Sue Gray’s Report on Parties Deepens Crisis for Boris Johnson

LONDON — A long-awaited report on parties in Downing Street during the pandemic dealt Prime Minister Boris Johnson a stinging blow on Monday, condemning him for failed leadership and painting a damning picture of “excessive” workplace drinking in the inner sanctum of the British government.

Mr. Johnson had hoped the release of the 11-page document would allow him to put a festering scandal over illicit parties behind him. But instead he was battered in Parliament, facing a new round of questions about his personal participation in social gatherings that appear to have violated lockdown rules meant to stop the spread of Covid-19.

Even in heavily redacted form, the report by Sue Gray, a senior civil servant, deepened the crisis that has engulfed Mr. Johnson for weeks, ever since reports of inappropriate gatherings surfaced late last year and raised a storm of criticism over a double standard: that the prime minister and his staff could flout the pandemic rules while insisting the rest of the country obey them.

“There were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No. 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times,” Ms. Gray wrote of the management in Downing Street. “Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place. Other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.”

In his bruising appearance in Parliament, Mr. Johnson faced a further call to resign from a senior member of his Conservative Party, as well as repeated demands to release the full report from the investigator — eventually forcing Downing Street to say it would.

Ms. Gray was forced to scrub the document of its potentially most damaging details because London’s Metropolitan Police is investigating eight parties, including one held in Mr. Johnson’s own apartment, and they did not want the findings to prejudice their investigation. Ominously, the police said late Monday that they had so far collected more than 500 pages of evidence and more than 300 photos.

Already confronting a revolt within his party, Mr. Johnson was forced to watch as Conservatives rose, one after the other, to scold him for allowing an unruly, alcohol-soaked culture to thrive in Downing Street. His predecessor as prime minister, Theresa May, summed up the gathering sense of opprobrium.

The British public, she declared, “had a right to expect their prime minister to have read the rules, to understand the meaning of the rules.” Arguing that the report clearly showed Downing Street had flouted pandemic restrictions, she asked Mr. Johnson if he “either had not read the rules, or didn’t understand what they meant, and others around him, or they didn’t think the rules applied to No. 10. Which was it?”

Mr. Johnson denied that the report found wrongdoing and pleaded with Mrs. May to wait for the completion of the police inquiry. After deflecting multiple questions about whether he would release Ms. Gray’s unexpurgated report after that — drawing heckles from the opposition and stony silence from his backbenchers — Downing Street relented late on Monday.

“I get it, and I will fix it,” a beleaguered Mr. Johnson said earlier. He insisted that his…