LONDON: Boris Johnson will not face another formal probe into allegations that he broke Covid lockdown laws at the UK prime minister’s country residence, police announced on Tuesday.
Officers said in May that they were looking into possible rule-breaking at Chequers involving Johnson, his family and friends, at a time when legal limits on social gatherings were in place.
Other “potential breaches” at Downing Street of the laws the government ordered the public to follow were also assessed.
But in a joint statement, Thames Valley Police and London’s Metropolitan Police said the events, alleged to have taken place between June 2020 and May 2021, “do not meet the retrospective criteria for opening an investigation.”
Johnson, 59, and more than 120 government officials, previously received police fines for holding a series of gatherings at Downing Street during the pandemic.
The revelations caused public outrage and contributed to his resignation last July. He insisted the latest accusations were false.
A parliamentary committee recently concluded that Johnson repeatedly lied to MPs, and was in contempt of parliament, ruling that he would have been suspended for 90 days had he not quit as a lawmaker.
The long-running “Partygate” affair is not fully over for the ruling Conservative party, as the Met said it was reopening an investigation into a Christmas party held at its party headquarters in December 2020.
Photos and videos published in the British media of the so-called “jingle and mingle” event showed Tory staffers drinking and dancing.
The Met said it was also opening an investigation into potential breaches of coronavirus regulations at parliament, also in December 2020.
That is thought to refer to a drinks event attended by a Tory member of the same parliamentary committee which ruled that Johnson repeatedly lied to parliament about “Partygate.”
No new ‘Partygate’ probe against UK’s Johnson: police
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No new ‘Partygate’ probe against UK’s Johnson: police
- Johnson, 59, and more than 120 government officials, previously received police fines for holding a series of gatherings at Downing Street during the pandemic
- The revelations caused public outrage and contributed to his resignation last July — he insisted the latest accusations were false
2025 among world’s three hottest years on record, WMO says
- All eight datasets confirmed that the last three years were the planet’s three hottest since records began, the WMO said
- The slight differences in the datasets’ rankings reflect their different methodologies and types of measurements
BRUSSELS: Last year was among the planet’s three warmest on record, the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday, as EU scientists also confirmed average temperatures have now exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming for the longest since records began.
The WMO, which consolidates eight climate datasets from around the world, said six of them — including the European Union’s European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the British national weather service — had ranked 2025 as the third warmest, while two placed it as the second warmest in the 176-year record.
All eight datasets confirmed that the last three years were the planet’s three hottest since records began, the WMO said. The warmest year on record was 2024.
THREE-YEAR PERIOD ABOVE 1.5 C AVERAGE WARMING LEVEL
The slight differences in the datasets’ rankings reflect their different methodologies and types of measurements — which include satellite data and readings from weather stations.
ECMWF said 2025 also rounded out the first three-year period in which the average global temperature was 1.5 C above the pre-industrial era — the limit beyond which scientists expect global warming will unleash severe impacts, some of them irreversible.
“1.5 C is not a cliff edge. However, we know that every fraction of a degree matters, particularly for worsening extreme weather events,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at ECMWF.
Burgess said she expected 2026 to be among the planet’s five warmest years.
CHOICE OF HOW TO MANAGE TEMPERATURE OVERSHOOT
Governments pledged under the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to avoid exceeding 1.5 C of global warming, measured as a decades-long average temperature compared with pre-industrial temperatures.
But their failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions means that target could now be breached before 2030 — a decade earlier than had been predicted when the Paris accord was signed in 2015, ECMWF said. “We are bound to pass it,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on societies and natural systems.”
Currently, the world’s long-term warming level is about 1.4 C above the pre-industrial era, ECMWF said. Measured on a short-term basis, average annual temperatures breached 1.5 C for the first time in 2024.
EXTREME WEATHER
Exceeding the long-term 1.5 C limit would lead to more extreme and widespread impacts, including hotter and longer heatwaves, and more powerful storms and floods. Already in 2025, wildfires in Europe produced the highest total emissions on record, while scientific studies confirmed specific weather events were made worse by climate change, including Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean and monsoon rains in Pakistan which killed more than 1,000 people in floods.
Despite these worsening impacts, climate science is facing political pushback. US President Donald Trump, who has called climate change “the greatest con job,” last week withdrew from dozens of UN entities including the scientific Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The long-established consensus among the world’s scientists is that climate change is real, mostly caused by humans, and getting worse. Its main cause is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, which trap heat in the atmosphere.
