Boris Johnson in for grilling as leaked video heaps fresh pressure over No 10 party claims

Boris Johnson is facing calls to “come clean” about an alleged Christmas party at No 10 during lockdown restrictions last year as the Government refused to send a minister to defend its position on television. Leaked footage from No 10’s £2.6 million press briefing room emerged on Monday night which showed former press secretary Allegra Stratton laughing as she appeared to rehearse answers to questions over a lockdown-busting Christmas party. The video, which is reported to be from December 22 last year, refers to a party on “Friday” – which would have been December 18, the same day The Daily Mirror reported there was a staff party where games were played, food and drinks were served, and revelries went on past midnight. No 10 initially did not say the reports were inaccurate but said all rules had been followed, before later denying any party had taken place. But the emergence of the video will put Boris Johnson under increasing pressure as he faces Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. The challenge for Downing Street was laid bare by no Cabinet minister being offered to represent the Government in morning broadcast interviews, and there were questions over whether a suggested press conference to mark one year since the first coronavirus vaccine was delivered would go ahead. As well as Health Secretary Sajid Javid pulling out of national interviews, vaccines minister Maggie Throup is understood to have pulled out of a planned round of regional television interviews. Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy called on the Prime Minister to “come clean” with the British public. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It really is quite unacceptable that this is seen as something that is sort of humorous, or something that isn’t serious, or something that suggests that there can be one rule for a Prime Minister and those in No 10 and another rule for the British public.” Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “What I know is that the Prime Minister said that no rules were broken. And nobody’s suggesting that he was at this party.” But a former chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs has said the Government is likely to now find it “almost impossible” to introduce “very proscriptive” Covid-19 restrictions due to the saga. Sir Charles Walker, MP for Broxbourne in Hertfordshire, told Times Radio: “I think now that, going forward, any measures will be advisory. I think it would be very difficult to enshrine them in law and then once again ask our poor police forces to enforce them.” He added: “To be very proscriptive about this now, particularly as we’ve had such a successful vaccine rollout… is much more difficult, and was always going to be much more difficult. And the events of the last 24 hours make it probably almost impossible now.” While chairman of the Commons Education Committee and Tory MP for Harlow Robert Halfon said: “I certainly think that those who were doing the video should apologise for the insensitivity of it when people were suffering and struggling all through that time.” Subscribe to the Evening Standard on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7RQon_YwCnp_LbPtEwW65w?sub_confirmation=1