Boris on brink: Partygate, polls and rebooting Brexit arguments to win general election – Express

Boris Johnson is under renewed pressure after photos have surfaced appearing to show him drinking alcohol at an event that broke Englands COVID-19 lockdown. ITV News published four images that it said show the Prime Minister raising a glass of fizz to colleagues at a boozy leaving party on November 13, 2020. The event, which is reported to have been for Downing Streets outgoing communications chief Lee Cain, was attended by at least eight revellers at a time when indoor gatherings of people from different households were limited to two.

Reports of the incident have questioned why Mr Johnson who was slapped with a fixed-penalty notice over his Downing Street birthday bash in June 2020 was not fined by the Metropolitan Police for this latest party under scrutiny.

In other developments, Sue Gray is expected to release her full report on lockdown-busting parties held in Number 10 as soon as Wednesday.

The civil servant claimed she was previously only able to release a limited version of the findings of her investigation, published in January, due to a parallel probe by the Met.

As the scandal rumbles on, a damning 68 percent of Britons think Mr Johnson is doing badly as Prime Minister, according to YouGovs latest monthly tracker of 1,623 to 3,326 British adults from May.

Politicos most recent poll of polls, from Sunday, makes equally grim reading for the Tories, forecasting a six-point lead for Labour over the Conservatives were a General Election held now.

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Polling guru Mark Pack also puts Labour ahead in his aggregation of nine of the countrys top pollsters, all of which show the Tories as only the countrys second-most popular political party.

The latest twist in the so-called Partygate scandal and the latest polling come after Mr Johnson was dealt a huge blow in the Northern Ireland Assembly election earlier this month as the results messed up his plan to rewrite sections of the Northern Ireland Protocol the controversial agreement governing Britains post-Brexit trade with the territory.

Dr Nicholas Dickinson, a political expert from the University of Oxford underlined the significance of Sinn Fin winning the election, with the nationalist party becoming the largest at Stormont for the first time, ahead of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the cross-community Alliance Party.

Sinn Fins first minister designate Michelle ONeill is opposed to the Governments attempts to rewrite the Protocol, but the DUP wants to change the Protocol and has blocked a new power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland until the post-Brexit agreement is sorted.

Speaking to Express.co.uk, Dr Dickinson said: There is the first nationalist first minister but more significantly a pretty solid majority in the assembly of parties which are either pro-reunification Sinn Fin plus Alliance, which is quite strongly pro-Remain.

Speaking about the election results, Dr Dickinson added: Now, whether that is good for them or not who knows.

Because one theory about the way they are going to try and win the next election is by having a huge argument over this and essentially rebooting Brexit arguments from 2019.

It doesn't necessarily stop them from doing that now this is the situation in Northern Ireland.

But it certainly weakens the case, and it makes the EU much less likely to make concessions.

It is probably the most significant thing which actually happened in the elections, for British politics as well as just for the politics of Northern Ireland.

The much-maligned Protocol imposes strict customs checks on goods such as chilled meat travelling from Britain to Northern Ireland post-Brexit.

This arrangement is to satisfy the EU as Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland, which, unlike its neighbour, remains in the 27-nation bloc.

The Protocol has effectively created a de facto trade border between Northern Ireland and Britain down the Irish Sea.

This was decided as the best option in order for the Protocol to uphold the 1998 peace deal, the Good Friday Agreement, and to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

But critics, including the DUP, have lambasted the situation because of the mountain of paperwork and extra costs that are imposed on businesses in Northern Ireland importing goods from Britain.

The UK Government has threatened to unilaterally rewrite sections of the Protocol and has called on the EU to agree to renegotiate this part of Britains Brexit withdrawal deal.

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Boris on brink: Partygate, polls and rebooting Brexit arguments to win general election - Express