James O'Brien's powerful response to No10 aides joking about Christmas party
8 December 2021, 11:49
James OBrien on the No 10 Christmas Party Leak
Watch James O'Brien's powerful response to the leaked footage of No. 10 aides joking about their Christmas party.
Amid calls for Boris Johnson to 'come clean' about a Christmas party allegedly held at Downing Street during lockdown last year, James perfectly summed up the situation.
A leaked video seems to show staff joking that there was "no social distancing" at a "cheese and wine event".
James said: "I am genuinely really upset, actually.
"I have not suffered particularly during this lockdown but I've had the very difficult privilege over the last nearly two years of speaking to people who have.
"Whether it's people who have buried loved ones after going months without seeing them. Whether it is people who have witnessed or seen or met for the first time their newly born granddaughter through the patio door windows on Christmas morning.
"Whether it's people who have attended funerals on Zoom."
"I don't know whether there's anything you can think of currently that would constitute sufficient remorse," James asked listeners.
"I can't think of anything, except the people who've broken down on the programme since this nightmare began, and the people who didn't see their loved ones in their final months.
"The people who put enormously important celebrations and commemorations on ice because they were obeying the rules.
"The people who possibly were denied the final touch, the final physical touch, with their mothers, or their fathers, or god forbid their children, because they were obeying the rules."
Number 10 has denied breaching any covid rules.
Watch the whole moving monologue in the video at the top of the page.
