'We need to have accountability': Dr Rachel Clarke says 'we can't move on' from Partygate

19 June 2023, 11:07

By Maddie Wilson

NHS palliative care doctor tells Nick Ferrari why she disagrees with Jacob Rees-Mogg's suggestion that we should now 'move on' from Partygate.

Speaking to LBC's Nick Ferrari at Breakfast Dr Rachel Clarke said: "The problem with the Jacob Rees Mogg view and of course let's not forget that he too has just been ennobled by disgrace by Minister Boris Johnson, he's been knighted for his obedience.

"The problem is, if you have been through a bereavement under really tricky difficult circumstances, your grief may well be whats known as complex or complicated grief.

"So, this is grief maybe because, the circumstances have been traumatic or the death very sudden where you can't psychologically move on - It's not that simple.

"Wonderful for people who do just want to sort of, say 'that's history let's stride on into sun lit-uplands' but for hundreds of thousands of people in Britain, they are trapped in on going difficult, wretched grief and also anger and bitterness."

It comes after Boris Johnson was officially confirmed as the Daily Mail's new columnist, following his resignation last week and the release of the Partygate report by the Privileges Committee, which found he had misled Parliament.

Rachel Clarke continued: "They know that if the rules had been different perhaps the death wouldn't have happened.

"And worse than that, every time one of these wretched pictures or videos surfaces, showing members of the government or their supports cavorting and carousing and laughing in our faces that's just an insult to injury and it just rubs salt in the wounds.

"How can the grieving traumatised members of our society move on when there isn't even any accountability for that, you have to have accountability."