Lawyer dismisses PM Johnson's excuses for 'covid' parties as nonsense
Photo: Jeff J Mitchell / Reuters
Another justification that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come up with for the “covid” parties held during the lockdown is nonsense, British human rights lawyer Adam Wagner told The Mirror.
The British prime minister, as noted, intends to explain that he did not violate the ban on holding mass events during the lockdown when he threw parties at his residence on Downing Street. Johnson has hired a lawyer to help him prepare a response to Scotland Yard by Friday. The politician has already admitted to attending some of the 12 meetings investigated, including spending ten minutes at a birthday party in his honor. In the photos published later, he was shot with beer in his hands, and now the prime minister wants to prove that he did not drink.
According to political analyst Robert Peston, the Prime Minister's lawyers now assume that the investigation is aimed at checking whether Johnson was able to return to work after such meetings. The question is whether the lawyers can prove that these meetings can be called simply part of the Prime Minister's workdays.
However, Adam Wagner stated that the argument about whether the prime minister returned to work after the party “doesn't matter” at all.
“It doesn’t matter what he did before or after, the question is whether he participated, and if he spent ten minutes at a birthday meeting and there is a photo of him holding a bottle of beer, then he participated. (…) I kept beer, but I didn’t drink (…) is nonsense,” said the lawyer.
Earlier it became known that the British prime minister appointed new employees to his team after some civil servants left amid a scandal over holding parties during the lockdown. As noted by Downing Street, the appointed staff “will accelerate the implementation of the priority task, which is the equalization of living standards in the country.”
At the end of January, the UK published an investigation report on Boris Johnson's parties, according to which the events on Downing Street during the lockdown were recognized as a serious violation of ethical standards. The conclusions indicate that, given the epidemiological situation in the country, some of the parties at the Prime Minister's residence should not have been held in the way they were organized.
