North East families who suffered alone while their loved ones fought for their lives during lockdown insist Boris Johnson has "no excuse" for the latest party allegations.
The embattled Prime Minister faced further criticism this week, after ITV News reported that as many as 30 people had celebrated his June 19 birthday with cake and a chorus of 'Happy Birthday' in the Cabinet Room after he returned from an official visit.
The government has said Mr Johnson was present for "less than 10 minutes" during the time when all indoor socialising was banned.
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In May 2020, Rebecca Highton's three year old son Alfie, who has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, was undergoing vital life-or-death surgery at the Royal Victoria Infirmary. For weeks, Rebecca couldn't see husband Zak or Alfie's twin Rory at all.
By June 19, when Number 10 has acknowledged that a group of people "gathered briefly" at an event where it's understood cake was served and "happy birthday" sung, things had eased slightly for the Highton family - Alfie could see his dad and brother from a distance, in the hospital cafe, for half an hour at a time, with masks on.
Rebecca, from Newcastle, has called for Mr Johnson to face criminal sanctions over what she says was clearly a breach of lockdown rules, which allowed people only to gather for essential work purposes which couldn't be done remotely.
She said: "If it was anybody else they would have been fined. Everybody else had cancelled everything."
Solicitor Rebecca said she was unconvinced by the defence offered that the Prime Minister hadn't organised the event and wasn't aware of it - an argument most notably made by Northern Ireland Minister Connor Burns, who said Mr Johnson had been "ambushed with a cake". She said the leader should have been instantly aware that such a gathering would be against the rules he had enforced.
"He was not 'ambushed by cake' - he knew he had his flat upstairs and he wasn't in that flat, he was at his workplace, but his wife was there and his interior decorator was there, so he wasn't working at that time," she said.
"Our boys' birthday was in September, we did nothing, we hadn't seen our family in months but we didn't see them. There was no celebrating that Alfie had come home, that Alfie didn't die, there was none of that - yet Boris Johnson gets to have his cake and eat it."
In June 2020, Kirstie Mulvey, from Berwick, had already spent over two months in hospital with her then-13-year-old daughter Alyssa, who'd suffered life-threatening complications after contracting Covid-19. She would be there for another five months, terrified for her daughter's health and seeing husband Shane for only brief moments.
The 42-year-old said: "On June 3, my wedding anniversary, Alyssa was transferred from the RVI to the Freeman Hospital because she was having a heart operation. When she had heart surgery it was just me there, my husband couldn't be there. When he came to see Alyssa that weekend there could only be one person at a time so I had to leave, I had to meet him outside and tell her where her room was, that was it, I couldn't even show him to the room.
"It was absolutely awful, we couldn't spend any time together - it wasn't until July or August that the three of us could be together, outside."
Kirstie and Alyssa shared their fury with us at ChronicleLive in the aftermath of the now-notorious 'bring your own booze' event in the Downing Street garden, and the Berwick mum said the latest revelations only cemented her family's view that the PM should resign.
She said she was unconvinced by the argument that the leader wasn't at fault because he hadn't organised the event.
Kirstie said: "When we heard we thought 'he will just blame his wife' - that's just typical, the fact that they were there inside with their M&S party food, well, lucky them. He'll try to blame someone else, say someone else organised it, but we all knew the rules, nobody else was able to see people, to say goodbye when people died.
"I just think it's a joke now - Alyssa and I say he's just taking the mick.
"It's just unfair. I think he thinks he's above the law and above everybody else and he's just holding on to his job, he doesn't want to give up his position. I don't know if it's stubbornness or arrogance. He is is being very arrogant, he's telling us to wait for Sue Gray's report but he just hold his hands up and say 'right, ok, it's time for me to leave'."
For Kim Shepherd, the first months of lockdown were a terrifying time. Her husband, Barry, spent three-and-a-half months in intensive care at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital, for much of that time in a coma, while she was completely unable to visit him.
Even after he came out of hospital, Barry remained vulnerable to Covid as he's in need of a kidney transplant, so he and Kim have had to be especially careful.
The Blyth wife said the Prime Minister has "no excuse" for enjoying cake with colleagues, his then-fiancee and an interior decorator when families like hers could not event see each other.
She said: "I think he is a complete joke, the man has no morals at all.
"While this country was locked down and we were all stuck at home he has parties galore. He's got no excuse he can make to justify having parties all over the place."
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