Staff carried on drinking in Number 10 until the early hours at parties on the eve of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral, with the last person not leaving until 4.20am, the Sue Gray report said. The two leaving dos which began the evening before the Queen sat alone in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle as her husband of more than 70 years was laid to rest were among the notorious episodes in the Partygate affair.
At around 6.30pm on April 16, about 45 people, including a few attending online, gathered in the press office to mark the departure of communications chief James Slack. Wine and beer had been brought in by staff.
Around the same time, a smaller event for another departing staff member started in the basement, with wine laid on and music playing from a laptop computer placed on top of a printer. In the course of the evening the two groups mingled, eventually joining together in the Downing Street garden, with more than 20 people still present with a number of bottles of alcohol at 9.30pm.
