Top aides to Johnson quit, adding to the turmoil at Downing Street

LONDON » An exodus of senior officials from 10 Downing Street on Thursday deepened the crisis engulfing Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as he fought to hold on to power in the wake of a scandal over parties that breached lockdown restrictions.

Johnson’s chief of staff, private secretary, communications chief and head of policy all resigned, leaving the top of British government rudderless at a time when Johnson is struggling to avert a mutiny in the ranks of his Conservative Party.

About a dozen party lawmakers have called publicly for a no-confidence vote in the prime minister.

Some of the departures fulfilled Johnson’s promise to overhaul the Downing

Street operation, after the release of a government report Monday that criticized the office for “excessive” workplace drinking, citing 16 social gatherings — some of them now under police investigation — during periods when England was under strict lockdowns.

But the resignation of his policy chief, Munira Mirza, carried an extra sting. One of his longest-serving and most influential aides, Mirza sent the prime minister a sharply critical letter in which she said he made a “scurrilous accusation” against the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer.

That referred to claims Johnson had made in Parliament on Monday, linking Starmer, who is a former chief public prosecutor, to a failure to bring charges against Jimmy Savile, a popular television personality who died in 2011, having never been tried for a string of sex offenses that later came to light.

Starmer was not involved in the case and later ordered an inquiry.

The departures of the chief of staff, Dan Rosenfeld, and the principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds, were not as unexpected as Mirza’s. Critics have faulted Rosenfeld for his management of Downing Street, while Reynolds sent an email inviting nearly 100 staff members to a BYOB garden party at a time when the government’s own lockdown rules prohibited people from gathering with more than one person outside their families.

The departure of the communications director, Jack Doyle, was also less of a surprise, as his name was linked with some of the parties now under investigation by the police.