The former Conservative mayoral candidate’s campaign team were filmed drinking and dancing during a national Covid-19 lockdown, reports Noah Vickers, Local Democracy Reporter

Shaun Bailey (left, credit Wikimedia Commons) and Sadiq Khan (right, credit GLA)

Sadiq Khan has suggested his former mayoral opponent Shaun Bailey should be stripped of his impending peerage following the release of last week’s ‘partygate’ video.

Speaking at Mayor’s Question Time today (Thursday 22nd), Khan said “Londoners are furious” about the video and that those present at the December 2020 gathering “should be held to account for their actions, not rewarded”.

The video, published last week by Sunday Mirror, showed Conservative activists dancing and joking about “bending the rules”, while London was under Tier 2 Covid-19 restrictions, which banned indoor social gatherings. The event was described on an invitation as “The Shaun Bailey for London Holiday Party”.

Bailey was earlier this month offered a peerage by former prime minister Boris Johnson. He is expected to join the House of Lords on 18th July, according to reports.

The former Tory mayoral candidate was absent from Thursday’s meeting. He was said by London Assembly chair Andrew Boff not to be present because he was “suffering a bereavement”.

After the video of the lockdown party was made public, Bailey apologised “unreservedly” but has said it was for “others to decide” what happens to his peerage.

Police are reviewing the video of the event and Mark Rowley, the Met Police commissioner, has suggested fines may follow.

Khan said the appearance of “lawmakers being lawbreakers” was a “plague on all our houses”, after Labour assembly member Leonie Cooper asked whether he agreed that the video had “brought all of us in public life into disrepute”.

He added: “At a time when leading Conservatives were partying, Londoners faced tight restrictions on numbers at funerals.”

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