Who is leaking the Downing Street party evidence?

Boris Johnson’s authority as prime minister has been seriously damaged by a series of explosive leaks to the press suggesting that multiple parties took place in Downing Street while the UK was in the grip of a national lockdown.

In the latest blow to his beleaguered premiership, The Guardian published a photograph showing the prime minister, his wife, and multiple advisers including Dominic Cummings enjoying a glass of wine in the Downing Street garden in May 2020. At the time, social mixing between households was limited to two people, who could only meet outdoors and at a distance of at least two metres.

The garden photo leak

Downing Street insiders are “pointing the finger of suspicion” at Treasury officials after noting that the garden photograph appears to have been taken from a “first floor function room” being used by Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s team and which overlooks the garden, reported The Telegraph.

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Another official pointed out that it could have been taken from the Downing Street library, which overlooks the private terrace on which Johnson and others were photographed. The chancellor’s private office is “nearby, adjacent to the library”, said the paper.

A “well-placed” No. 10 source said: “It has to be taken by someone associated with the chancellor. It is the chancellor’s bit of the Downing Street complex.

“The room is used for receptions but at that point, it was being used by No. 11 special advisers and officials. The Treasury was closed down and a number of staff were working out of No. 11. Anybody could walk into that office with a Downing Street pass but it was used by Rishi Sunak’s people and anybody else going in would have been noticed.”

Treasury sources have insisted that it would be “wrong” to suggest one of its officials was responsible for the leak.

“At the time the picture was taken there was no one occupying that room. It is never locked and anyone working in Downing Street could have accessed the room which was often left empty,” said the source.

The photograph emerged three weeks after The Mirror’s political editor Pippa Crerar reported that Johnson and his Downing Street staff broke Covid rules last year by attending a number of parties in the run-up to Christmas.

On an episode of BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show, Crerar said it was her “personal rule” that she had multiple sources for a “big story like this” and that she had “several sources” corroborating reports of Downing Street parties.

‘Chatty pig’

This is not the first time the finger of blame has been pointed at Sunak’s office. The Treasury was also at the centre of a “furious briefing war” after government insiders fingered Treasury sources as the so-called “chatty pig” who made “incendiary” comments after Johnson’s disastrous CBI speech where he lost his place for 20 seconds, and riffed about children’s TV character Peppa Pig, reported the Daily Mail.

“It’s just not working,” the source claimed after the speech. “Cabinet needs to wake up and demand serious changes otherwise it’ll keep getting worse. If they don’t insist, he just won’t do anything about it.”

Allies of Sunak have reportedly “furiously denied” the claims.

The Allegra Stratton footage

Crerar’s Downing Street parties scoop sparked widespread public anger, which deepened with the emergence of a video that showed the then Downing Street press secretary Allegra Stratton awkwardly laughing when asked about a Christmas party in a mock press briefing last year.

The video shows Stratton at a rehearsal for White House-style daily recorded press conferences, plans for which were later scrapped. In it she jokes she “went home” when asked by a Downing Street special adviser about the possible existence of a Christmas party.

ITV’s UK editor Paul Brand, who broke the story, told The Media Show he had been made aware of the video “some time ago” but “things had changed” with regard to the public interest of the video once Crerar’s story had been published.

Speculation has been rife over the identity of the “whistleblower” who leaked the video to Brand, with The Telegraph reporting that it “may come from a circle of Downing Street advisers or else the various TV and industry technicians, from contracted and subcontracted firms” who had been helping prepare Stratton for the live press briefings.

Downing Street insiders said that footage of the rehearsals – of which there were several, raising the possibility of further leaks – was distributed to Downing Street employees for review.

“The footage was circulated to the events and communications team, who would distribute it to more senior people, including the director of communications at the time, who was James Slack,” said one source. Slack has since quit his role as director of communications and is now The Sun’s deputy editor.

The Telegraph noted that an ITV producer, Nathan Lee, worked on the Stratton video story, as well as an earlier ITV exclusive, which revealed Downing Street had spent millions on the new press briefing studio. Lee had previously worked for former journalist and Downing Street adviser Chris James at Made Television.

James was “from December to February working inside Downing Street trying to make sure the Stratton project would run smoothly”, said the paper. However, James has not commented on the speculation and his present employer has called the suggestion “daft”.