LONDON – Prime Minister Boris Johnson has presided over a disorderly workplace that has seen widespread violations of coronavirus restrictions, according to a much-anticipated government inquiry released Wednesday that marks a moment of reckoning for the scandal-stricken British leader.
The report, by a senior official, Sue Gray, included photos of Mr Johnson raising a glass at a birthday party in his honor, a violating event for which he paid a police fine. It noted that 83 people broke the rules at parties, with some drinking heavily, fighting with each other and damaging property.
Still, the report yielded no particularly explosive new information about Mr Johnson’s behavior, and even credited Downing Street with changing some of its practices to address an office culture that Ms Gray described in an earlier edited version of described her report as lacking leadership and being marinated in alcohol.
Mrs. Gray does not recommend punishment for those who break the rules. But she emphatically noted that junior staff could reasonably have expected the parties to be legitimate, since they were also attended by their superiors. That suggested that Mr. Johnson and other prominent figures deserved the majority of the blame for breaking the rules.
“Whatever the original intent was,” wrote Ms Gray, “what happened at many of these gatherings and the way they developed was not in line with Covid guidelines at the time.”
The report added that “at least some of the meetings in question are a serious failure to uphold not only the high standards expected of those working at the heart of government, but also the standards established at the time.” of the whole British population were expected.”
That could be a thorny issue for Mr Johnson, as he claimed in parliament that none of the meetings violated the restrictions in place at the time. The question of whether he misled lawmakers is probably the prime danger to the prime minister in the coming weeks, even if he appears to have survived the initial reaction from the public and members of his conservative party.
Mr Johnson repeated his apology in Parliament for the illegal parties, but he reiterated his claim that he did not believe at the time that they were breaking the rules. He defended several of the gatherings as legitimate excuses for workers who had worked long hours during the difficult days of the pandemic.
In some cases, Mr Johnson said, meetings continued long after he left, and some staff members mistreated security and cleaning staff — behavior he said frightened him and demanded apologies.
“We are humbled by the experience,” Mr Johnson told opposition catcalls. “We’ve learned our lesson.”
The release of Ms Gray’s full findings on the scandal was blocked in January when police began their own investigation. Still, her preliminary report — which was made public but parts of which were redacted — was damning, concluding that there had been “failures of leadership and judgment” by various parts of Downing Street and the government machine.
Last week, London’s Metropolitan Police said their investigation into ‘Partygate’, as the rule-breaking scandal has come to be known, was complete, paving the way for Ms Gray to complete her report.
