‘Ambushed by cake’: the many defences of Boris Johnson

It’s crunch time for Boris Johnson with a police investigation under way and civil servant Sue Gray’s report into various Downing Street lockdown parties due imminently.

Reports suggest that at least 12 alleged parties have been investigated by Gray’s team, events which included a “bring your own booze” party in the garden of No. 10 in May 2020 and a surprise birthday celebration for the PM the following month.

On Tuesday, Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick announced the launch of a criminal investigation into eight specific events – an abrupt U-turn for the Met which had previously said its policy was not to undertake retrospective investigations of lockdown breaches.

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The Times is now reporting that Johnson may be interviewed by police “either under caution or as a witness” due to the evidence Gray handed to detectives. This would make him the first sitting prime minister to be interviewed by police since Tony Blair in 2006, who was questioned as a witness as part of the cash for honours scandal.

‘All guidance followed completely’

Throughout all the various “partygate” allegations, No. 10 has consistently denied claims that any rules were broken.

When the first story was broken by the Daily Mirror in November 2021, claiming that the PM and his staff had attended parties at No. 10 in the run-up to Christmas 2020, Johnson told the House of Commons that “all guidance was followed completely”.

He refused to explain his account of the allegations in an interview with Sky News a day later, saying instead: “I have told you and what I want to repeat… that the guidance is there and I am very, very keen that people understand this”.

Speaking to the BBC a few days later, Johnson repeated the same defence. “I can tell you that the guidelines were followed at all times,” he said. “We are focusing on the issues which matter to me, above all, and that is fighting crime – and I believe those are the things that matter also to the British public”.

Photos ‘show people talking about work’

Johnson was asked to defend himself again when The Guardian published photos that showed him with wine and cheese alongside his wife and up to 17 staff members in the Downing Street garden on 15 May 2020.

When asked by journalists about the images, Johnson said they showed “people at work, talking about work”, reported the BBC. When asked as a follow-up question whether it was acceptable for people to be drinking while working, he responded: “I have said what I have to say about that.”

Earlier that day, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab told BBC Breakfast that “sometimes after a busy working day people have a drink – that was not against the regulations”.

‘Thought it was a work event’

Eyebrows were further raised when Johnson insisted that he thought a party he attended in the rose garden of Downing Street on 20 May 2020 was “a work event”. Sources later told The Times that he was seen “wandering round glad-handing people” during the occasion.

“I believed implicitly that this was a work event,” he told the House of Commons. Johnson added that he went back into his office “25 minutes later to continue working” after thanking groups of staff – suggesting that the short length of time constituted an excuse.

The PM said that “with hindsight” he “should have sent everyone back inside and “recognised that – even if it could have been said technically to fall within the guidance – there would be millions and millions of people who simply would not see it that way.”

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Labour leader Keir Starmer described Johnson’s defence as “so ridiculous that it's actually offensive to the British public”.

Did not see or receive the email

The invitation to the garden event was sent via email by Johnson’s principal private secretary Martin Reynolds to more than 100 people including advisers, speech writers and door staff, said ITV News.

But even though the email came from Johnson’s own secretary and the event itself was held in his back garden, No. 10 said that the PM had not been notified in advance of the party, a claim Johnson later backed up during an interview with Sky News.

Downing Street also denied allegations that Johnson was warned by two senior staffers to cancel the drinks event, saying this was “not true”, The Guardian reported.

‘Nobody told me it was against the rules’

The PM then told Sky News’s political editor Beth Rigby that he hadn’t known that the garden drinks party was against the rules.

“Categorically, nobody told me or said that this was something that was against the rules... or that we were doing something that wasn’t a work event,” he said. “Frankly I can’t imagine why it would have been allowed to have gone ahead.”

But Starmer questioned this defence in the House of Commons. “Since the prime minister wrote the rules, why on earth does he think this new defence is going to work for him?” he asked. “We must wait for the outcome of the inquiry,” replied the PM.

‘Ambushed with cake’

In what the BBC’s Adam Fleming described as “a new stage in how the government is handling these accusations”, No. 10 did admit that staff had “gathered briefly” in the cabinet room to celebrate Johnson’s 56th birthday on 19 June 2020.

But Northern Ireland minister Conor Burns – an ally of the PM’s – had a very specific view of the event. In an interview with Channel 4 News, the Tory MP described Johnson as being “ambushed with a cake”. “It’s just sort of farcical the way you’re all trying to scurry round and defend him,” retorted the journalist Cathy Newman.

The food writer Nigella Lawson tweeted that she was considering making the term “ambushed by cake” the title of her next cookbook.

Rules ‘broken in most homes’

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme on Tuesday, Tory MP Crispin Blunt defended the PM by accusing the British public of “[losing] our sense of perspective on this”.

Blunt attempted to excuse the No. 10 parties by suggesting that other people had not been keeping to the rules at the time. “It may very well be that probably inside most homes and inside most businesses, and inside most places of public administration, people may not have kept absolutely to the rules”, he said.

A poll from YouGov, however, found that of 2,397 British adults surveyed, the vast majority (68%) said they never knowingly broke the rules at any point during 2020.

“Conservative MP Crispin Blunt has defended Boris Johnson, saying that Covid rules were broken in ‘most homes’”, wrote the polling company on Twitter. “The public would beg to differ,” the tweet added.