Boris Johnson faces fresh demands to “come clean” about parties in Downing Street after reports emerged that the Prime Minister’s wife, Carrie Johnson, may now have had two lockdown parties in family flat above No 10.
Labour has called for an investigation into leaked texts suggesting there was a second gathering in Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat on his birthday in 2020.
Leaked messages, reported by the Sunday Times, suggest Johnson’s wife Carrie was with two friends in the Downing Street flat on his birthday in June 2020.
It is the second time that the Prime Minister’s wife is said to have attended a Covid rule-breaking event in the flat.
The other gathering, the so-called Abba party was on November 13, 2020, when loud music could be heard coming from Downing Street.
Neither party was investigated in the Sue Gray report or the Met’s investigation that saw both Carrie and Boris Johnson fined for the earlier birthday bash in Downing Street.
According to the paper an aide possesses messages sent by Mrs Johnson at around 6.15pm appearing to notify her husband that she was in the No 11 flat “with an unspecified number of male friends”.
At the time gatherings of two or more people were banned other than for work purposes.
The anonymous aide has reportedly since written to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case to inform him of the alleged gathering.
Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, has written to Case calling on him to release correspondence that relates to an alleged evening meet-up.
She told the head of the Civil Service: “It is crucial that you now advise the Prime Minister to come clean about his involvement in this apparently rule-breaking gathering.
“Given the public interest at stake, I request that you make public his correspondence pertaining to this event and his whereabouts on the date of Friday June 19 2020 and publish the relevant messages you have received, as well as handing them over to the Privileges Committee to consider as part of their investigation.”
The event has not been denied, but Carrie Johnson’s spokesperson said that Gray had been made aware of the texts “as part of her exhaustive inquiry into alleged breaches” of Covid rules.
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