Downing Street Party - Hello Hacks

One story which refuses to vanish from the political radar, despite every last supporter of alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, and rather a lot of the media class, trying to shoo it away, is that of the party allegedly held at 10 Downing Street on December 18 last year, when London - all of it - was under Tier 3 restrictions.

Those restrictions banned social gatherings, except those of family or other groups that had formed a Covid “bubble”. They meant that relatives of those dying from The Rona could not see them in their last days, and then, after death, to make matters worse, could only give them any kind of send-off in very small numbers.

It is the kind of incident that exposes the tone-deaf mindset of Bozo and his coterie of ineptitude most harshly: one rule for them, and another for the hoi polloi. Howard Beckett pointed out the hypocrisy. “Today, the London Metropolitan Police are prosecuting folk for an illegal gathering in their house last year on December 18th. That same day, Downing Street hosted an illegal gathering with the police providing security for the premises”.

Not for nothing did he conclude “This system is rigged”. But then came an intervention from an unlikely quarter: former chief Downing Street polecat Dominic Cummings went into full j’accuse mode: “V unwise for No10 to lie about this but PM set the course of lying on covid in spring when he decided to start rewriting history, deny herd immunity plan etc. NB some lobby hacks were also at parties in No10 flat so trying to bury this story”.

Anyone missing that? I’ll just say that again: “some lobby hacks were also present at parties in No 10 flat”. Sam Bright’s initial take was to mention “A reminder also that one of the gatekeepers of the lobby is reportedly the Godfather to Wilfred - Boris and Carrie Johnson's son”. But if he means Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham, he’ll be out of luck.

After all, Wickham is not known as a serial liar for nothing. Meanwhile, Alastair Campbell suggested checking the No 10 entry logs, and Peter Jukes added “I remember Beth Rigby, Prof Neil Ferguson and Tobias Elwood all suffering sanctions, media criticism and having to apologise for less. Is the lobby press public interest journalism or just a private protection racket? Could this case be anymore indicative or crucial to prove it?”

As names began to be speculatively dropped, including some senior print and broadcast ones, Bethany Usher, who you can tell as she’s a doctor, suggested those names come clean sooner rather than later. “If you attended the party as a journalist your first instinct should be to to get ahead of the story … apologise, name everyone you can remember as there and take the six month suspension as a break”. And it got worse.

James Foster concluded that “Any journalist who knows the names of those at the Downing Street party but just tweeting about the event rather than revealing the names are as complicit as those that attended. IMO”. Worse still, if Cummings has those names, he has every last one of those lobby hacks totally compromised.

Do they wait for Dom to drop them in the mire? Or do they cross their fingers and hope no-one in the Met will pass the security logs to a media outlet which will publish them?

The corruption of this Government appears even worse than feared. Shame on the lobby.

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