Wednesday, July 05, 2023
Will the parties ever end?
Is the party over for Rishi Sunak? Well, he might wish that some of the parties from the last few years would go away and not bother him again. The Guardian reports that Scotland Yard is reopening its investigation into potential Covid breaches at a “jingle and mingle” lockdown party at Conservative headquarters at the height of the pandemic. The Partygate scandal is continuing to plague the Conservative party.
The paper says that the Metropolitan police’s decision to look again at the gathering of former Tory mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey’s campaign team in the run-up to Christmas 2020 has prompted calls to delay his peerage until the investigation is completed.
They add that the force will also scrutinise an event in parliament that the Tory MP Bernard Jenkin – a member of the privileges committee that produced a highly critical report into Boris Johnson lying to MPs over lockdown parties – is said to have attended:
Rishi Sunak faced pressure of his own over Partygate during an appearance in front of the powerful Commons liaison committee on Monday, where he sought to justify missing the vote on Johnson’s sanction and admitted he had not yet fully read last week’s brief report on attacks on the privileges committee by a series of Tories.
The gathering in parliament on 8 December 2020, when London was under tier 2 restrictions, became the focus of a furious row between Johnson and Jenkin, the most senior select committee chair and one of four Tory MPs on the privileges committee.
Johnson issued a scathing statement accusing Jenkin of “monstrous hypocrisy” for allegedly attending the event before sitting on the cross-party panel which found, after a year-long inquiry, that the former prime minister had lied to MPs with his Partygate denials.
The event was believed to be a “drinks party” held by Dame Eleanor Laing, a Commons deputy speaker, in her office to celebrate the birthday of Lady Jenkin, the veteran Tory MP’s wife. Laing will not step down from her role while the investigation continues.
Elena Ciesco, a spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice who lost her father on 8 December 2020, said: “To think that while I was saying goodbye to him over a screen, the people who were supposed to be protecting him were ‘jingling and mingling’ and treating the whole situation like a joke is beyond devastating.”
As the Guardian says. the reopening of the investigation into the Conservative HQ event potentially plunges the Tory party’s London mayoral campaign into fresh turmoil. But the real damage must be to Sunak, who doesn't appear to be able to put Johnson's toxic legacy behind him.
The paper says that the Metropolitan police’s decision to look again at the gathering of former Tory mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey’s campaign team in the run-up to Christmas 2020 has prompted calls to delay his peerage until the investigation is completed.
They add that the force will also scrutinise an event in parliament that the Tory MP Bernard Jenkin – a member of the privileges committee that produced a highly critical report into Boris Johnson lying to MPs over lockdown parties – is said to have attended:
Rishi Sunak faced pressure of his own over Partygate during an appearance in front of the powerful Commons liaison committee on Monday, where he sought to justify missing the vote on Johnson’s sanction and admitted he had not yet fully read last week’s brief report on attacks on the privileges committee by a series of Tories.
The gathering in parliament on 8 December 2020, when London was under tier 2 restrictions, became the focus of a furious row between Johnson and Jenkin, the most senior select committee chair and one of four Tory MPs on the privileges committee.
Johnson issued a scathing statement accusing Jenkin of “monstrous hypocrisy” for allegedly attending the event before sitting on the cross-party panel which found, after a year-long inquiry, that the former prime minister had lied to MPs with his Partygate denials.
The event was believed to be a “drinks party” held by Dame Eleanor Laing, a Commons deputy speaker, in her office to celebrate the birthday of Lady Jenkin, the veteran Tory MP’s wife. Laing will not step down from her role while the investigation continues.
Elena Ciesco, a spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice who lost her father on 8 December 2020, said: “To think that while I was saying goodbye to him over a screen, the people who were supposed to be protecting him were ‘jingling and mingling’ and treating the whole situation like a joke is beyond devastating.”
As the Guardian says. the reopening of the investigation into the Conservative HQ event potentially plunges the Tory party’s London mayoral campaign into fresh turmoil. But the real damage must be to Sunak, who doesn't appear to be able to put Johnson's toxic legacy behind him.
