Boris Johnson Lockdown Parties: Live Updates – The New York Times

The report, by a senior civil servant, Sue Gray, was scrubbed of its most potentially damaging findings at the request of London’s Metropolitan Police, which launched their own investigation of the lockdown breaches last week. So abridged was the document released on Monday that the Cabinet Office characterized it as an “update” of Ms. Gray’s investigation rather than as a report.

Still, even in its redacted form, the report painted a troubling portrait of a work culture at Downing Street, where staff members held alcohol-fueled gatherings with colleagues during a period when the government was urging the public to avoid socializing, even with close friends and relatives. Accusations of double standards have engulfed Mr. Johnson’s government and threatened his grip on power.

“At least some of the gatherings in question represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of government, but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time,” Ms. Gray said in one of her general findings.

“There were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No. 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times,” she continued. “Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place. Other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.”

Ms. Gray took particular aim at the regular drinking at these events. “The excessive consumption of alcohol is not appropriate in a professional workplace at any time,” she wrote, adding that government agencies needed “a clear and robust policy in place covering the consumption of alcohol in the workplace.”

The prime minister had shored up his position somewhat in recent days, and the findings released on Monday did not immediately appear to pose a fresh threat to him. But at a minimum, they raised hard questions about the operation Mr. Johnson and his senior aides have put together at Downing Street.

Mr. Johnson, who addressed Parliament about the report on Monday, has been scrambling to avoid a vote of no-confidence in his leadership by Conservative lawmakers. Such a vote would be called if 54 members submit confidential letters demanding it. That threshold has not yet been met, and it was unlikely that the details released Monday would lead to a flood of new dissidents.

Indeed, Downing Street moved swiftly to change the subject. Mr. Johnson, eager to drape himself in a statesman’s mantle, scheduled a phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday to discuss the mounting tensions in Ukraine. He will visit the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday.

Britain has been staking out a more assertive policy on Ukraine in recent weeks. But Mr. Johnson has been forced to cede much of the spotlight to his foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and defense secretary, Ben Wallace, while he grappled with the mutiny inside his Conservative Party over the party scandal.

Later in the week, the government will release a report on its “leveling up” program, the blueprint to bolster economically blighted parts of the country’s north, which is the centerpiece of its legislative agenda.

Mr. Johnson hopes to mollify Conservative lawmakers, many of whom were swept into Parliament in 2019 on the strength of Mr. Johnson’s “Get Brexit done” campaign slogan but who have grown disillusioned with him, particularly in the wake of disclosures about pandemic socializing at Downing Street.

The highly critical 12-page document was published online an hour before Prime Minister Boris Johnson was scheduled to address lawmakers in Parliament.

“A number of these gatherings should not have been allowed to take place or to develop in the way that they did,” Sue Gray, the civil servant who led the inquiry, said in the report’s conclusion.

Ms. Gray said that law enforcement authorities would have to assess whether Downing Street employees had broken the law. But she wrote repeatedly that the gatherings should not have taken place.

The police confirmed they had asked for critical details to be withheld from the report that was delivered on Monday. By scrubbing the most incriminating material, the report, compiled by a senior civil servant, Sue Gray, could give Mr. Johnson a chance to regroup rather than face a crippling no-confidence vote.

The development outraged opposition leaders and other critics. Some accused the police of an ill-timed intervention that allowed Mr. Johnson to escape judgment for flouting the rules he had imposed on others, as well as for dissembling about it afterward.

“Britain faces huge challenges as we emerge from the pandemic and it is offensive that the government’s sole focus is on cleaning up after themselves,” said the leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer.

Still, Mr. Johnson faces a political landscape strewn with land mines. The Gray report could yet be damaging, even in a redacted form. And the police could impose fines on several people for breaching lockdown restrictions, including the prime minister himself.

After a lifetime toiling in anonymity, it is an awkward position for Ms. Gray, who now finds herself famous enough to be the subject of memes, poems and YouTube videos.

Ms. Gray is experienced in solving thorny problems and has a reputation as a steely and skillful fixer. She has spent most of her career in government service although at one point she took a break to run a pub in Northern Ireland with her husband, Bill Conlon, a country singer.

Later Ms. Gray worked closely with Gus O’Donnell, a former head of the civil service. Because of the power of his position, as well as his initials, he was nicknamed “God” and, perhaps inevitably, Ms. Gray was known as “baby God.”

One former minister, David Laws, recalled in his memoirs being told by Oliver Letwin, a fellow minister, that it had taken him two years to realize who really ran Britain. According to this account, Mr. Letwin concluded that it was “a lady called Sue Gray,” adding that “unless she agrees, things just don’t happen.”

Experts have said that Ms. Gray is in an unenviable position for a member of a division that prides itself on its political neutrality. She had to produce a report that is seen as credible, while knowing at the same time that her findings could determine whether enough Conservative lawmakers write formal letters of protest to trigger a no-confidence vote in Mr. Johnson.

Jill Rutter, a senior research fellow at U.K. in a Changing Europe, a research institute, said before the report was released: “She won’t want to open the civil service to the charge that they put a bullet through the prime minister’s forehead, because that would be very bad for our system of government.”

Mr. Johnson then had to admit having attended a gathering in a garden at Downing Street, where the prime minister lives and works, in May 2020 to which 100 people were invited and urged to “bring your own booze.” At that time, official restrictions prohibited socializing with more than one other person, even outside, in almost all circumstances.

He said that he had stayed 25 minutes and that he regretted not ending the gathering of several dozen people who were eating and drinking. He insisted that he had thought he was attending a work event.

The prime minister suffered another damaging blow after reports emerged that staff members had used a suitcase to bring alcohol from a nearby store into Downing Street on the evening before the funeral of Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. Mr. Johnson did not attend the gathering, and later apologized for two parties that took place at Downing Street that evening.

At one event, a disco was set up in the basement, and the swing of Mr. Johnson’s toddler son was broken as staff members drank into the early hours, according to news reports.

Then, last week, the broadcaster ITV reported that Mr. Johnson had a 30-person surprise birthday lunch in Downing Street’s cabinet room in June 2020. His office told ITV that he had spent “less than 10 minutes” at a brief gathering organized by the staff, and one loyalist came to Mr. Johnson’s defense.

“He was, in a sense, ambushed with a cake,” said Conor Burns, a minister and ally of Mr. Johnson.

On Jan. 25, the British police said they had opened an investigation into “a number of events” at Downing Street and other government offices during lockdowns, “in relation to potential breaches of Covid-19 regulations.”

The investigation was prompted by information turned over by the inquiry led by a senior civil servant, Sue Gray, whose investigation into parties that might have breached lockdown rules was delivered to Mr. Johnson on Monday.

Although its findings could inflict further damage on Mr. Johnson, the report was expected to be heavily redacted after the police confirmed last week that they had asked for critical details to be withheld to avoid prejudicing their own inquiry. A spokesperson for Mr. Johnson’s cabinet confirmed that he had received “an update” on the investigation, signaling that much of the report was redacted.

The report is expected to be published later on Monday. Mr. Johnson was studying the report and was expected to make a statement to Parliament in the afternoon.

Still, the details in the report, prepared by a senior civil servant, Sue Gray, could prompt Conservative Party lawmakers to trigger a no-confidence vote that could eject Mr. Johnson from power. That, in turn, raises the extraordinary prospect of the prime minister being forced out a little more than two years after winning a landslide election victory for his party in December 2019.

Since the scandal broke late last year, the Conservative Party’s poll ratings have plummeted as voters reacted furiously to reported breaches of strict coronavirus rules by the people who made them. At the time of some of the gatherings in Downing Street and other government offices, people in England were prevented from holding family gatherings or even saying their final farewells to dying relatives.

Mr. Johnson’s position is also vulnerable because he is accused of lying to Parliament about what he knew, something that is normally considered a resigning matter.

To trigger a no-confidence vote in Mr. Johnson, 54 Conservative members of Parliament must write a formal protest letter to one of their senior colleagues, and the secretive nature of the process means that only a few people will know how many letters have been submitted until the threshold is reached. The prime minister would then need the support of at least half of his own lawmakers to survive a vote.

So far, only a handful of Conservative lawmakers have said publicly that they have written letters demanding a no-confidence motion in Mr. Johnson.

But many Conservative lawmakers appeared to be waiting to see Ms. Gray’s report’s findings before deciding whether to try to bring Mr. Johnson’s eventful premiership to an end.

Initially, Mr. Johnson asked Simon Case, the head of the civil service, to investigate the accusations about the parties that at that stage mainly involved Mr. Johnson’s staff members. But to his embarrassment, Mr. Case had to recuse himself when it emerged that one event had taken place in his office.

Ms. Gray then took over, only to find herself investigating not just the conduct of officials but also of the prime minister.

The crisis worsened on Tuesday for Mr. Johnson when the Metropolitan Police said that based on information Ms. Gray had uncovered and shared with them, it would launch an investigation into parties at Downing Street.

The police had long resisted calls for their involvement, despite calls from opposition politicians, so the announcement from Cressida Dick, the London Metropolitan Police commissioner, suggested that serious questions had been raised by Ms. Gray’s inquiry.

But after the police asked for some details to be scrubbed from the report because of their own investigation, critics accused them of making an ill-timed intervention that could allow Mr. Johnson to escape judgment for flouting rules that he had imposed on others.