I know very little of UK politics, but I like to read The Guardian and Partygate looks like this huge scandal. Wasn’t it just that Boris Johnson attended a party during the pandemic? Why is it such a big deal that it’s causing all sorts of political drama?
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During the worst parts of the pandemic the government made gatherings of people for things like parties illegal, to reduce the spread of the virus. This had a big effect on people who were isolated from friends and family. There’s an iconic picture of the queen sitting alone at the funeral of her husband.
The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson attended multiple parties at his house. Johnson claimed various things in his defence. The police were not convinced, and fined him for breaking the law. He is, I believe, the only serving Prime Minister to be fined for breaking the law. (They only fined him for one party, probably due to some good lawyering and.)
So while much of the country was diligently following the rules and avoiding socialising, the Prime Minister was attending parties. His defence *at best* seems to be that the rules *his government* wrote weren’t clear enough to follow.
Now on top of that Johnson said a bunch of things to Parliament about these parties which he knew to be untrue. An important Commons committee found that he lied to Parliament, to them, and tried to obstruct their work. Among other things it recommended he be suspended from Parliament for 90 days.
This is not something that happens often, let alone to a former Prime Minister.
Johnson decided to resign as an MP before the report was published.
Now is this a huge scandal. Politician breaks the law his government wrote, lies about it. I don’t know about you but I think that *should* be a scandal. The thing about Johnson is that this is a man who already lost two jobs for lying. His opponents always expected this from him. His supporters already know he’s a liar and support him regardless.
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