A woman who lost her father to Covid has said Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list is “tainted with blood” after damning new footage showed Conservative staff partying during lockdown.
Ruth Carney’s father Peter Carney died alone in hospital on 2 May 2020, just months before a video showing Tory staff joking about “bending the rules” at the gathering when indoor socialising was banned under Tier 2 restrictions on 14 December 2020.
At least 24 guests were reportedly at the party in the basement of the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) in London, held days before Mr Johnson imposed severe lockdown rules on London and the southeast, The Mirror reported.
TV and theatre director Ms Carney, 47, said it was insulting to see Tory staff drinking and dancing when families could not be with their loved ones when they died – especially as two of those present have since been given honours by Mr Johnson.
She said: “That honours list is really rubbing salt in the wound – how dare he be allowed to do that? It should be scrapped.
“I’m sure there are people on there who are worthy and should be honoured but do they really want to be honoured on his list? It’s tainted with blood.”
Shaun Bailey, who was awarded a peerage this month by the former prime minister, quit as chair of the London Assembly’s police and crime committee when a photograph of the party, organised by his London mayoral campaign, first emerged last year. He had left the party by the time the video was filmed, but is now facing calls for his peerage to be blocked. Tory aide Ben Mallett, who was given an OBE by Mr Johnson, was also among those filmed at the Christmas party.
A mere few months before that video was said to have been filmed, on 23 April, Ms Carney, of Sandbach in Cheshire, was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital with her father, who has Alzheimer’s, after he had caught Covid in his care home.
She waited with him in hospital where it took nine hours for him to get a bed, describing scenes there similar to a “warzone”, with NHS staff desperately “scrambling” to save lives.
Her mother Kathleen Carney had not been able to see her husband of 54 years prior to him being admitted to hospital due to lockdown restrictions, so she never got the chance to say goodbye to him.
Neither mother nor daughter could not be with Mr Carney in his final moments. Ms Carney had caught Covid and then a secondary infection, so she was isolating in their garden annexe when she received a call from the hospital, telling her he had died.
“I wasn’t even able to touch or hug my mum when my dad died,” she said. “I had to tell her through a door. It was horrendous.”
The family was forced to have a socially-distanced funeral with just 15 people, for “a man who should have had 250 people”, said Ms Carney.
“Then ... they’re having a party and dancing. I’m fuming, I’m extremely angry, I absolutely cannot believe this – it’s like some kind of joke,” she said of the video.
The video is the first that appears to show Tory staff breaking the rules but it comes after a series of photos uncovered during the Partygate scandal that showed gatherings among members of a government during lockdown.
Those gatherings came at a time when the then-prime minister was instructing people across the UK to live by strict coronavirus restrictions and ultimately led to his downfall.
A committee of MPs last week found Mr Johnson had repeatedly lied to parliament about rules being followed and they would have recommended he be suspended from the Commons for 90 days, had he not resigned his seat in anger over their ruling days earlier.
