Fresh allegations have emerged that Boris Johnson attended a social gathering during the first lockdown. Unlike with previous leaks, this gathering appears to be purely social in nature, being described in an email from the Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary Martin Reynolds as “socially distanced drinks in the No. 10 garden”, inviting attendees to “bring your own booze!”. It is hard to see how this can be explained away as work-related and not a social gathering, which were banned at the time. The same day it took place, May 20th 2020, Oliver Dowden, then Culture Secretary, urged the public only to meet one other person outdoors. Witnesses say the Prime Minister and his wife were among around 40 attendees, and Boris refused to deny the allegation in an interview on Monday. The Telegraph has the story.
The email, which was obtained by ITV News, said: “Hi all. After what has been an incredibly busy period it would be nice to make the most of the lovely weather and have some socially distanced drinks in the No. 10 garden this evening.
“Please join us from 6pm and bring your own booze!”
Unlike other leaks relating to gatherings during the pandemic, the email is particularly damaging for the Prime Minister because it appears to make clear the event was solely a social gathering.
Downing Street has insisted that other events, including the gathering Mr Johnson was photographed at in the garden on May 15th 2020, were informal and related to work.
On Monday Adam Wagner, a leading lawyer and expert on Covid regulations, said: “This looks unlikely to be legal for attendees. Being outside the home was illegal at the time unless (the only potentially relevant exception) it was for the need to work. ‘Socially distanced drinks’/’BYOB’ don’t sound like work.”
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said: “It is terrible and I think many people that see the evidence now will not only think that Boris Johnson’s lies are catching up with him, but will see it as absolutely despicable that when they were actually told to follow the rules, Boris Johnson and No 10 were breaking the rules.
“It is disgraceful and he should be ashamed.”
On Monday, Liberal Democrat spokesman said the party planned to report the leaked email to the Metropolitan Police.
The force has previously said it does not typically investigate historic allegations that lockdown rules have been breached.
It is understood that the email will now form part of the official probe being carried out by [Sue] Gray.
In recent days, her team has been asking a number of officials in No 10 about the use of the garden and the consumption of alcohol.
On Friday, she officially expanded her investigation to include the two gatherings in the garden after Dominic Cummings, the former No. 10 Senior Adviser, said he had told Mr Reynolds that he believed the event breached lockdown rules and should not go ahead.
Despite raising the issue, Mr Cummings said he was “ignored”.
Worth reading in full.
I confess, these revelations are getting kind of tedious now. Plainly, Government figures played fast and loose with the rules they were imposing on the rest of us, not really believing them to be necessary. Much like Professor Pantsdown and Matt Hancock and their lockdown hanky-panky, the people driving the restrictions clearly didn’t actually think there was a virus so deadly circulating that people couldn’t risk getting close to each other. Everyone knows by now this is the kind of thing they were up to. I suppose they should resign over the rank hypocrisy of it – though Neil Ferguson did resign and that didn’t last long – but really they should resign over the absurd, draconian policies that made their behaviour hypocritical in the first place. But that’s never going to happen, and neither will anyone resign over this except perhaps Martin Reynolds. Still, if it helps to turn the public against this miserable regime then that’s probably a good thing – though with Labour only ever outflanking the Government on the side of Chairman Mao, part of me fears what might come after.
Stop Press: Boris says Martin Reynolds has his “full confidence” and will stay in post. Is this because he was only doing what Boris told him to? We’ll see how long it lasts.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Try playing Ricky Nelson’s “I went to a Garden Party” from the seventies and keeping a straight face….
Good BTL comment in the Spectator…
Apologies, this is slightly off the topic of Rod Liddle’s piece; but I think it is vital that the media does not continue to ignore the most significant aspect of the government’s behaviour during spring 2020, Christmas 2020 and summer 2021.
It is totally obvious that NOBODY in government was frightened or worried about catching, passing on, suffering with or dying from C-19. If there had been a public health emergency, they would never have gone within 100 of each other – particularly the PM and senior cabinet ministers. Their security would never have been jeopardised.
Yet…..
1. The government invoked ‘emergency powers’…….a government can only do this when the nation is faced with an emergency that is ‘catastrophic’ (Cabinet Office’s own words).
2. British democracy has been suspended for nearly two years, as ‘emergency powers’ have been held four times longer than ever in our peace-time history.
3. Pursuant to this, the government voted itself access to unlimited funds of public money.
4. The nation was terrified – some people panicked and killed themselves – into compliance. The state actively, and highly unethically, orchestrated a strong campaign of fear, spending £400m on MSM… Read more »
If the May 15th meet was a business meeting why was the then Carrie Simmons, Boris’ fiancé (not married until the end of that month) present.
She didn’t and still doesn’t have any official government role.
Where are the minutes of the meeting if it wasn’t just an unofficial chat. In which case every business in the country could been having an ‘unofficial’ meeting with drinks every night.
I think it’s the clearest indication yet that they have been lying through their teeth for almost two years. In May 2020 they were still pushing the deadly virus scenario while partying in the back garden. Can’t put that down to cognitive dissonance. ..
So the habitual liar lies once again and people lose their sh*t! No matter that Johnson has blood on his hands, has terrorised the nation for two years and has used that fear to do anything he likes. What has taken the population so damn long to wake up to this utter bullshittery? And STILL some will back Bozo, presumably because the “opposition” in Parliament is as useful as a chocolate tea pot! Bring on Nuremberg 2 for the whole lot of them!
The problem I have is we are now finally starting to tame him. It’s not because he’s had some Damascene conversion but because he sees his political future depends on winding back the regulations. It’s all come too late for me as I’m inwardly screaming every day but at least it looks as if we are getting there.
Now it looks as if we have to punish him, quite rightly, for deciding we all had to follow rules which he blatantly did not. Even those who carried on meeting up and claimed mask exemptions still had their lives severely curtailed. We never had the memorial for my mother, friends and associates had their weddings postponed more than once. People I know attended socially distanced funerals for very close relatives and had to go their own way straight after. My daughter in law caught Covid in May 2020 as a newly rush-qualified doctor with insufficient PPE.
On and on the sacrifices go so I am effing angry and he must go in my book. But who on earth can now take this forward in the right direction when they are nearly all lock down lovers? That’s the major issue today.
Anybody fined or prosecuted during this fiasco must now be pardoned and fines rescinded.
All who attended should lose their jobs or positions.
Boris should offer a groveling apology and then piss off.
I won’t hold my breath.
Also, who would replace him. Better the devil you know, we don’t want anyone who is worse, not a covidian or lockdowner. We need a freedom lover who will leave us alone.
Is the cabal throwing Boris under the bus?
This may be tedious for us lot but it’s sadly what the sheeple respond to. I’ve always thought that the Spectator-like long-read articles contained on this site (excellent though they are) are the very thing that stop the fact seeping through to the public in general. The sheep want headlines and twitter entries. Sad but true.
whilst everyone in England was under house arrest , didn’t the police standing outside & around downing street see these folks going in? Did they use blind cops ?
No politician has the decency to resign over wrong doing anymore. It comes from the brash and deceitful Blair years when Campbell was spin Doctor. The damage those years have done to this country is akin to Charles 1 who was beheaded.
More importantly now is not to hold this whole Parliament over their breaking the rules, but to drain this terribly fetid swamp for their last two years of gaslighting, economic destruction (to suit their own investments) and breaking the bonds and emotional health of the nation they were supposed to be leading into a better future after Brexit. They have ignored every single manifesto point they were elected on and they have been wholly supported without question by the other Political Parties.
It’s time the people of this country stopped voting for their own serfdom and started to engage with better politicians who will keep Government lean, patriotic and only meeting when absolutely necessary. ie not very often.
While there’s no denying that this is hypocrisy a lot of those whingeing about this were in fact revelling in their masochistic ‘I ‘m so good for obeying all these restrictions’ smugness.
Professional people -more than able to access the internet AND read that there were indeed exemptions such as visiting their elderly widowed mother on grounds of mental health etc NOT doing so out of some twisted idea of the greater good etc.
I LOATHE these people. Loathe them. They can stick their whingeing where the sun don’t shine.
To those unable to read properly and/or prevented from doing something by a third party, such as a jobsworth council c***, you have my sympathy.
I scoured those bullshit rules for loopholes and exploited them fully. I would not look down on anyone for doing the same.
Everyone had access to the guidelines. I agree with you, however, that many in the public sector chose to manipulate those guidelines to suit themselves. After all they were on full pay. Whereas those who had to work to put food on the table and support the bloated public sector were given tiny loans which didn’t cover diddly squat or were offered 80% furlough that had to be paid back.
There has been a very big drift for a number of years to close down SMEs and grow the public sector beyond any natural sustainability. The ideology of a socialist universal credit has been in the pipeline since (again) the Blair years.
Same as he’s always done, by lying, bluster and bullsh×t!!
The faux outrage over this is truly despicable.
But we didn’t really deserve any better. Did we?
The police are investigating this? Fuck tha police. If you house gets burgled or your car stolen, you can expect pretty much zero police hours expended in solving the crime, bringing the perpetrators to justice, or returning your property. But Britain’s beloved Bobbies will be methodically investigating the circumstances under which a dozen or so politicians and flunkies drank some pinot grigio?
If you were so stupid as to comply with “covid regulations” then you’ve got no moral justification for taking umbrage now. You were not just “part” of the problem. You are the fucking problem.
We’re in a village in rural Somerset. Lockdown never happened, and social distancing collapsed in a few days, bar the usual frit suspects. One of whom turned up at our PC meeting last night, mask in hand, and demanded the door was left open. Fuck’s sake.
They obviously knew there was nothing to be afraid of, despite the messages of doom they were handing out to the peasants, along with their diktats.
The only option is surely the Scrubs
It is all a set-up. Johnson will soon be replaced by the Trilateral Commission’s Sir Keir Starmer, and our oppression will become much closer to being ruthlessly efficient.
Psychological operations are highly choreographed, but Johnson might not have been handed his moves, much in advance.
I’d like to hear a journalist ask any/all of the attendees, “But, were you not afraid of catching the deadly virus?”
We sane sceptics must use this to full advantage.
A full bore covidian where I work was very upset about this.
He saw it as a case of rules for us but not for them.
I took time to explain to him that this also showed that those in the heart of government knew that the virus was not very dangerous otherwise they would have not risked infecting themselves, others, and taking a virus back home to their loved ones.
This is very obvious information that shows the whole thing has been a con.
I think my covidian colleague actually processed the meaning of this.
Listening to the public this morning expressing their anger over what was just a hypocritical breaking of their rules by the government, with no direct consequences, how angry would they be if they knew the following;
They had been told that there was no treatment for the virus which was a lie as Hydroxychloroquine was recognised by Fauci in 2005 as the best treatment for SARS-CoV-1, and that doctors in the UK were denied access to the drug by their Health Boards in early 2020 when people were getting sick [and that the Chinese were using it at the same time].
So they were told that if they became ill they should stay at home, take paracetamol, and if they couldn’t breath, call an ambulance, by which time prognosis was known to be poor.
They were told that everyone was at equal risk from the virus which was another lie known by the Government and that your chance of becoming ill depended on known comorbidities, that only affect a small minority of the population, which if acted on would have made it unnecessary to clear out hospital wards to make unneeded bed space by shipping infected patients from hospitals to… Read more »
They wouldn’t believe a word of it. Unless the PM were to reveal it all, and more, at one explosive press conference.
This would not lead to his being lynched; he would be re-elected in a landslide.
‘You wanted straight-talking, right?… here it is, dear people’.
A brazen reversal of ALL is his only chance left.
The leaked emails confirm they knew Ivermectin, HCQ and Interferon all worked. One at least at all points in the illness. They also confirm that Fauci has been lying through his teeth
https://thepostmillennial.com/project-veritas-releases-military-documents-that-contradict-fauci-gain-of-function
This link almost certainly true given elements in the emails above, regarding how the virus was let loose in the Bat Caves. Daszak the main mover. Hanging, drawing and quartering would be too good for such filth
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/33581/20210922/was-covid-19-intentional-heres-what-this-chinese-whistleblower-says.htm
This should keep the party running, there are 46 mutations…
UK ‘monitoring’ cases of new Covid variant with ’46 mutations’ first detected in France (msn.com)
My new line is, I’ve had it… when asked how many, I say 25 times, they say with horror! why at your age (not saying, but I can remember the war) are you not pushing up the daisies?
They’re going potty on the “46” numerology. (Joe Biden must love it 🙂 .)
Are any big medical conferences scheduled to be held in London soon, such as the one in late November that was attended by the Israeli medic Elad Maor “who was one of the first people in the world to become infected with the Omicron variant”?
“Omicron” has been out for two and a bit months. That’s less time than there is between now and 1 April when all patient-facing NHS staff who want to keep their jobs are supposed to have been double-spiked.
“Pi” is probably coming.
Don’t really care about partygate et al. But, when is Fat Pang going to start think about the critical thinkers who made their own mind up against not-really-a-vaccine, masks and stupid lockdowns, as voters?
“On Monday Adam Wagner, a leading lawyer and expert on Covid regulations, said: “This looks unlikely to be legal for attendees. Being outside the home was illegal at the time unless (the only potentially relevant exception) it was for the need to work.”
Perhaps they were “exercising” their forearms lifting glasses…or their fingers rolling up banknotes?
“Still, if it helps to turn the public against this miserable regime then that’s probably a good thing – though with Labour only ever outflanking the Government on the side of Chairman Mao, part of me fears what might come after.”
Labour isn’t a player. Whatever comes after Johnson if he falls, it won’t be Labour. I wouldn’t trust the Torygraph one inch. They “exposed the MPs’ expenses scandal” in 2009 for reasons which had nothing to do with upholding the rule of law or even propriety. Everybody serious had known what MPs are like for a long time. They are as crooked as local councillors, but they wear more expensive clothes and have a budget for hiring “researchers”. The reasons for the Torygraph move was something else entirely. John Bercow knows.
There once was a team called Cummings-Gove-Johnson. I haven’t got much that’s… Read more »
Hmm, NutNuts is obviously the de facto PM; after all, Bozo believes in nothing except his own good and, hence, cannot possibly have instigated all the greenery, let alone the covid insanity. NutNuts should be introduced to Madame LaGuillotine, whose love of red would be a perfect match for NutNuts’ love of green.
Cometh the hour, cometh the bitch. He twisted the knife again 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHJe3k8OQ0M
I like the headline more punchy … I know people think that writing to MPs don’t work, they do in so much as not allowing them to stay hiding in their ivory towers until election times. Then they row back temporarily and after the election start their miserable governing all over again!
I am going to write today… threatening my support for lawful peaceful legal proceedings and due process against those responsible and that voters will not forget. We are growing in number.
I did it before the last vote, to a number of MPs and I think it pricks them somewhere 😊 even if it isn’t their conscience.
injecting 5 year olds with an experimental Non vaccine is unforgivable!
I bet voters will forget about their MP for a moment when they get that next huge electricity bill!
I’ll bet they won’t.
My personal contribution has been a ten page letter to mine.
I love that there is a tag for “Hypocrisy.” I think that tag has been needed nearly as much as comorbidity.
We lost hours and hours of time with friends who have left the nation since the start of Covid. Time we won’ get back ever. All that despite none of them (nor us) being in a high risk category. But we followed the rules to the letter until last June (when we decided Freedom Day was finally due). This is insulting. This is disturbing (they really do believe we are ignorant serfs don’t they). But it is not surprising.
Years ago a famous writer in America said he would rather be ruled by the first 100 names out of the phone book than the faculty at Harvard. I think i’d rather be ruled by the same than the current people in the Cabinet, and of course the person at #10 and her husband.
Simon Case at Number 70 Whitehall, and formerly in the Royal Household, could eat 10 cabinet ministers for breakfast.
In 15 days time the 2021 Coronavirus regs including the current face covering law all automatically expire. It is as if one aspect of these revelations is to ensure they do not renew these regs. If he announces that this law is not being renewed and the plan B restrictions are going, I think he can get out of all this on the back of the general euphoria of an end to face-coverings and a better year ahead. I think all this party business is of more concern to the media and the politicians than it really is to the general public, they will forget it tomorrow.
The bigger issue is what is he going to do about the NHS vaccine mandate? I think there is a fudge on the horizon, Novavax is now being shipped out for use in Europe, Pfizer are developing an Omicron specific vaccine, I think they can put in a delay on the NHS vaccine mandate while new vaccine technologies are investigated, if Covid fades away then so can the NHS mandate.
Steve, you are probably right. Give us back our old world (or as much as he can) and there will be enough happiness we won’t care about this (besides we have inflation, higher taxes and the coming heating crisis to focus on). Which means that once again the decisions won’t be based on science (which would have kept us out of masks and the vast majority of us living our lives) but on politics (remember those 70-80% support levels for lockdowns). I miss the simple concept of living your life based on truth. But is that so 2019 or what?
I have my doubts Boris will be around in the coming weeks. He’s already on notice that one more slip up and he’s toast. Brady had letters of no confidence in Boris with the event on the 15th May, of which no one asked the question – where are the minutes of that ‘business’ meeting, where is the agenda.
If none are available, then it was an informal gathering of work colleagues, in which case, every business could have claimed the same every Friday evening. Or every evening for that matter – We were discussing business in an informal environment.
This time it was an emailed invitation, with no mention of any business, no requests for specific individuals to attend, no agenda proposed, nothing that conforms to what would be considered a business meeting, just BYOB.
Had any of this been based on science our government would have been obliged to consult with the inventor of mRNA technology Dr. Robert Malone who has been vocal throughout.
The NHS vaccine mandate says first dose by 1 February and second by 31 March? Is there some more staging too? I’m not up on the details.
I dearly hope you are right that the mandate will fade away, but it could be that the whole shtick of sending in the army to do NHS work during “staff shortages” has been in preparation (in both logistics and propaganda) for losing staff on 1 April. There are a lot more service personnel who could be sent to work in hospitals than the few hundred who have already been sent in. They could call up reservists too.
It is even possible that sending the army into hospitals was a function of festive-season testmania, in addition to the thieving of billions of pounds directly and the conditioning of ever greater obedience in the population.
A backtracking from the attacks and humiliations meted out to the unvaccinated may be too much to hope for… For instance a removal of the requirement of 10 days of lockup for unvaccinated people (including British citizens) who enter the country from abroad may not be on the horizon.
The only places I’m aware of where there has been… Read more »
NHS mandate? Fuck off, when did we start having to comply with “NHS mandates”.
I predict the NHS ‘vaccine’ mandate will never be fulfilled, nor was it ever going to be. I think it always was an empty threat.
No government could live with the devastation sacking even a small percentage of NHS staff would bring. Every target they ever set would be obliterated. Backlogs of elective surgeries could never be addressed.
The political backlash would be unthinkable with only two years or so before the next general election. It’ll be bad enough as it is, but they can blame that on covid. They could never get away blaming sackings on covid, particularly when most of these staff worked through the first year with no vaccinations and little in the way of PPE.
The question of natural immunity then becomes a real problem for the government they won’t want to be made a central issue.
I have said since the SA data first became available that covid in the UK will be over by spring, all bar the shouting, and a receding memory by summer.
I wonder how much more shit Dominic Cummings has ready to throw at the fan?
Dom threw this shit on his blog 4 days ago.
Yes. Just wondering when we get the next instalment. Could be fun.
Go to Dom’s substack account. You can sign up for regular updates from him. Mine of information.
Well, what a surprise. But he’ll get away with it of course.
Nothing gets in the press unless it is sanctioned by the dictatorship
Go figure
This story is front and centre on the BBC website. Predictably.
The lesson to be drawn from this is not that Johnson and Co are hypocrites (of course they are, they’re politicians), but rather that Johnson and Co knew that they were perfectly safe from what they were telling us was deadly plague like no other.
And safe from it being reported at the time, despite brazenly sending 100 invites.
It’s almost as though they’ve kept their powder dry for when they need it….perhaps to force Johnson to keep the vaccine passport per chance?
Nah. Too many back benchers objecting to the passports. This will flush out a few more.
How many letters will Brady get this time round? If Boris doesn’t go now the next election is seriously at risk and the rest of the party knows it.
I do hope you are right. For me, the passport was always the end game/prize of this entire sham
I have often wondered about that. ID cards were supposedly planned years before being rejected.
If that’s the case, all they needed to do was resurrect part of those plans, but clearly, the vax passports were cobbled together at the last minute. They had so many problems with them they simply didn’t work early on. Nor am I convinced they are working now, for all but the most compliant.
Blair tried to get them in shortly after he came into power and the idea was resoundly rejected. Covid horse/vaxx pass is the Trojan Horse by which they’ll sneak this ID system in.
There is already no justification for using it to deny unvaccinated peeple moving around given that the vaccinated are all infecting each other anyway!
It should be dropped at once, but I’ve a feeling they will hang on to it.
I don’t think they can hang onto them. Event organisations will be screaming for their withdrawal. Fans of football and rugby etc. are doing their nut.
I’ll be very surprised if there are any meaningful restrictions come the 6 Nations. It’s monster income for the RFU and they won’t be happy with another half full Twickenham.