The SUE Gray senior official on the holidays organized at Downing Street during the confinement denounces “serious failures”. The British Prime Minister apologized.
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The British often use the term “roller coaster” – the Russian mountains – to describe their emotional state or unforeseen succession of events. This Monday, January 31 was a real “Roller Coaster” for Boris Johnson. In the morning, the prime minister seemed almost out of business: from the Essex where he visited a shipyard, he promised a new post-Brexit law to get rid of Community legislative legacy. A telephone interview with Vladimir Putin was planned later in the day, a trip to Ukraine considered for the following days.
The highly anticipated internal report of the senior Sue Gray official on multiple parties organized at Downing Street during the confinement was certainly imminent, but after the surprise intervention of the Grand London Police (Met), which required the 28 January she expurns her findings from all the details that could compromise her own investigations, the leader seemed almost out of danger. Who, among the Conservative members (who hold his fate in their hands) would have the notclaim of claiming his resignation on the faith of an inconsistent report?
But the wind turned abruptly at the beginning of the afternoon. Despite the constraints imposed by Scotland Yard, Sue Gray delivered much more severe conclusions than expected. Unlike repeated denials of the Prime Minister, there were “meetings” in Downing Street and in departments (M me Gray avoids the term “holidays”, left to the appreciation of the police). Seize in all of May 2020 and April 2021, twelve of which are the subject of a police inquiry, said the number two of the Cabinet Office (the administration working for the government), renowned for its integrity. And his courage. The place in particular on a meeting that took place on November 13, 2020, in the function apartment of Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie Johnson.
“Serious failures”
Some of these events “represent serious breaches of the standards to which those who work at the heart of the government should be accepted but also to the standards to which the entire British population was supposed to adhere at the time,” says Sue Gray. “There have been leadership and judgment errors at different parts of Downing Street and the Cabinet Office”, adds M me Gray, which denounces “excessive consumption of alcohol” in the corridors of The British Executive and claims that these malfunctions are corrected “immediately, without waiting for the end of the police investigations”.
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