POLICE PROBE DOWNING STREET PARTIES

MET CHIEF LAUNCHES CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OVER ‘LOCKDOWN BREACHES’

- Martin Bentham, Rachael Burford, Nicholas Cecil and David Bond

SCOTLAND Yard today announced a criminal investigation into gatherings in Downing Street, throwing Boris Johnson’s leadership into fresh crisis. In a bombshell intervention in the “partygate” storm, Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said there were grounds to suspect “serious and flagrant” breaches of the law. She added that her officers were “investigating a number of events that took place at Downing Street and in Whitehall in the past two years in relation to potential breaches of Covid-19 regulations”. She declined to say whether the Prime Minister — who No10 has admitted attended a birthday party for him and at least two other gatherings in Downing Street during lockdown — was personally under investigation. But her comments sent shockwaves through Westminster as it raised the prospect of Mr Johnson being fined. Emerging from Cabinet, Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg rushed to defend the Prime Minister amid the doubts over his future. “The leadership of Boris Johnson that this country has had has been so brilliant that he has got us through this incredibly difficult period and he’s got all the big decisions right,” he said. “I’m honoured to be under his leadership.”

However, a number of Tory MPs will now be considering whether to send in letters of no confidence in the Prime Minister as they had been awaiting the report by senior civil servant Sue Gray into the series of “parties” in Downing Street before making up their mind.