Partygate was “overblown” and the Government should not have fined people for “everyday activities” during lockdown, the new Conservative leader has said.
In her first media appearance since winning the Tory leadership, Kemi Badenoch was challenged over what went wrong under her predecessors after promising to be “honest” about where the Conservatives had made mistakes.
Although she largely declined to be drawn into a “post-mortem” of the previous government, she said there had been “serious issues” under Boris Johnson’s premiership, but suggested the Partygate scandal was not one of them.
The scandal saw Mr Johnson fined for attending a party in Downing Street, one of several that took place under his tenure in breach of Covid lockdown regulations.
Ms Badenoch was a junior minister at the time the scandal came to light and remained in government, ultimately resigning over the Chris Pincher scandal that brought down Mr Johnson.
Asked about what had gone wrong with Mr Johnson’s government, she told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “I thought he was a great prime minister, but there were some serious issues that were not being resolved and I think that during that tenure the public thought that we were not speaking for them or looking out for them, we were in it for ourselves.
“Some of those things I think were perception issues, a lot of the stuff that happened around Partygate was not why I resigned.
“I thought that it was overblown. We should not have created fixed penalty notices, for example. That was us not going with our principles.”
Although Mr Johnson did not contest the fine, he has since insisted that he does not believe he did anything wrong.
Adding that the public was “not wrong to be upset about Partygate”, Ms Badenoch said: “The problem was that we should not have criminalised every day activities the way that we did.
“People going out for walks, all of them having fixed penalty notices, that was what ended up creating a trap for Boris Johnson.”
Leaving the house for exercise, including walks, was explicitly permitted under lockdown regulations, although Derbyshire Police was forced to apologise to two women it had fined for driving five miles to go for a walk. Their fines were also cancelled.
Labour Party chair Ellie Reeves criticised Ms Badenoch’s comments, saying: “Listening to Kemi Badenoch dismiss Partygate as ‘overblown’ will add insult to injury for families across Britain who followed the rules, missing loved ones’ deaths and family funerals, whilst her colleagues partied in Downing Street.”
Liberal Democrat frontbencher Sarah Olney said: “It’s clear the Conservative Party haven’t learnt anything from the years of sleaze and scandal under their watch.
“Kemi Badenoch’s comments are an insult to those who lost family members during the pandemic while Boris Johnson partied and lied.
“On day one of the job she’s already shown she’s completely out of touch with the public.”
