Michael Gove has apologised for a new Partygate video that shows Conservative officials dancing and laughing as they broke Covid lockdown rules, deeming their actions “terrible” and “indefensible”.
The video, obtained by the Mirror, shows members of staff drinking alcohol at the gathering in London on 14 December 2020, and mocking lockdown rules the public were following at the time. At least 24 people were in attendance, including Shaun Bailey – made a peer in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list – whose campaign team organised the event. He left before the video was taken.
Ben Mallet, who was awarded an OBE in Johnson’s honours list, is pictured wearing Christmas braces and a blue tie. Mallet was the Conservatives’ campaign director for the 2021 London mayoral election and is running Moz Hossain’s mayoral campaign.
In the video, two people appear to dance past a sign saying “Please keep your distance” before colliding with a table full of buffet food. In the background, someone can be heard saying: “As long as we don’t stream that we’re like, bending the rules.”
Gove, the levelling up secretary, told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday show: “The fact that this party went ahead is indefensible,” but insisted it would not be right for him to say whether the Metropolitan police should reopen their investigation into this lockdown-breaking event.
He said: “It’s terrible. I think it’s completely out of order. As I understand it, this was an event that was organised by the people who were running the mayoral campaign for Shaun Bailey. They had obviously behaved in a way which is unacceptable.”
He said: “I want to apologise to everyone who, looking at that, will think these people are flouting the rules designed to protect us all.”
But he said Bailey and Mallett should keep their honours despite the video of them breaking lockdown rules. “The decision to confer honours on people was one that was made by Boris Johnson as an outgoing prime minister. Outgoing prime ministers have that right,” Gove said.
When the lockdown party was held, indoor socialising was banned under tier 2 restrictions. On the day the party is understood to have taken place, the then health secretary, Matt Hancock, announced that London would enter tier 3 restrictions in order to contain a surging number of Covid infections.
The Met police had launched an investigation after the Mirror published a picture of the gathering, but said the photo was not enough evidence to find an offence had been committed.
The Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, said the Conservative officials who attended the CCHQ lockdown party should “absolutely” be stripped of their honours.
“If Rishi Sunak wasn’t so weak, he should be withdrawing the entire list from Johnson. The video will anger people right across the country and it feels like the Conservative party wants us to relive that trauma day after day, week after week,” Sarwar told Sky News. “So Sunak should show leadership, shouldn’t be so weak, and withdraw that honours list.”
Samuel Kasumu, a former London mayoral hopeful who previously worked as as an adviser to Boris Johnson’s No 10, said seeing evidence of lockdown parties was one of the reasons he quit his role in April 2021.
MPs are to vote on a motion in the Commons on Monday endorsing the findings of the privileges committee, which found Johnson had deliberately misled parliament over the Partygate scandal.
CCHQ said “formal disciplinary action” was taken against four staff members, who were seconded to the Bailey campaign, over the “unauthorised” event.
A spokesperson for the Bailey campaign said: “This is an old story. We repeatedly apologised for this event at the time. It was subject to a nearly year-long police investigation. The matter is closed.”
