DOWNING STREET staff partied with their bosses’ approval while Britain was in lockdown, the long-awaited publication of senior civil servant Sue Gray’s report found today.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson was told by opposition MPs that “the game is up” following her damning report into 16 gatherings between May 2020 and April 2021.

The report found that a large number of staff at No 10 attended the frequently boozy events and breached Covid guidelines.

In the wake of the report, a snap YouGov poll found 59 per cent of Britons thought the PM should resign.

Ms Gray said senior leadership, political and official, must bear responsibility for the drinking culture at Downing Street which saw 83 people — including Mr Johnson, his wife Carrie and Chancellor Rishi Sunak — fined for breaking strict lockdown rules.

The report found some staff had “witnessed or been subjected to behaviours at work which they had felt concerned about but at times felt unable to raise properly” and there were multiple examples of an “unacceptable” lack of respect and poor treatment of security and cleaning staff.

Ms Gray’s conclusions will also be considered as part of the forthcoming investigation by a committee of MPs into whether the Prime Minister misled Parliament and disciplinary action against staff may also yet follow.

In a Commons statement, Mr Johnson said it was his first opportunity to “set out the context” of what happened.

“Some of these gatherings went on for far longer than was necessary and they clearly fell in breach of the rules,” the PM said.

Mr Johnson added that he had “no knowledge” of proceedings until the report as “I simply wasn’t there.”

But Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer told the Prime Minister “the game is up” and demanded he resign.

Sir Keir said the report “lays bare the rot that under this Prime Minister has spread in No 10, and it provides definitive proof of how those within the building treated the sacrifices of the British people with utter contempt.”

He said the report will stand as a monument to the “arrogance” of a government who believed it was “one rule for them, and another rule for everybody else.”

Sir Keir added: “The Prime Minister has turned the focus of his government to saving his own skin. It is utterly shameful.”

Left Labour MPs were also damning, with Diane Abbott saying that if Mr Johnson had any conscience he would resign but “instead he makes it blatantly clear that laws are for little people.”

And Jarrow MP Kate Osborne said Mr Johnson “is clearly not fit for public office.”

The SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford MP, who also tackled Mr Johnson on the subject at Prime Ministers Questions, said: “The bottom line is that the longer they leave Boris Johnson in office the more damage they will do to public trust in this out of touch and broken UK government.”

Civil servants waded in to heap heavy criticism on the shamed PM. 

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “The Prime Minister should resign.

“He has consistently shown a failure of leadership. He has no integrity, no moral authority and his position is untenable.”

Junior staff had been fined for attending gatherings with Mr Johnson present, while the PM escaped sanction, according to the Good Law Project.

The campaign group revealed it has taken legal action over alleged failures of the Metropolitan Police to adequately investigate.

“We can see no basis for holding junior civil servants to a higher standard than the Prime Minister,” a letter by the Good Law Project says.

Earlier, during PMQs, Sir Keir also attacked Mr Johnson over the cost-of-living crisis.

Attacking Mr Johnson for having “dithered and delayed” over the well-trailed announcement of a windfall tax on the profits of energy companies by Mr Sunak, Sir Keir asked: “What was it about the Sue Gray report that attracted you to a windfall tax?”

Mr Johnson accused Labour of being instinctively in favour of high taxation. The Tories have introduced 15 new taxes since 2020.