Boris Johnson: New 'partygate' photos emerge, as PM waits official report
New photographs have emerged of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson raising a glass in front of a group of people, with snacks and several wine bottles on a table in front of him.
British broadcaster ITV published four new pictures which they said were taken at a leaving party for Johnson’s communications chief in November 2020, when England was under the second of three periods of national lockdown.
When allegations of Downing Street parties emerged a few weeks later, Johnson told lawmakers “there was no party” and no rules were broken.
These fresh images came to light as Johnson faces one more threat to his political future: a comprehensive report into coronavirus lockdown-breaching parties in government offices that is expected to be published within days.
Senior civil servant Sue Gray is due to release her findings on “partygate,” the scandal over more than a dozen gatherings in Johnson’s No. 10 Downing Street residence and nearby buildings that took place when COVID-19 restrictions barred people in Britain from mixing with others.
Critics, some of them inside Johnson's Conservative Party, said the photos proved Johnson had lied to Parliament -- traditionally a resigning matter.
“It’s absolutely clear that there was a party, that he attended it, that he was raising a toast to glass one of his colleagues," Conservative lawmaker Roger Gale told Times Radio. "And therefore, he misled us from the dispatch box. And honourably, there is one answer.”
Ruth Davidson, the Conservatives' former leader in Scotland, said the photos showed that Johnson had "lied to Parliament.”
“I don’t think his job is tenable and his position is tenable," she said.
Claims that Boris Johnson and his staff enjoyed illegal office parties while millions in
Read more on euronews.com
