told shortly before his week-
ly cabinet meeting yesterday that
Dame Cressida Dick, the Met’s com-
missioner, had decided to start her own
inquiries into the allegations of lock-
down rule-breaking.
He decided not to tell his secretaries
of state, meaning they found out only
when the meeting ended — after Dick
made the announcement to a commit-
tee of the Greater London Assembly.
Johnson’s spokesman defended his
decision, saying it was “important not
to pre-empt a police statement on this
sort of issue at any point”. They said
that Johnson instead “alluded” to the
matter at the end of the meeting by
“emphasising there was more work to
do to deliver for the public and that the
government would not be deterred
from getting on with the job”.
Cabinet ministers found themselves
being bombarded with questions about
the police investigation as they left
10 Downing Street to return to their
departments.
Only Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of
the House of Commons and a passion-
ate Johnson loyalist, engaged, telling
reporters: “The leadership of Boris
Johnson this country has had has been
so brilliant that he has got us through
this incredibly difficult period, and he
has got all the big decisions right. We
have opened up faster than any other
European country thanks to the prime
minister, and I am honoured to be
under his leadership.”
A stream of Conservative MPs madeNews
aides to give up phone records
not mention Scotland Yard’s investigation of parties. Dominic Cummings will give his evidence in writing to Sue GraySTEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA; PETER CZIBORRA/REUTERS; NEIL HALL/EPAJohnson left cabinet
in the dark about
Met’s investigation
Henry Zeffman
Chief Political Correspondentsimilar defences of Johnson in the Com-
mons afterwards when Angela Rayner,
Labour’s deputy leader, forced an
urgent question on the Met’s announce-
ment. She said that the police investi-
gation was a “truly damning reflection
of our nation’s very highest office”.
Michael Ellis, the paymaster-gener-
al, who was handed the task of respond-
ing for the government, urged MPs “to
wait for [Sue Gray’s] findings”, and
argued that “we would be in lockdown
now were it not for this prime minister”.
Stuart Anderson, the MP for Wolver-
hampton South West, claimed that
“every time” Labour called for Johnson
to resign, it was “strengthening Putin’s
hand” against Ukraine.
Mark Jenkinson, the MP for Work-
ington, accused Labour of being “in
cahoots with the media to undemocrat-
ically depose this prime minister”, while
Sir Edward Leigh, a veteran of eight
leaders, asked: “When Europe stands
on the brink of war and there is cost-of-
living crisis can we please have a sense
of proportion over the prime minister
being given a piece of cake in his own
office by his own staff ?”
Ellis was joined on the government
frontbench by Johnson’s most commit-
ted supporters, including Rees-Mogg,
Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary,
and Christopher Pincher and Conor
Burns, two ministers who are now part
of a dedicated team battling to save the
prime minister’s leadership.
Burns, a minister at the Northern
Ireland Office, later defended Johnson
over the birthday celebration in June
2020, saying he had been “ambushed
with a cake”. Burns told Channel 4
News: “It was not a premeditated,
organised party.”
Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conserv-
ative leader, said: “I have made my posi-
tion very clear on breaking Covid
guidance... with regret, I believe the
prime minister should resign.”