James Slack, Boris Johnson’s former communications chief has apologized “unreservedly” to Queen Elizabeth on Friday for a lockdown-breaching party in Downing Street on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral last year.
Gatekeepers News reports that the former Downing Street Director of Communications said his April 2021 job-leaving party “should not have happened at the time that it did.”
“I wish to apologize unreservedly for the anger and hurt caused,” Slack said in a statement.
“I am deeply sorry, and take full responsibility,” added Slack, who is now deputy editor-in-chief of tabloid newspaper The Sun.
It was gathered that Downing Street staff drank, danced and socialized at Slack’s leaving parties and another staff member late into the night. The next day, the widowed queen sat alone in the church during her husband’s funeral service at Windsor Castle in order to adhere to social distancing rules that barred indoor mixing.
Similarly, Kate Josephs, a former Director-General in the unit that coordinated the government COVID-19 response and is now chief executive at Sheffield City Council, said she was ‘truly sorry’ for a gathering held in the Cabinet Office to mark her leaving the civil service on December 17, 2020.
Josephs said she and colleagues who had been working assembled for drinks in the evening. Dozens of staff are reported to have attended – even though London was in Tier 3 lockdown at the time and the rules prohibited households from socialising indoors.
Johnson isn’t alleged to have attended any of the parties, but earlier this week, he apologized for going to an earlier gathering in the garden of Downing Street, his office and home, in May 2020, when the U.K was under strict lockdown.
Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP are all calling for Johnson to resign after he admitted attending a drinks party in the Downing Street garden during the lockdown on 20 May 2020.
The P.M urged people to await the conclusions of an investigation by senior civil servant Sue Gray into multiple alleged rule-breaking parties.
