How Boris Johnson's birthday party in lockdown contrasts with leaders who canceled weddings and missed deaths of loved ones

• Boris Johnson's lockdown birthday party contrasts with world leaders who missed funerals and canceled weddings during the pandemic.
• It has invited comparisons with world leaders who stuck to the rules, including the Dutch PM who was unable to visit his dying mother.

The image of Boris Johnson attending his own birthday party – complete with cake and songs – during a national lockdown already threatens to be a defining one of his premiership.

When ITV News last night reported that a surprise bash was thrown for the prime minister's 56th birthday, it immediately piled further pressure on the embattled prime minister, with multiple allegations of events at Downing Street now the subject of a police investigation.

It also invited comparisons on the world stage of his actions as they compared to other leaders, several of whom made strikingly more rule-abiding decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic, often involving a degree of personal sacrifice.

The Netherlands in 2020 imposed what the government called an "intelligent lockdown," meaning rules were less strict than those in place when Johnson was celebrating his birthday.

Nonetheless in May 2020 — one month before Johnson's birthday celebration — Dutch PM Mark Rutte was unable to visit his dying mother in her final weeks because he was determined to comply with lockdown regulations in place at the time.

He announced the death of his mother on May 13, with his spokesperson saying he had not been able to say goodbye to her because "the prime minister has complied with all directives."

Officials and members of government who held lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street have also drawn deeply unfavourable comparisons with the behaviour of Queen Elizabeth II, who was photographed sitting alone at her late husband's funeral in what became a defining image of the pandemic in the UK.

The night before the Queen sat alone at Prince Philip's funeral, officials are reported to have held a basement party in Downing Street, where one of Johnson's top aides reportedly DJ-ed and where a suitcase filled with wine was brought in through a back entrance.

Johnson didn't attend that party, but his attendance of a birthday celebration the year previously further exacerbates the unfavourable comparisons between his own behavior and that of the Queen.

Some leaders continue to make sacrifices even in the later stages of the pandemic. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, perhaps the world's most prominent advocate for the "zero-Covid" strategy adopted by governments including her own, last week cancelled her wedding due to coronavirus restrictions.

She told reporters on Sunday that her wedding — rumoured to be imminent — would "not be going ahead," adding: "Such is life," Reuters reported.

Johnson is not the only leader accused of breaking rules during the early stages of the pandemic.

California governor Gavin Newsom had to apologise for a "bad mistake" after his own lockdown-busting birthday mishap in November 2020 when he attended the birthday of one of his advisers.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was criticised in April 2020 — months before Johnson's birthday party — for travelling to his summer residence in Quebec. And Israel's former health minister in April 2020 was quietly moved to a less prominent position after he was accused of breaking his own department's guidelines on social distancing.

That said, no world leader has yet been forced to resign over their failure to comply with lockdown rules — but no world leader is accused of presiding over a residence where quite so many rule-breaking parties were held. Whether Johnson himself will survive a scandal that is now the subject of a police investigation remains to be seen.