Guto Harri called on Boris Johnson to make a “grovelling apology” to the public over the partygate scandal.
In an interview last month, before he was appointed the new Number 10 director of communications, Harri said Downing Street needed to “get a grip” of the “toxic” affair.
The PM has faced calls to resign, including from many of his own MPs, over the alleged lockdown-busting parties in Whitehall and Downing Street.
But it was reported in The Times today that Johnson does not intend to quit even if he is handed a fixed penalty notice by Metropolitan Police officers investigating the gatherings.
In an interview with BBC’s Newsnight on January 11, Harri said the public were right to be angry about the scandal.
He said: “It’s serious on one level because it’s going on and on and on and it’s haemorrhaging and they’re not taking control of it, which is just bad administration, but it’s more toxic than that.
“In the end I would defend any doctor, nurse, medic, who had gathered at the end of a really stressful shift and had a glass of wine together before going home. This is not those people. These are the people who made the laws and proscribed those laws to the rest of us and did not live by them. That’s why it’s toxic.
“One one level it’s a mad diversion from big, big affairs of state, but on another it gets to the heart of what people care about.”
Harri said there was a way for Johnson to survive the row, but it would involve full disclosure of what went on as well as the PM telling the public he was genuinely sorry.
“We can safely assume that there were many more gatherings like this because it seems to be a pattern,” he said. “Somebody needs to put them into context and say ’yes, they’re unforgivable, but they were almost understandable at the time in some ways’.
“The problem at the moment is nobody seems to be getting a grip and the prime minister needs to invite an inquiry to conclude what went on is his own house.
“He’s got to say there’s a reason, it was understandable at the time but it wasn’t acceptable and I can see that because of the pain you went through that whatever the pressure they were under - and they were - they were not there partying, they were there working and having a drink at the end of the day.
“But it was against the rules and the rules were passed by the people present so that’s why it’s a problem, and in the end nothing short of a grovelling, a really grovelling apology [will do].”
It has also emerged that in 2018, Harri said Johnson was “digging his political grave” by joking about suicide vests and being “sexually incontinent”.
And in an interview earlier this week, Harri revealed that Johnson had sung Gloria Gaynor’s hit ‘I Will Survive’ when he offered him the Downing Street job.