For the Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, this morning’s media round must have felt like a hangover worthy of a Downing Street staffer on 21 May 2020.
Inadvertently, Raab-caught-in-headlights became the first cabinet voice to confirm publicly that the No 10 garden drinks gathering on 20 May 2020 during lockdown was, indeed, a “party” – ie, not, as Boris Johnson put it, something “believed implicitly” to be a work event…
In a hilarious interview with Sky News’s Kay Burley, worthy of the iconic “Don’t tell him, Pike!” scene in Dad’s Army, Raab used the very word he was seeking to deny when describing the scandal.
“Speculation that the 20 May party was held in my honour to thank me is just ridiculous,” Raab said.
“So it was a party on 20 May then?” Burley asked.
“No, exactly, it wa– no, the, the…”
“You referred to it as the 20 May party.”
“No, no, no, no, this is a claim that was made…”
“That’s what you just said!”
Watch above and cringe.
[See also: What Dominic Raab missed about Angela Rayner at Glyndebourne]
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