Johnson accused of blaming junior officials for "Partygate".

 

Putin's invasion of the Ukraine effectively threw a lifeline to Johnson, but now that media interest in the war is waning, the press have put the spotlight back on Boris Johnson and the police investigation into 'Partygate'.

The Metropolitan Police are investigating 12 events during 2020 and 2021, where it is thought that lockdown rules were broken. The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is known to have attended six of these events. Some of these parties took place at 10 Downing Street.

The police have issued 20 fixed penalty notices to people who attended these events, including officials working in Downing Street. Previously, the Prime Minister, told Parliament that "all guidance was followed completely in No 10." Although the police have been issuing fines to those who are believed to have broken the law, it's astonishing that Johnson, still refuses to accept that the law has been broken. Nor will he confirm that he will resign, if he's found to have broken the law.

The Met have been accused of focusing their attentions on "low hanging fruit" - junior officials. A former senior aide to the Prime Minister, Dominic Cummings, has now accused Boris Johnson of encouraging attacks on junior officials in order to protect himself and his wife Carrie. He says senior officials have "turned a blind eye" to his behaviour. In a recent blog, Cummings wrote: "It is deeply, deeply contemptible that not just the PM but senior civil servants have allowed such people to have their reputations attacked in order to protect the sociopathic narcissist squatting in the No 10 flat."

If the Prime Minister or his wife are not fined for breaching lockdown restrictions, when others in their charmed circle have been, critics are likely to say that the police investigation looks bent, and that there is one law for powerful figures like Boris Johnson, and another law, for the rest of us. During lockdown restrictions, the police issued thousands of fines to those they believed broke the law. The crux of the matter is whether Johnson broke the law, and then lied or misled Parliament, and if his position as Prime Minister is now untenable. The "sociopathic narcissist', seems to be hanging on by the skin of his teeth.