After Downing Street apparently pulled Grant Shapps from the media round yesterday (Sky said he'd been due to appear), the unenviable job of defending the Prime Minister was given to the Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis just after Jacob Rees-Mogg added fuel to the Partygate fire by describing Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross as a “lightweight“.
Speaking on Sky News, Lewis said:
“It’s difficult to explain, but the reality of how Downing Street works – and the garden is actually an integral part of Downing Street – I absolutely can see the logic of the Prime Minister going outside to talk to the staff who’ve been working together and focused on things around Covid all day…”
So not only did Mr Lewis follow his leader by failing to offer up any sort of clarification as to what a "work event" was (or is?) when there was nothing in the guidance other than instructions/orders telling us to go to work only if was essential or stay at home, he also claimed that the Prime Minister went "outside to talk to the staff who’ve been working together"; a statement made using the past tense!
Did he mis-speak? Was it a subconscious slip of the tongue because he's well aware that working staff tend not to hang around gardens sharing bottles of wine? Or has he simply assumed that it wasn't anything like a "work event" (whatever that means) and that's why he claimed the staff "had been" working together, not "were" as should have been the case had the gathering in groups (as it was described at PMQs yesterday) not been social when Boris went out to congratulate people on a job well done, even though not all the "attendees" even worked at Downing Street!!
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