Boris Johnson must face consequences of fresh Partygate accusations, urges man fined £1.5k in lockdown

A restaurant owner who was fined £1,500 after he was accused of breaking Covid regulations believes Boris Johnson should “100 per cent” face prosecution over fresh Partygate claims.

David Wilson, 58, refused to pay the penalty after hosting an outdoor event at his Calypso restaurant in Blackburn in May 2021, insisting that the council had agreed beforehand and the guests were complying with the regulations at the time by being in groups of six.

He said he would rather go to prison than pay the fine, but successfully challenged the decision in court and won his case.

Allies of Mr Johnson have rallied around the former prime minister after it was announced he was being investigated by police over allegations of more lockdown-breaking events at Chequers and Downing Street, with some claiming he was the victim of a “stitch-up”

But Mr Wilson said suggestions that Mr Johnson should no longer face investigation over the incidents – dating from June 2020 to May 2021 – were “totally wrong”.

He told i: “It doesn’t matter how many times, he should be prosecuted. End of. They make the laws, so he should stand by it and not pick on people like myself.

“If he broke the rules it doesn’t matter how many times. He should be fined for each time.”

He said the event at the Calypso restaurant involved about 150 people split into bubbles of six in “pens”, and there were no issues until police arrived to check on it.

He added: “I refused to pay it [the fine]. I said, ‘I’ll go to prison.’ I got that fine was at the same time Boris and all that lot were all just doing what they want.

“I was obviously struggling trying to get my business back up. It was like, how can he be partying and doing what they’re doing when people couldn’t see their grandmothers, their families?”

He said at the time he was told he could even be prosecuted for letting someone sit on one of his outdoor tables or use his toilet.

“It’s not just the £1,500. It’s the stress of it, and the costs. And then it’s in the local paper that you are being prosecuted. It wasn’t nice, he added.

Mr Wilson said he found the new revelations that Mr Johnson may have breached the Covid regulations he himself fell foul of “shocking”.

“At the end of the day, they’re the Government that made the rules – they are the ones that obviously should have been upholding them,” he said. “So to say sweep it under the carpet and say it doesn’t matter, let it all go now, 100 per cent it shouldn’t be let go.”

He called for redacted Government WatsApp messages given to the Covid Inquiry to be handed over, questioning what Mr Johnson “is hiding”.

If Mr Johnson was proven to have “broken the rules again” he should be prosecuted, he believes, dismissing attempts by allies of Mr Johnson to downplay the police probe.

“It’s alright saying don’t mention it, what about all the thousands of people that had to go to court and suffer the consequences,” he said.

“He just basically broke the law, but he knew what the law was.”