When the first Mirror front page dropped with a story about two illicit parties in No 10, most MPs and aides were willing to shrug it off. After all, the serious suits working behind the famous black door are not perceived as a party-mad crowd.
Most in Westminster blithely assumed it was a glass of fizz at the desk. One cabinet minister confided at the time that he had shared the dregs of a bottle of whiskey in a near-deserted office with some officials working late just before Christmas, and joked about whether that would see him on the front of the Mirror as well.
