The Partygate scandal has been thrown back into the spotlight after Boris Johnson quit as an MP in anger at an investigation which found he misled parliament over lockdown-breaking events in Downing Street.

The Commons privileges committee recommended a suspension from parliament for more than 10 days, prompting the former prime minister to claim he had been driven out.

Last month Johnson was referred to the police over new allegations he broke lockdown rules with gatherings at Chequers. On Wednesday, the Guardian revealed that he and his wife, Carrie Johnson, hosted a close friend who helped plan their wedding at the grace-and-favour mansion.

Previously, Johnson and the then-chancellor, Rishi Sunak, were among 83 people to have been fined by the Metropolitan police over gatherings held while Covid restrictions were in place.

The scandal ultimately led to Johnson resigning as prime minister, despite his initial claims that “all guidance was followed completely in No 10”. His departure as an MP may signal the end of his political career.

With more than 220,000 Covid deaths to date, the Guardian plots the UK death toll against dates on which the staff parties are alleged to have occurred, as well as other alleged breaches of lockdown rules and Johnson’s comments on the gatherings.

Data notes and methodology

UK daily deaths are as recorded by the Office for National Statistics – which includes all deaths where Covid was mentioned on the death certificate deaths to 7 April 2023, as in the most recent publication – and stood at 224,823 people. This time lag means that the graphic remains static for the final couple of weeks of the interactive which does not reflect the actual situation on those days.

This differs to the government’s primary metric sourced from the Covid-19 data dashboard, which only includes those deaths occurring within 28 days of a positive Covid test.

The restrictions level is sourced from the University of Oxford’s coronavirus government response tracker. A stringency index score of above 75 is classed as “very high” restrictions level, above 50 “high”, above 25 “medium” and then anything below is classed as “very low”. From 18 August 2022, the score dropped below 10 which has been classed as no restrictions from then on.

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