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Caught with the drink in hand: Photo of Party Gate sinner Boris Johnson from November 2020. Now investigations have been launched into two "parties" that took place a few weeks later

Photo: Cabinet Office / dpa

Police in the British capital have reopened investigations into illegal lockdown parties in the government district. As Scotland Yard announced on Tuesday evening, it is, among other things, about an event on December 14, 2020. A recently leaked video recording had shown the team of the then Conservative mayoral candidate for London, Shaun Bailey, at the exuberant celebration.

  • You can read the original Scotland Yard statement here: Update on assessment of alleged breaches of Covid Regulations

An event in parliament on December 8, 2020 is also to be investigated, the police statement continued. According to a report, there was a birthday party in parliament. The piquant thing about it is that a sharp inner-party critic of ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Sir Bernard Jenkin, is said to have participated. A committee of which Jenkin is a member had reprimanded Johnson a few weeks ago for lying in parliament with regard to the Partygate affair.

According to the Commission's report, Johnson was the first prime minister to deliberately mislead the House of Commons. The violations were so serious that Johnson – if he had still been a member of parliament – would be excluded from the parliamentary sessions in Westminster for 90 days. Johnson escaped such a suspension only because he had previously resigned his mandate.

126 penalty orders imposed for illegal celebrations in the government district

Johnson had already discredited the results of the investigation as "garbage" and spoke of a "witch hunt" against him. I believed, correctly, that these events were reasonably necessary for work purposes," the ex-prime minister said of the meetings in question during the Corona period.

During Johnson's tenure, a total of 126 penalty orders were issued for illegal celebrations in the government district, Scotland Yard writes. Johnson and the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, also received penalties. Johnson, however, had long denied any wrongdoing in Parliament. Meanwhile, reports of further prohibited gatherings by Johnson, which were examined by the police, did not lead to new investigations.

oka/dpa