LONDON (Reuters) – A photograph showing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and more than a dozen other people drinking wine in the garden of his Downing Street residence during a lockdown last year does not show a party, his deputy said on Monday.
The picture, published by the Guardian, shows Johnson with his wife Carrie, who appears to be holding their newborn son, and two other people at a table on a terrace in the Downing Street garden with cheese and wine.
“Downing Street use that garden as a place of work,” Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab told Times Radio. “That’s not against the regulations.”
“I genuinely don’t think it gets classified as a party,” Raab said. “I don’t think it was a party.”
(Reporting by William James; writing by Guy Faulconbridge)
