No 10 was breaking Christmas Lockdown rules last year.

This from PoliticsJoe on Twitter is quite good:

twitter.com/politicsjoe_uk/status/1468601234584080384?s=21

Dinahmo
If there was no party, why were they practising their responses to possible questions?

Your guess is as good as mine!

I'm absolutely furious that the recording is not being used as the starting police for a proper inquiry. The whole think stinks.

I note that there are still a few people on here that think this is not important. 149,000 have died, many without being able to see their loved ones. Assuming that each one of those had at least 10 family and friends then that's 1,490,000 people affected by the regulations.

And it's not just covid sufferers. I heard one lady yesterday whose child was born by C section whose husband was able to be with her for 1 hour and then just had a glimpse of the baby. Another lady had twins but one died and she was alone in hospital. I'm aware that there a many on here bemoaning that they haven't been able to see their new GCs and I tend to think that they could wait but there must be hundreds of new mothers who needed their own mothers and couldn't see them.

I note that there are still a few people on here that think this is not important.

Perhaps to them it really isn't. What can you say? You can't make people care, if they don't.

The question that comes to my mind is - would they be equally unconcerned if it was the Opposition party that had allegedly broken the rules?

... and if it was the Tory party in Opposition - would they have challenged Labour if they'd been in power over such an issue?

As long as we have our adversarial system of politics - which is what people appear to want - then this 'politicking' will continue to be part of Westminster life. We don't want consensus government, inclusiveness and conflict resolution type government.

Both parties will try to outdo the other, and that means exploiting the weakness one party finds in the other. It's a question of how much you care about whatever it is that's being revealed. But it's hypocritical to accuse either party of 'point scoring' because it's in the very nature of our system of government.

You can't expect parties to 'work together'... that's government by consensus... and we don't seem to want that.

Johnson accuses Starmer of ‘playing politics’. I think it’s obvious Johnson sees politics as a game whereas Starmer sees it as a serious business.
Starmer’ s party has supported the government on many issues during this pandemic. He can’t be criticised for challenging lies.

And incompetence and more lies

Dickens

^I note that there are still a few people on here that think this is not important.^

Perhaps to them it really isn't. What can you say? You can't make people care, if they don't.

The question that comes to my mind is - would they be equally unconcerned if it was the Opposition party that had allegedly broken the rules?

... and if it was the Tory party in Opposition - would they have challenged Labour if they'd been in power over such an issue?

As long as we have our adversarial system of politics - which is what people appear to want - then this 'politicking' will continue to be part of Westminster life. We don't want consensus government, inclusiveness and conflict resolution type government.

Both parties will try to outdo the other, and that means exploiting the weakness one party finds in the other. It's a question of how much you care about whatever it is that's being revealed. But it's hypocritical to accuse either party of 'point scoring' because it's in the very nature of our system of government.

You can't expect parties to 'work together'... that's government by consensus... and we don't seem to want that.

We will continue to endure this corrosive adversarial political system until the UK becomes a true democracy where no government can be elected without the support of the majority of electors.

There are only two remaining European countries which continue to use the undemocratic First Past The Post electoral system - The United Kingdom and Belarus.

Let's insist that our elections are run on a proportional representation system, like all true democracies, before Belarus beats us to it.

www.electoral-reform.org.uk/

Starmer has one thing in his favour-he looks the part. Beyond that I don’t know that he’d be any better at running the country.
Politics is a world of accusations and counter accusations and full of hindsight which shows how you would have done it better, without ever having to prove it.

Politics should include integrity, honesty, a political and personal belief system.
Sadly lacking in Mr Johnson[s case

Growstuff I agree, and I’d happily vote for PR elections, but the call needs to come from the party in power.
This argument came up when I was a child. It resurfaced in my recall when Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, James Callaghan, Gordon Brown, John Major et were in power.
The problem is that if the party in power think they’ll win with FPTP they won’t bring PR in during their term of office. It’s an immediate cry when the party in power loses.
Perhaps if we all write to Starmer now and ask him to make a promise to introduce PR immediately, if Labour get in next time it might happen. What do you think?

It’s the lying to us and Parliament which is the most important issue here. How can the country trust a habitual lier. Max Hastings said he wouldn’t trust Boris Johnson to tell him the day of the week. As for the poor people who suffered untold misery as they were refused the right to comfort and be with their dying relatives and then to have the lasting hurt increased by the shenanigans in Downing Street, well all that is unforgivable.

If the supposed partygoers were already at work in the office I can't see why them cracking open a few bottles of wine should be a problem. The blatant lying that it actually happened is obviously a completely different kettle of fish, I'd also be more critical of the reported "gatherings" in the no 10 flat, which must have involved outsiders coming in
One rule for some, another for us plebs.

If the supposed partygoers were already at work in the office I can't see why them cracking open a few bottles of wine should be a problem.

Like all offices have a few bottles of wine lying about just waiting to be cracked open, preferably just before Christmas tidyskatemum?

When is a party not a party?
www.itv.com/news/2021-12-09/boris-johnsons-senior-aide-gave-awards-at-downing-street-christmas-party

MaizieD

^If the supposed partygoers were already at work in the office I can't see why them cracking open a few bottles of wine should be a problem.^

Like all offices have a few bottles of wine lying about just waiting to be cracked open, preferably just before Christmas tidyskatemum?

And Santa was there too (secretly)

Like all offices have a few bottles of wine lying about just waiting to be cracked open, preferably just before Christmas

Well, I have been known to take a bottle of wine into the office on an agreed date just before Christmas. In one office one of the managers used to bring in several bottles of his home made sloe gin on the day of the canteen Christmas lunch and after lunch instead of working we would all sit around drinking sloe gin from paper cups from the water fountain and getting quietly sozzled. itt was only when we stood up to go home we realised how potent his jollop was.

But no secret santa, they hadn't been invented.

Not a 'party' then, MOnica

Sloe gin is wickedly delicious!

No, no *Maizie8, we were all busy at our desks - drinking

I'll repost this here. I put it on the wrong thread...

If you subscribe to the Times the article linked in this tweet might be of interest

Christmas party row: Tories held ‘up to seven’ parties in lockdown | News | The Times

This says the 18th Dec Party was held just a few rooms down from where Johnson was working (& from where the Ministers meeting was held?).

The party started at 6pm.

twitter.com/fascinatorfun/status/1469224977018806272