Activist group Led By Donkeys has done it again and struck at the heart of government over partygate with its latest stunt.
On the day the highly-anticipated Sue Gray report was published – after the Met issued 126 fines to 83 people who attended illegal Downing Street parties during lockdown – the campaigners projected a damning video onto the side of the Parliament building.
The activists are famous for holding the government to account, and this latest antic is no different.
The clip begins by calling itself the “Partygate crime file” followed by footage from the prime minister dating back to the start on the pandemic, when he told the public: “If you don’t follow the rules, the police will have the power to enforce them.”
A voiceover from writer Gavin Esler then begins: ″Boris Johnson and the MPs who work in this building passed laws which banned us from attending social gatherings.
″We weren’t even allowed to visit sick relatives, so they died alone in the tens of thousands.
“The British people stuck to the rules because the politicians who work in this building told them to.”
The video then cuts to a clip of home secretary Priti Patel telling the press: “If there was a big party taking place, it would be right to call the police.”
Although Johnson and his staff attended several of these gatherings, Led By Donkeys claims: “Most Conservative MPs don’t care, they say it’s all overblown and we need to move on.”
It then flashes to clips of culture secretary Nadine Dorries calling partygate a “misnomer” and Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg dubbing the interest in the parties “fluff”.
The clip then moves through all of the parties which were investigated, including the bring your own booze event in May 2020 and parties in June 2020.
The video also compares the punishment the government has received for its parties with the way the general public were penalised for socialising at exactly the same time.
The activists also remind viewers of the Downing Street Christmas party held in December 2020 where red wine was sprayed on the walls, alone with the later parties to mark the departure of two No.10 staffers in January. At the time, the government was urgently telling the public to avoid socialising where at all possible to slow down Covid transmission.
The video also mentions the two parties on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral, including the one where a suitcase of wine was wheeled into No.10.
It concludes by noting that at least four of the parties the Johnson attended were illegal, according to the recently-concluded investigation from the Met.
The voiceover ends: “The address that has received the most lockdown fines, the place that is the most criminally sanctioned property in Britain, is 10 Downing Street.
“But for hundreds of MPs who made the rules in this building, and told the rest of us to follow them, loyalty to Boris Johnson is more important than respect for the truth and for the law itself.”
Only a few MPs in the Conservative Party have publicly called for Johnson to resign since the Sue Gray report was released, although one Tory MP left his government role over the “toxic” party culture in No.10 on Friday.