Reactions are flooding in after senior civil servant Sue Gray provided a public update on her 'partygate' investigations into Downing Street gatherings.
While she said there were limits on what she could say, there was stinging criticisms of the leadership in Number 10 highlighted in her report published this afternoon.
Broadcaster and journalist Piers Morgan said: "Sue Gray’s #PartyGate report may be heavily retracted but it’s still absolutely damning about the drunken rule-breaking sh*t-show going on in Downing St throughout the Pandemic involving the very people who made the rules yet showed shameful contempt for the public."
And he added in a follow up tweet: "Boris Johnson told Parliament he didn’t know anything about any illegal parties at No10 despite TWELVE of them now being referred to police including p*ss-ups in HIS flat, HIS cabinet office & HIS garden. He lied - and that’s a resignation offence."
Labour’s Chris Bryant, chairman of the Commons Standards Committee, tweeted: “Behaviour that is difficult to justify. A serious failure to observe high standards. Failures of leadership and judgement.
“Excessive consumption of alcohol in a professional workplace. Gatherings that should not of been able to take place. And that’s just the update!"
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey tweeted: “Everyone knows Boris Johnson broke the rules and lied to the country.
“It’s time Conservative MPs did their patriotic duty, listened to their constituents and stood up for decency by sacking Boris Johnson.
“He must go before he does our country any more harm.”
Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy tweeted: “During this crisis, our country needed a leader more than at any time since the Second World War.
“We didn’t get one. This report shows what we have known all along: The Prime Minister is a coward, a rule-breaker and needs to step down.”
Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner told Sky News: “I think that would be terrible for the Conservative Party and MPs to try and blame civil servants when it is the Prime Minister himself that has to take responsibility here.”
She said Tory MPs should not try to “prop up the Prime Minister when they know he’s broke the law, when they know he’s acted inappropriately”.
She added: “If they choose to try and defend that, then I think what actually will happen is it will have a devastating impact on the brand of Conservatives who have always prided themselves on upholding the British principles, upholding the law of the country, and I think it will start to erode the trust and frustrate Conservative voters.”
More reaction as we get it
