FORMER Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has spoken out following claims the Prime Minister’s aide organised a “bring your own booze” Downing Street drinks party during the first lockdown.
In May 2020, Martin Reynolds, the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary, sent an email to more than 100 Downing Street employees asking them to “bring your own booze” for an evening gathering, ITV reported on Monday night.
Multiple reports have suggested the Prime Minister attended the event with his wife, Carrie Johnson.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed it is in contact with the Cabinet Office over the claims.
Davidson, a Tory peer and former Scottish Conservative leader, condemned the alleged drinks party in May 2020, saying “People are (rightly) furious.”
The Tory peer tweeted in response to health minister Ed Argar telling BBC Breakfast: “I can entirely understand why people who’ve lost loved ones, or people who’ve just had their lives hugely disrupted by these restrictions, are angry and upset by these allegations.”
Baroness Davidson said: “This line won’t survive 48 hrs. 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?”
Meanwhile, Scottish Tory representatives from the Commons and Holyrood were accused of being in “hiding” by SNP figures as they failed to appear on morning news to answer questions on the allegations.
Commenting on the media blackout from Douglas Ross, the SNP's shadow Scotland secretary Mhairi Black MP said: "The silence from Douglas Ross and the Scottish Tories over the latest Covid rule-breaking party in Downing Street is deafening.
"Rather than growing a backbone and challenging Boris Johnson, Ross and his colleagues have gone into hiding - again.
"For all his hollow rhetoric, when it comes to the man he backed as Prime Minister, it seems as though Douglas Ross has conveniently lost his refereeing cards.
"Boris Johnson has serious questions to answer over his conduct and whereabouts over this latest scandal, but people in Scotland won't be quick to forget how Douglas Ross can't even bring himself to condemn this latest rule-breaking while everyone else was following the rules."
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The Scottish Tories have been contacted for comment.
It comes after Ross suggested last month that if the Prime Minister knew about a party which took place in Downing Street in December 2020, he should resign.
He said that if Johnson knew about the event but denied that, that is “the most serious allegation”.
He went on: “There is absolutely no way you can mislead parliament and think you could get off with that.
“No-one should continue in their post if they mislead parliament in that way.”
Speaking on Monday night after ITV published the email invitation, SNP Westminster chief Ian Blackford demanded the Prime Minister “come clean and admit whether he attended, or was aware of, this Covid rule-breaking party in his own back garden”.
The MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber added: “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.”
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