Partygate investigation zeros in on ‘ABBA party’ at Boris Johnson’s flat
Officials probing pandemic rule-breaking under Boris Johnson’s government are focusing on an Abba-themed party at the former PM’s flat.
The parliamentary privileges committee, led by Labour MP Harriet Harman, has been working through messages and other information handed over by the government towards the end of last year.
Their inquiry is understood to be zeroing in on a particular event, themed around the Swedish pop superstars, that took place in the flat above Downing Street on 13 November 2020, as reported by The Observer.
Abba were previously reported to have been appalled by the allegations.
Bjorn Ulvaeus, one of the pop group’s founding members, said in February last year after reports of the evening first surfaced: ‘I mean, wow. Did they only play Abba music? Are you kidding?’
Benny Andersson, another Abba singer, added: ‘You can’t call it an Abba party.
‘It is a Johnson party where they happened to play some Abba music. It is not an Abba party.
‘You see how [Johnson] wriggles himself out of this.’
The soiree is reported to have included food, alcohol and music, and the noise from the event was reported to have been heard even from several floors below.
Though Boris Johnson, then prime minister, is known to have attended for at least some of the evening, the gathering did not form a substantive part of the investigations of Sue Gray.
Mrs Grey was the senior civil servant charged with following up on reports of rule-breaking by Johnson and his staff during lockdowns instituted during the pandemic.
It is thought that the evening has become a focus of the follow-up inquiry under Harman due to the fact Johnson was directly asked about the event in the House of Commons.
His response to questions about the evening, which he has continued to maintain since, was: ‘Whatever happened, the guidance was followed and the rules were followed at all times.’
It is one of four instances in which Johnson specifically denied having broken his own government’s rules introduced to curb the spread of the pandemic, meaning it is crucial to the committee’s work to determine whether Johnson misled parliament over the extent of the issue.
As part of her earlier report on the issue, civil servant Gray did look into the event, but said that she did not pursue it further because her inquiries were interrupted by the Metropolitan Police launching their own inquiry into the allegations.
The Abba party took place in the hours after Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former chief adviser, and Lee Cain, Downing Street’s former director of communications, left Johnson’s team.
It was after a power struggle with his then-partner and now-wife, Carrie Symonds, who was herself also present at the event.
Cummings has since expressed astonishment that the party was not investigated sooner, or in more depth.
He said in an interview with UnHerd: ‘Dozens of people downstairs could hear it, so all the police had to do was interview any one of them.
‘You don’t have a work meeting, at the top of No 10, where the music is so loud that you can hear it in the fucking press office.’
Last Saturday, Unmesh Desai, deputy chair of the London Assembly’s police and crime committee, reportedly wrote to the Metropolitan Police urging them to reopen their investigation into pandemic rule-breaking at Downing Street.
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