Four of Boris Johnson’s top aides quit, while ‘Partygate’ scandal rocks Downing Street

One of the staffers who left Thursday has been directly implicated in Partygate. Martin Reynolds, the prime minister’s principle private secretary, was responsible for an email encouraging Downing Street staffer to “bring your own booze” to a party on May 20, 2020 — at a time when the public was banned by law from meeting up with more than one person outside households.

Also announcing their resignations were Director of Communications Jack Doyle, Chief of Staff Dan Rosenfield and Policy Director Munira Mirza.

Mirza is a longtime ally of Johnson and made a point that she was leaving on principle. In her resignation letter, she said Johnson needed to apologize for an “inappropriate and partisan” slur of opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer.

In Parliament on Monday, Johnson accused Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, of failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, a television personality who was revealed after his death in 2011 to be one of Britain’s most prodigious child abusers.

Mirza said that Johnson was “a better man than many of your detractors will ever understand,” but she said it was “so desperately sad that you let yourself down by making a scurrilous accusation against the leader of the opposition.”

Alice Lilly, a senior researcher at the Institute for Government, an independent think tank, said that aside from Mirza, it seemed as if the exodus was an attempt to “clear house and make some of the changes” that he promised earlier in the week. She said that the big challenge for Johnson going forward will be “whether he can persuade people to go and work in Number 10.”

On Monday, after the Gray report was published, Johnson told Parliament that there would be big personnel changes at Downing Street and that he would act swiftly.