Scotland Yard has launched an investigation into the partygate scandal for the parties held in Downing Street for the alleged violation of anti-Covid rules. This was announced by the commander of the Met Police, Cressida Dick. And the political future of Prime Minister Boris Johnson is becoming increasingly shaky.
Pending the conclusions of the internal investigation into the gatherings organized in violation of the anti Covid restrictions in 2020, which according to press revelations could produce potentially “overwhelming” evidence for the fate of the British Prime Minister, another accusation is brought down on BoJo: that of having given birth to an alleged birthday party on 19 June 2020, when the country was still in fact in a phase of just lightened lockdown, with rules that still prohibited any recreational meeting inside, allowing at most social gatherings between 6 people outdoors.
To launch the umpteenth bomb – revealed by the usual anonymous source behind which Dominic Cummings, former eminence gray of the Johnsonian entourage, determined to take revenge after being torpedoed just over a year ago – could be hidden is the broadcaster Itv. According to the revelations of which the premier would have participated that day in a celebration organized by surprise by the first lady Carrie to celebrate his 56 years with a cake in the cabinet office in Downing Street: present up to 30 members of his staff and also Lulu Lytle, the interior designer entrusted with the expensive and controversial renovations of her official residence. To then receive some relatives and friends in the evening. Accusations that a spokeswoman was quick to deny as “completely untrue”, claiming that Johnson would have limited himself to “10 minutes” with some collaborators who stopped “briefly” on the sidelines “of work” to wish him good wishes; to then receive in the evening “a few family members in the garden in full compliance with the rules” then in force. But which, however, cast further shadows on a leader already crippled in credibility; and they offer the detractors (from the Keir Starmer Labor party to the animators of the anti-Boris revolt in the Tory house) the right to return to demand immediate “resignation”.
All the more so since another internal investigation is now being added to the Partygate affair, in this case concerning the accusations made yesterday by the majority parliamentarian Nusrat Ghani, convinced that she was raised two years ago from the post of Undersecretary for Transport only for the fact of to be “a Muslim woman”. The conservative prime minister for his part still tries to resist, defended by the loyalists, but his situation is becoming more precarious day by day even and above all within his own party.
Speaking to reporters, BoJo could not help but affirm that he “takes very seriously” the two investigations underway. “We have to wait and see” what they will produce, he then insisted, clinging as a mantra to the conclusions of the report on the Partygate expected by the inflexible senior official Sue Gray later this weekend, in charge of investigating the matter. The revelations made by the Daily Telegraph however, Gray’s administrative findings sound increasingly alarming. In particular in relation to the testimonies collected among the police officers on duty in Downing Street who seem to be able to disprove some of his versions on the alleged parties, or at least those of his closest collaborators. After all, the problems for the prime minister do not end here, because yesterday he gave his testimony (in written form) to the poisoned Dominic Cummings, former Brexit guru who has now become a bitter enemy intent on trying to deal the coup de grace to his old boss. A blow that BoJo may not be able to parry – despite a survival capacity not to be underestimated – shielding himself with a simple purge of praetorians involved in the first person in the scandal: starting with the head of his secretariat, Martin Reynolds.
Finally, as if these troubles were not enough, the biggest financier of the Tories, the British oligarch of ex-Soviet origin Alexander Temerko, also appears to threaten a millionaire legal action against the government for having blocked in extremis – perhaps in order to avoid the suspicion of another scandal – a £ 1.2 billion energy project. A project with which the Aquind company (controlled by Temerko and his partner Viktor Fedotov) aimed to build a mega submarine electric cable between England and Normandy.