Former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has raged at the partygate allegations engulfing Boris Johnson’s government.
Baroness Davidson said the reported lockdown breaching parties in No 10 and Whitehall “makes a mockery of all of the sacrifices that people in the country made to stick to the rules”.
Police are investigating at least 12 events across government for alleged Covid breaches, including the prime minister Boris Johnson’s birthday celebration and a gathering in his Downing Street flat.
Johnson apologised on Monday and said he was “making changes” to Downing Street and the Cabinet Office.
Baroness Davidson was in tears as she told Channel 4 News she had been left upset by the latest developments, and that people are “feeling like idiots” after following the rules.
She told Channel 4 News: “I am upset and I’m upset because, not just because of things that myself and others that are in my close family and circle of friends missed and had to give up, but, you know, I was working in the Scottish parliament, I had constituents that lost businesses, I had people that feel guilty that they didn’t go to the care home to see their parents, that they didn’t hug a friend at a funeral because they played by the rules.
“And now they look at what happened in Number 10 and they feel like idiots and they shouldn’t be made to feel like that.”
Johnson insisted “I get it and I will fix it” as he faced fresh calls to resign after Sue Gray’s limited inquiry criticised “failures of leadership and judgment”.
But her full investigation into claims of parties in No 10 and Whitehall has been sidelined while the Metropolitan Police look into 12 separate alleged breaches of the rules in 2020 and 2021.
Baroness Davidson said she does not think Johnson can recover.
She told the broadcaster: “Boris Johnson, the prime minster, his colleagues and his supporters may think he can hang on but I do not think that he can recover.
“I think if you look at all the polling he has lost the support of the public, he’s lost the trust of the public and I think there’s a really big job for whoever comes next to rebuild that trust.”
She added: “If you believe in the institutions of this country and I do, you don’t want to see them undermined, you don’t want to see them degraded.
“To have a fabric of a society you need to have trust in the institutions that are there to both serve us and lead people in this country and the degradation which is occurring day in daily as this drip drip drips on is going to be so hard to recover.
“And at a time where the resilience of this country is so low because for the last two years, because of the difficulties we’ve had, because of the hardships people have faced, it is more important than ever that we have a Prime Minister who leads by example, because if you’re not leading by example at a time of national crisis you’re just not leading.”