Bombshell email  invitation PROVES Downing Street held a boozy party during lockdown

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Downing Street staff were invited to a boozy garden party at the height of the first Covid lockdown, according to a bombshell email.

The Prime Minister’s principal private secretary Martin Reynolds invited more than 100 staff to bring their own drinks to No10’s lavish gardens on May 20, 2020 to ‘make the most of the lovely weather’, an email leaked to ITV News shows.

At the time, only two people were allowed to socialise outside while at least two metres apart under national Covid curbs.

On a visit to his constituency today, Boris Johnson ducked questions about whether he attended the May 20 garden party, merely insisting it was a matter for Sue Gray, the senior official leading an investigation into allegations of lockdown-busting parties across Whitehall.

However, ITV News alleges that around 40 staff met for drinks and food from 6pm that evening — including the PM and his wife Carrie. Mr Johnson’s ex-chief aide Dominic Cummings continues to claim that the couple were both there.

Mr Reynolds’s email said: ‘Hi all, after what has been an incredibly busy period it would be nice to make the most of the lovely weather and have some socially distanced drinks in the No10 garden this evening. Please join us from 6pm and bring your own booze!’.

Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said: ‘Boris Johnson has consistently shown that he has no regard for the rules he puts in place for the rest of us.’

Ian Blackford, the SNP’s Westminster leader, accused the PM of ‘sleaze and corruption’ and demanded he ‘come clean and admit whether he attended’ the party.

Mr Johnson’s authority has come under serious challenge among backbenchers and Cabinet colleagues in recent months.

His government is fighting allegations that staff broke lockdown rules during the pandemic. In December, the PM insisted that a photo of a gathering in the No10 garden where staff were seen eating cheese and drinking wine from May 15, 2020 showed people ‘working’.

Another photo, obtained by the Sunday Mirror, showed Mr Johnson hosting a Christmas quiz in Downing Street in 2020.

The PM has also come under criticism for imposing restrictions including facemarks and Covid passes in response to the Omicron variant. It is understood that the issue sparked Lord Frost’s dramatic resignation last month.

In other developments today:

Data shows Covid infections in London have ticked up in under-30s since New Year’s Eve, but have started to fall in over-60s;More NHS cancer patients will be treated in private hospitals under a deal struck with the sector to ‘safeguard’ against the staff absence crisis and rising Covid admissions; Clive Watson, chairman of the City Pub Group, questioned the continuing work-from-home guidance and said the review of measures due by January 26 is a ‘very good opportunity’ to change them; Mr Johnson has insisted he and Chancellor Rishi Sunak are looking at ways of easing the cost of living crisis as the economy struggles to recover from Covid. 

The Sunday Times yesterday alleged that the PM and his wife attended an event after Mr Reynolds emailed officials with an invite adding ‘BYOB’, meaning bring your own bottle, or booze.

But speaking on a visit to his Uxbridge constituency, Mr Johnson told reporters: ‘All that, as you know, is the subject of a proper investigation by Sue Gray.’

Pressed on whether he had been interviewed by Ms Gray, he said: ‘All that is a subject for investigation by Sue Gray.’

Downing Street denied reports that Mr Reynolds is to be moved to another post following the claims. Mr Johnson’s official spokesman said he was staying in his current role, saying: ‘The Prime Minister has full confidence in his team. There is no change in that post.’

Miss Rayner said: ‘He is trying to get officials to take the fall for his own mistakes, but he sets the tone for the way Downing Street and the rest of government operates.

‘At the time this party took place, key workers on the frontline were working round the clock to keep us all safe, people suffered loneliness and loss in unimaginably tough circumstances and for the majority of the country our freedom was limited to a daily walk.’

Mr Blackford said the PM ‘has no moral authority left’ and urged Tory MPs to ‘remove him from power’.

‘Boris Johnson must come clean and admit whether he attended, or was aware of, this Covid rule-breaking party in his own back garden,’ the SNP’s Westminster leader said.

‘People will find it utterly outrageous that while the rest of us were banned from public gatherings, the most powerful people in the Tory Government were boozing up at No 10 Downing Street, proving yet again that it’s one rule for them and another for the rest of us.

‘Boris Johnson’s Tory Government is the most corrupt in decades. If the Prime Minister had a shred of integrity or an ounce of shame, he would have resigned many months ago. He has no moral authority left, and as he won’t go his Tory MPs have a duty to remove him from power.

‘Sleaze and corruption are endemic at Westminster. The only lasting solution is for Scotland to become an independent country and escape the broken Westminster system for good.’

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the PM would have ‘very serious questions to answer’ if Ms Gray found he had attended one of the parties under investigation.

Asked whether Mr Johnson would have to resign, Sir Keir added: ‘We need to let the inquiry take its course, see what the findings are. The Prime Minister has insisted he broke no rules, so if the finding is that he did then he will obviously have very serious questions to answer.’

Allegations of that gathering, said to have been attended by 40 people, emerged this week when Mr Cummings said he had warned at the time the ‘socially distanced drinks’ would likely be against the rules and ‘should not happen’’

But the Sunday Times’s front page report suggesting Mr Johnson himself was present will add to the seriousness of the claims.

The PM imposed England’s first Covid lockdown in March 2020, and it was not until June 1 that groups of up to six people were allowed to meet outdoors.

Ms Gray, a senior Cabinet Office official, also expanded her investigation to the May 15, 2020 garden gathering revealed by a leaked photo showing the PM and staff sitting around cheese and wine.

Mr Cummings, who was present in the picture, insisted in a blog post on Friday that there was nothing ‘illegal or unethical’ about that day, which he insisted was a staff meeting.

But the former Downing Street adviser wrote: ‘On Wednesday 20 May, the week after this photo, a senior No 10 official invited people to “socially distanced drinks” in the garden.’

Mr Cummings said he and at least one other special adviser ‘said that this seemed to be against the rules and should not happen’, adding that he issued the warning ‘in writing so Sue Gray can dig up the original email’.

‘We were ignored. I was ill and went home to bed early that afternoon but am told this event definitely happened,’ he continued.

It came as Covid infections in the UK fell again today and hospitalisations stayed flat as pressure grew on the PM to release plans on how the country can safely live with the virus.

UK Health Security Agency bosses logged 142,224 positive tests, marking a week-on-week drop for the fifth day in a row. Infections in London — the first region to be battered by Omicron — plunged to their lowest levels in nearly a month, with rates now dropping in over-60s.

Another 77 deaths were registered within 28 days of testing positive, marking a 83 per cent rise on the figure last Monday. But that figure only covered fatalities in England due to the holiday, and the overall trend has barely risen ever since the ultra-transmissible variant took off.

Meanwhile, hospitalisations rose by just three per cent in a week, with the trend having finally flattened off after three weeks of steep increases. Rates in London fell again.

Both the government and NHS leaders are increasingly confident that Omicron will not overwhelm services, and even experts today claimed that there was light at the end of the tunnel as ministers admitted Britain is on a path to ‘living with’ the virus.

MailOnline analysis shows daily Covid deaths are currently running at less than half the rate expected in a bad flu year, in another sign the UK is finally on the brink of beating the pandemic.

Dr David Nabarro, of the World Health Organisation, said coronavirus would pose a very difficult situation for the next three months ‘at least’ but insisted ‘we can see the end in sight’. 

Meanwhile, Professor Graham Medley, No10’s chief modeller, warned Covid ‘can’t be an emergency forever’ as he said ‘Government decisions’ would need to be made about scrapping mass testing and vaccinations.

They are the latest scientists to suggest that Britain is moving into a new phase of the coronavirus crisis now that it appears increasingly likely the NHS will cope without restrictions. 

Dr Clive Dix, the former chief of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, yesterday called for a return to a ‘new normality’ and for Covid to be treated like the flu.

There are also calls for routine testing to be scrapped to put an end to the self-isolation crisis plaguing businesses and vital services now that Omicron is causing little or no symptoms for most. 

Writing in the Mail today, Professor Angus Dalgleish, an oncologist at St George’s University, said mass screening amounted to ‘national self-harm’.

Mr Johnson today admitted the Government is ‘looking at’ cutting the self-isolation period again, as he hailed the country’s ‘great progress’ against the fourth wave. But he also warned that the NHS is still under significant pressure and urged people to get booster jabs.

On a visit to a vaccine clinic in Uxbridge, he poured cold water on rumours that lateral flow tests may stop being free soon, saying they will stay ‘as long as necessary’. 

And he tempered optimism by stressing that ministers will follow the ‘science’ on whether quarantine can be cut again from seven days without causing another deadly spike in infections.

In a round of interviews earlier, Housing Secretary Michael Gove said the UK is ‘moving to a situation’ where it is ‘possible to say we can live with Covid and that the pressure on the NHS and on vital public services is abating’. 

However, he stressed ‘we are not there yet’ and dismissed complaints that dire warnings about the possibility of huge numbers of deaths had been ‘scaremongering’.

Mr Johnson is rumoured to be drawing up a fresh strategy for the transition away from restrictions, which would be implemented by March. 

There is speculation that it could see lateral flow tests withdrawn for non-high risk situations as well as shorter isolation.

Tory MPs have already piled pressure on No10 to set out their vision for dealing with Covid, with business leaders saying the current curbs are ‘really, really tough’ on the hospitality sector. 

Clive Watson, chairman of the City Pub Group, said: ‘Why do people who work in hospitals or work in retail go to work, but office workers are exempted from going to work?’

EXCLUSIVE: London’s New Year’s Omicron hangover: Covid infections tick up in under-30s … but have started to FALL in over-60s as hospitalisation rates continue to drop

London’s Covid outbreak may no longer be shrinking, according to official data which has prompted scientists to warn that the worst of the Omicron crisis may not be over yet.

Infections in the capital have risen in under-60s as a whole since New Year’s Eve, with rates highest among adults in their 20s and 30s. Top experts fear they will likely keep creeping up because children have now gone back to school, giving the virus more opportunities to spread. 

Simultaneously, cases appear to be dropping among the over-60s in a hopeful sign pressure could ease further on the NHS, with London’s hospitals already seeing a downturn in admissions. 

But it’s not yet clear whether either trend is genuine or simply due to changes in the number of tests being carried out, with the proportion of people now swabbing positive for the coronavirus having fallen for the first time since Omicron took off. 

Academics today warned that cases would inevitably rise in over-60s if the outbreak is generally growing among younger adults, warning that the true trajectory won’t become clear for another week or so.  

Despite warning signs that the capital’s outbreak may not have peaked, London’s senior health official yesterday argued that outbreak peaked over the New Year period. Separate Covid surveillance data warned up to one in 10 Londoners were infected on New Year’s Eve. 

Yesterday London recorded 16,493 cases, its lowest tally since mid-December. Its hospitalisations are also falling after peaking at half the level of last winter’s crisis.

But the numbers of critically ill patients has barely risen throughout the Omicron wave, which has given ministers confidence to stick to their ‘ride it out’ plan. Deaths are also flat and the mortality rate is dropping because of the ultra-infectious variant, experts say.  

Nationally, Covid cases have fallen week-on-week over the last four days. But they are now highest in the North West and North East, in a sign these regions could soon face heavier pressures.  

Archbishop of Canterbury urges people to have Covid jabs because Jesus said Christians should ‘love your neighbour as yourself’

The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged people to get vaccinated ‘to look after their neighbours’.

In a BBC Radio 4 interview, Rev Justin Welby said that while he is not in favour of compulsory jabs, he believes in encouraging rather than condemning those who have not yet had the vaccine.

Asked what society’s attitude to the unvaccinated should be, he told the Today programme: ‘I think we need to be encouraging rather than condemnatory, because condemning people doesn’t do much good, apart from anything else, but also it increases the general sense of anger that comes at a time of insecurity and fear and grief.

‘I think we need to be encouraging to people to look after their neighbours.’

He quoted Jesus as saying ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, and added: ‘So, if you do that, it seems to me you go and get vaccinated. 

‘I’d encourage people. I’m not personally in favour of compulsory vaccination by law, but I am very much in favour of encouraging people, of incentivising people to get vaccinated. It makes a difference. It’s not decisive, it’s not the whole story, but it’s an important part of the story.’

It is not the first time the archbishop has spoken out about the importance of Covid vaccines. He told an ITV interviewer in December he agreed that being vaccinated was ‘a moral issue’.   

‘A lot of people won’t like that, but I think it is because it’s not about me and my rights,’ he said.