UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 15 of 150

Correct — A, Relates to flouting of Covid-19 norms by British P.M.'s Office. 'Partygate' was the row over social gatherings held at 10 Downing Street and elsewhere in Whitehall by government and Conservative Party staff during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 — while the same government was telling the country it could not attend funerals or visit dying relatives. The gatherings were investigated by the senior civil servant Sue Gray, whose interim update appeared on 31 January 2022 and whose final report was laid before Parliament on 25 May 2022, a fortnight before this exam. Separately, the Metropolitan Police ran Operation Hillman and issued 126 fixed penalty notices to 83 people, among them Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Carrie Johnson and the then Chancellor Rishi Sunak. Johnson was fined in April 2022, making him the first serving British Prime Minister sanctioned for breaking the law. Note the wording of the name, because it is the whole trap: 'party' here means a social party, not a political party, and the affair concerned the Prime Minister's own office. As of the June-2022 exam Johnson was still in office; he resigned as Prime Minister in July 2022, a few weeks after candidates sat this paper.

• (b)Relates to conservative party flouting norms of Democratic behaviour — Names the right party but the wrong offence. Partygate was about breaches of the government's own public-health regulations — a matter for a civil-service inquiry and for police fixed penalty notices under Covid rules — not about any abuse of democratic norms or institutions.
• (c)Relates to illegal funding made to political parties in U.S.A. and U.K. — The misreading the name is designed to invite. 'Party' in Partygate refers to gatherings, not to political parties, and no part of the affair concerned campaign funding or the United States.
• (d)Relates to labour party flouting the norms of Parliamentary behaviour — Wrong party and wrong setting. The gatherings were held by staff of the Conservative government at Downing Street and in Whitehall, not by the Labour opposition, and the issue was lockdown regulations rather than conduct in Parliament.

Partygate is a case study in political accountability under emergency regulation. When a government legislates restrictions on the whole population, its own compliance becomes a test of legitimacy — the objection was less that a few drinks were had than that the people writing the rules exempted themselves from them. Two separate accountability tracks ran in parallel: an internal civil-service inquiry into what happened, and a criminal-law process under the Covid regulations themselves.

For an Indian aspirant the item is answerable without following British politics closely, provided you read the option texts rather than the headline word. Option (c) is what 'Party Gate' sounds like; option (a) is what it was. The '-gate' suffix, ever since Watergate, simply marks a political scandal, and the word before it names the thing that went wrong — so 'Partygate' points at parties, and the only option that describes parties is (a). Anchor the whole item to mid-2022: the Gray report was three weeks old when candidates sat the paper.

• The gatherings took place at 10 Downing Street and in Whitehall during the 2020 and 2021 Covid-19 lockdowns, in breach of the government's own restrictions.
• Sue Gray's interim update was published on 31 January 2022 and her final report was presented to Parliament on 25 May 2022.
• The Metropolitan Police investigation, Operation Hillman, issued 126 fixed penalty notices to 83 people, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Carrie Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak.
• Johnson was fined in April 2022 — the first serving British Prime Minister to be sanctioned for breaking the law. He resigned as Prime Minister in July 2022, after this exam was held.

• Reading 'Party Gate' as a political-party funding scandal. The word refers to social gatherings.
• Attributing the affair to the Labour Party. It concerned the Conservative government and the Prime Minister's own office.
• Answering current-affairs items from today's news rather than from the exam's own date — this paper was set on 12 June 2022, while Boris Johnson was still Prime Minister.

Both commissions test international current affairs by asking you to identify what a named event actually was, with distractors built from plausible misreadings of the name — so the marks go to precise recall, not to a general sense that you have heard of it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The senior civil servant who led the internal United Kingdom government inquiry into the Partygate gatherings, reporting in May 2022, was

  • (a)Sue Gray
  • (b)Simon Case
  • (c)Cressida Dick
  • (d)Chris Whitty

  Answer(a) Sue Gray — her interim update appeared on 31 January 2022 and her final report was presented to Parliament on 25 May 2022.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following made Boris Johnson's April 2022 fixed penalty notice constitutionally significant?

  • (a)It was the first time a British Prime Minister was impeached
  • (b)It was the first time a serving British Prime Minister was sanctioned for breaking the law
  • (c)It automatically vacated the office of Prime Minister
  • (d)It was issued by the House of Commons rather than the police

  Answer(b) It was the first time a serving British Prime Minister was sanctioned for breaking the law. The fine did not remove him from office — he resigned as Prime Minister only in July 2022.