40-second video that will haunt the Tories
IT was supposed to be a private rehearsal in Downing Street’s controversial new £2.6million media suite.
Allegra Stratton, who had recently been given the job of the Prime Minister’s TV spokesman, was practising with other senior aides ahead of the launch of what, at the time, No 10 hoped would be regular televised briefings.
But last night’s video leak of the 40-second-long damning exchange now threatens to have serious political consequences for the Government. During the practice run, filmed on December 22 last year just as sweeping Covid restrictions were being re-imposed, Miss Stratton was pressed by a fellow aide, Ed Oldfield, about ‘reports’ that there was a Christmas party in Downing Street the previous Friday.
Asked if she recognised the reports, Miss Stratton smiled and laughed, at first saying that she ‘went home’ before apparently agonising over what the correct answer should be.
The video showed Mr Oldfield then pressing her for a response, asking whether the Prime Minister would ‘condone having a Christmas party?’
Laughing again, she then asked aides ‘what’s the answer?’ before staff in the
‘PM is urged to come clean’
press room appear to suggest ideas, with one proposing that ‘it wasn’t a party’ but rather ‘cheese and wine’.
‘Is cheese and wine alright? It was a business meeting,’ Miss Stratton replies, to more laughter in the room, before deciding that the ‘fictional party was a business meeting’. But she then admits: ‘It was not socially distanced.’
Since the story about a No 10 Christmas party first surfaced a week ago, Downing Street has consistently denied that any rules were broken.
The Daily Mirror reported on December 1 that there were two ‘boozy’ parties hosted in No 10 at the end of last year, while London was under stringent coronavirus rules.
The latter party, on December 18, was described as an unofficial Christmas bash, where staff were said to have ‘knocked back glasses of wine during a Christmas quiz and a Secret Santa’.
At the time London was under Tier Three restrictions which banned social mixing indoors. Mr Johnson is not believed to have attended the December party, though is reported to have given a speech at a packed leaving do for a senior aide on November 27.
The day after the reports surfaced last week, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman insisted that ‘at all stages the rules have been followed’ and denied a Christmas party had been thrown. But he did not deny a ‘gathering’ had taken place, when asked by journalists.
At the briefing last Wednesday, Mr Johnson’s current press secretary said she did not ‘recognise’ the account of the party, and added: ‘Covid rules have been followed at all times.’
Mr Johnson has also denied that any rules were broken, and yesterday – before the video of Miss Stratton surfaced – said he was ‘satisfied myself that the guidelines were followed at all times’. The fact that aides joked about what Miss Stratton described as a ‘fictional’ party just days after the event was said to have taken place will cast doubt on Downing Street’s repeated denials.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer last night accused the Government of lying and laughing ‘about those lies’, and urged Mr Johnson to ‘come clean’ and apologise. ‘It cannot be one rule for the Conservatives and another for everyone else,’ he said. Ex-ITV journalist Miss Stratton was hired last year to host the briefings that Mr Johnson hoped would give the public more ‘direct engagement’ with the Government – but he ditched the idea before she made her first appearance.
It was revealed earlier this year that the taxpayer footed the bill for a £2.6million refurbishment of the No 9 briefing room.