PMQs: Boris Johnson sorry for offence caused by Christmas party joke video

Boris Johnson has apologised for a video showing Downing Street staff joking about a lockdown Christmas party in No 10, amid mounting public fury.

The PM said he shared people’s anger and had ordered an inquiry into whether rules had been broken.

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson

But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he was taking people for fools and the PM should just admit what had happened.

MPs lined up to criticise Mr Johnson at Prime Minister’s Questions, with one Labour MP asking how he slept at night.

Replying to Rosena Allin Khan, who also works as a doctor in a London hospital, Mr Johnson said he took “full responsibility for everything the government has done”.

But in his apology, he suggested he had been misled about the Christmas party on 18 December last year.

He said he had been “repeatedly assured that there was no party and that no Covid rules were broken”.

Downing Street has spent the past week denying that a party had taken place at all.

But that line fell apart when a video obtained by ITV News showed the PM’s then press chief Allegra Stratton joking about the party four days after it had taken place.

At the time, the government’s coronavirus guidance specifically stated that people should not have Christmas parties – and gatherings in London of two or more people indoors were banned unless they were “reasonably necessary” for work.

Conservative MPs fear the government’s credibility has been damaged, and some are warning it could harm Mr Johnson’s ability to impose further coronavirus lockdowns.

Sir Keir Starmer also questioned Mr Johnson’s “moral authority” to ask people to abide by further restrictions, contrasting his actions with the Queen’s leadership during the pandemic.

“Her Majesty the Queen sat alone when she marked the passing of the man she’d been married to for 73 years. Leadership, sacrifice – that’s what gives leaders the moral authority to lead.

“Does the prime minister think he has the moral authority to lead and to ask the British people to stick to the rules?”

Mr Johnson replied: “Not only that but the Labour Party, and the Labour leader in particular, have played politics throughout this pandemic.”

He accused Sir Keir of trying to “muddy the waters, to confuse the public and to cause needless confusion about the guidance” during the pandemic.

Sir Keir replied: “That’s so desperate and even his own side can see it.”

SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said that if the prime minister did not resign, “he must be removed”.

“People have sacrificed at times to the point of breaking, while the UK government has laughed in their faces. It is clear that this prime minister has lost the support of the public and now even of his own benches,” he told MPs. – bbc.com