The pictures that might put the fizz
Detectives decided the PM committed no crime but wider public may not be so accommodating
‘There was the sound of lots of banging and dancing and drinking, and a number of Abba tracks’
BORIS JOHNSON raises a glass of wine and toasts the departure of his director of communications. The glass of fizz (possibly champagne) is gripped in his right hand, a smile on the Prime Minister’s face as he and at least seven members of his Downing Street press team say their farewells to Lee Cain, his departing official spokesman who had fallen out with Mr Johnson’s young fiancée Carrie Symonds (now his wife).
Yet eight days before this incriminating photograph was taken on November 13 2020, the Prime Minister had plunged England into a second national lockdown. Pubs were shut, travel banned and socialising indoors or even in back gardens prohibited.
On the table in the photograph’s foreground appears prima facie evidence of what could only best be described as a party. There are two bottles of bubbly, four bottles of wine (two red and two white) and half a bottle of gin. Most of the booze has been drunk bar one bottle of unopened fizz, visible at the very edge of the picture. There appear to be some baguettes on a plate, biscuits, crisps and paper cups and what eagleeyed watchers on social media said was a takeaway cardboard container.
Oh, and perched on a chair in the Press Office is the Prime Minister’s red box, containing the official documents of state he was taking home with him to the flat in 11 Downing Street.
After some months studying the evidence – believed to include this photograph and three others from the same set – the Metropolitan Police concluded Mr Johnson had broken none of the rules he had ordered the rest of the country to follow just a few days before. The other photographs all taken by the same person show Mr Johnson in a variety of poses. In one image he fully extends his wine glass up high while in another his arms are flapping at his sides, a big grin across his face. In the final photo, he appears to be in mid-flow of what is said to be a farewell speech, his left arm gesticulating as his staff, their faces subsequently digitally obscured, look on. ITV News, which obtained the exclusive photographs, has branded the party “fizzgate”.
Not that the Prime Minister has admitted to any wrongdoing. A little over a year after this event took place, Mr Johnson told MPS “all guidance was completely followed in No 10”.
Now it has emerged that he has escaped a fine for the leaving do, despite the photographic evidence. Police did not even send Mr Johnson a questionnaire, indicating that officers did not believe he had a case to answer. Back in November 2020, Downing Street was in chaos. Mr Cain and his mentor Dominic Cummings, the Downing Street chief of staff, had fallen out with Ms Symonds (now the third Mrs Boris Johnson).
Mr Johnson had a plan to promote Mr Cain but that had been scuppered. Mr Cain instead announced he was resigning and – after The Daily Telegraph reported on November 12 that Ms Symonds was being referred to behind her back as “Princess Nut Nuts” – he went the next day.
The departure of Cain and Cummings didn’t just spark this leaving do.
Upstairs in the Johnsons’ Downing Street flat, it is alleged that Ms Symonds hosted her own farewell party. Hers was entirely celebratory. Having won her power struggle, she celebrated her win with friends. “There was the sound of lots of banging and dancing and drinking, and a number of Abba tracks – including a triumphalist Winner Takes it All,” a source said in January this year. Downing Street insisted the Abba party did not happen. “It is totally untrue to suggest Mrs Johnson held a party in the Downing Street flat on November 13, 2020,” said a spokesman in rebuttal.
England was in its second national lockdown on Nov 13, 2020, after restrictions were reintroduced on Nov 5 following a rise in Covid cases.
However, the restrictions did not apply to gatherings “reasonably necessary for work”. The “working safely during coronavirus” guidance of the time said only “absolutely necessary participants should attend meetings and should maintain two metre separation throughout”.
Last night, No10 sources offered suggestions for why the PM had escaped a damaging fixed penalty notice on this occasion. The photograph was taken from inside the Downing Street Press Office, officials explained, looking out to the corridor from Mr Johnson’s pri
‘It is totally untrue to suggest Mrs Johnson held a party in the Downing Street flat on November 13, 2020’
vate office on the ground floor to the lift that takes him up to his private flat.
Mr Johnson was simply on his way to his flat when he chanced upon the Press Office event. Having heard the commotion as he strode to the lift, he was diverted by the noise and stuck his head through the doorway. There he discovered, so the version of events goes, a leaving do for Mr Cain. Aides were drinking and Mr Johnson thought it impolite not to say his own goodbyes. He then toasted Mr Cain’s work in Downing Street with other staff – the event caught on camera – before leaving to go upstairs to his flat.
Those around Mr Johnson believe he was not fined over the incident because he spent so little time inside the Press Office that it did not meet the threshold for a non-work related event.
Once upstairs, Mr Johnson may well have stumbled across another party in progress. This one was his wife’s alleged Abba party. Sources have let it be known that once upstairs he was interviewing Henry Newman, a close friend of his wife’s, about a potential job in No10. The interview, according to government sources, took place in another part of the four-bedroom official state apartment at No11. He had not broken the law at the so-called Abba party, because, said the source, the job interview constituted work.
The decision by police to issue the PM with a £50 fine for attending his own 56th birthday party in the Cabinet room in June 2020 but not for the events in November of that year will cause the Prime Minister’s opponents to cry foul.
Whatever the law and the police interpretation of it, the reality is the photographs are not a good look for a prime minister who had just plunged the country into the strictest of Covid lockdowns. That the photographs emerged yesterday, shortly after Mr Cummings predicted they would, will also raise eyebrows about who leaked them. Mr Cummings, writing on his blog, said the images would show the PM had “obviously lied” to the House of Commons and to the police.
That detectives have decided no crime was committed on November 13 will come as some relief to Mr Johnson. The wider public, studying the evidence for itself, may not be so accommodating.