Senior Tories turn on PM as ‘partygate' row intensifies

Senior Conservatives have turned on Boris Johnson over the “partygate” scandal, as the prime minister dodged demands to reveal whether he attended a Downing Street drinks event at the height of the Covid lockdown.

- ANDREW WOODCOCK

The leader of Tories in Scotland, Douglas Ross, called on the prime minister to come clean, and warned that he would have to resign if he had broken the rules. Meanwhile, another former minister branded the situation “humiliating”, while a senior Tory backbencher told The Independent that Mr Johnson's position would be “difficult” if a probe by Whitehall mandarin Sue Gray found against him.

Mr Johnson dodged a House of Commons debate on the row, sending a junior minister to answer an urgent question from Labour on his behalf. But he will be dependent on supportive Tory MPs to rally behind him when he faces a hostile grilling at the weekly session of prime minister's questions today.

An overwhelming two-thirds (66 per cent) of voters - including 42 per cent of those who backed Tories in the 2019 election polled by Savanta ComRes said that Johnson should resign over the issue, up 12 points on a similar survey in December. Fewer than a quarter (24 per cent) said he should stay.

Downing Street and a succession of ministers insisted that the government could not comment on the “bring your own booze” party in the No 10 garden on 20 May 2020 until Ms Gray's investigation is concluded.

But Ruth Davidson, the former leader of Scottish Conservatives, responded: “This line won't survive 48 hours. Nobody needs an official to tell them if they were at a boozy shindig in their own garden. “People are rightly furious. They sacrificed so much visiting sick or grieving relatives, funerals. What tf were any of these people thinking?”