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When asked about reports of a Downing Street Christmas party, she laughed and replied: “I went home,” before asking, “What’s the answer?”

“Is cheese and wine all right? It was a business meeting,” Ms. Stratton can be heard saying. “This fictional party was a business meeting,” she continued, before laughing and adding: “And it was not socially distanced.”

Opponents have seized on the video as more evidence of a familiar and damaging critique: that the Conservative-led government applies one set of rules to itself and another to the rest of the population. That was deeply damaging early in the pandemic when faith in the government was seriously undermined after Mr. Johnson’s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, traveled hundreds of miles to his parents’ home during a lockdown.

In response to the video, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, accused the government of misleading the public. “People across the country followed the rules even when that meant being separated from their families, locked down and — tragically for many — unable to say goodbye to their loved ones,” he said.

“They had a right to expect that the government was doing the same,” he added. “To lie and to laugh about those lies is shameful.”

Mr. Johnson is scheduled to answer questions on the matter in Parliament on Wednesday afternoon.