Insiders who attended events at Downing Street during lockdown have told the BBC how staff crowded together, sat on each other's laps and how bins were overflowing with rubbish. Empties were left on the table and bottles left around parts of the building.
A BBC Panorama programme, on at 7pm tonight, features testimonies of three insiders who were at the events. They describe arriving for work the morning after a get-together to find bottles lying around parts of the building, bins overflowing with rubbish and empties left on the table and that events featured dozens of staff crowded together, and parties going so late that, on occasion, some ended up staying in Downing Street all night.
They also said staff mocked others including a security guard who tried to stop what was going on. The accounts come a day before the senior civil servant Sue Gray is expected to deliver her report on lockdown parties in No 10.
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Last week, the Metropolitan Police concluded its own investigation into rule-breaking after issuing 126 fines - including one for the Prime Minister, his wife and the chancellor Rishi Sunak for attending a birthday party in June 2020. But the Met Police are under pressure to explain how they did not charge the Prime Minister for any further events, after ITV News' Paul Brand shared a picture showing Mr Johnson as part of a group holding a glass of wine. You can see that here.
Three insiders who were at the parties spoke to the BBC's former political editor Laura Kuenssberg anonymously. Speaking of a leaving event for former head of communications Lee Cain, one said: "There were about 30 people, if not more, in a room. Everyone was stood shoulder to shoulder, some people on each other's laps…one or two people."
At the party on the eve of Prince Philip's funeral on 16 April 2021, they portray a "lively event... a general party with people dancing around". The gathering becoming so loud that security guards in the building told them to leave the building and go into the No 10 grounds. So everyone grabbed all the drinks, the food, everything, and went into the garden," one source says. "We all sat around the tables drinking. People stayed the night there." They now concede what went on was "unforgivable".
The insiders admit that events were routine. "They were every week," one says. "The event invites for Friday press office drinks were just nailed into the diary." The invitation was known as "WTF" - meaning "Wine-Time Friday" which were scheduled for 4pm on Fridays.
But drinking wasn't limited to Fridays. One former official describes turning up at work in No 10 often to find "A mess! There were bottles, empties, rubbish - in the bin, but overflowing - or indeed sometimes left on the table."
Staff told BBC Panorama that some staff were worried about what was going on, describing the "foolish" now notorious BYOB - bring-your-own-bottle - email sent by the prime minister's top civil servant, Martin Reynolds. Instant messages were sent asking what was happening but one former staffer says how difficult it felt to raise concerns.
Another insider describes how a Downing Street security guard was mocked when they tried to stop a party in full flow.
"I remember when a custodian tried to stop it all and he was just shaking his head in this party, being like, 'This shouldn't be happening'." People made fun of him because he was so worked up that this party was happening and it shouldn't be happening."
All three told the programme they saw Downing Street as a parallel universe. "We saw it as our own bubble" where the rules didn't really apply, one said. "Everything just continued as normal. social distancing didn't happen. We didn't wear face masks. It wasn't like the outside world."
Another even describes the events as a "lifeline" for staff who were working long hours, especially if they lived alone but all three point to the culture set by the prime minister himself, suggesting he "wanted to be liked" and for staff to be able to "let their hair down". One said that Boris Johnson being there effectively gave them permission to rule break. "He may have just been popping through on the way to his flat because that's what would happen," they add. "You know, he wasn't there saying this shouldn't be happening. He wasn't saying, 'Can everyone break up and go home? Can everyone socially distance? Can everyone put masks on?'
"He wasn't telling anybody that. He was grabbing a glass for himself."
Mr Johnson has been fined for attending one event and denies that he broke the law on other occasions, or was aware that rules were being broken in Downing Street.
One staffer described watched the prime minister denying, in the House of Commons, that anything had gone wrong. We were watching it all live and we just sort of looked at each other in disbelief like - why?" they say. Why is he denying this when we've been with him this entire time, we knew that the rules had been broken, we knew these parties happened?"
One former staffer says that particularly younger members of the team "did not think they were breaking the rules at the time because the prime minister was at [the events], some of the most senior civil servants in the country were at them - and were indeed organising some of them".
Others say they have been "subject to this witch hunt" while more senior officials and politicians have found it easier to carry on.
"It's been very distressing and shaming and, particularly because that whole period was just quite traumatic, it was really difficult to work on every single day.
"We were learning that people were dying in hospital beds and people were dying needlessly…So it was quite difficult to look back at that period now and think this is what will define that - not the vaccine programme or the food parcels for shielding people. It will be 'What were you doing on 20 May in the garden?'"
