Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has now claimed that the “catastrophic” mistake he made during partygate was not for breaking Covid rules – but apologising for doing it
Boris Johnson has claimed he made a “catastrophic” mistake by saying sorry for breaking Covid rules in the partygate scandal.
The former Prime Minister and his then chancellor Rishi Sunak were both fined by the Metropolitan Police for attending get-togethers that broke Covid rules that their government had imposed. The scandal from ‘partygate’ engulfed the Conservative party and played a big part in the downfall of Johnson as Prime Minister.
The Mirror broke the partygate story in November 2021 by revealing details about the gatherings and after 18 months Johnson was found by the House of Commons ‘ Privileges Committee to have deliberately misled parliament when he insisted to MPs all rules had been followed. And now a defiant Johnson, rather than feeling a sense of remorse over what happened, claims his “catastrophic” mistake was to apologise for partygate.
Looking back now he said: “Without belabouring this weary business, I think I made several catastrophic mistakes in the handling of the story. I should have been far more robust at the outset. I tried to defuse public anger by a series of rather pathetic apologies, even when I knew zero about the events for which I was apologising.”
Writing in the Mail the former PM described the public outrage and desire for justice as an “unfair witch hunt”. He continued: “My grovelling just made people even angrier – and made it look as though we were far more culpable than we were. I should not have sanctioned a ridiculous and unfair witch-hunt led by a senior civil servant, Sue Gray, who was to become – unbelievably – chief of staff to Keir Starmer, and whose evidence collation was overseen by a Labour-supporting QC who had publicly called on Twitter for me to be removed from office. I should simply have asked anyone with evidence of wrongdoing to go to the police.”
Previously Johnson was found to have boasted on WhatsApp that he would “get through” partygate and “come out on top”. As he appeared at the Covid Inquiry last year, he complained the characterisation of lockdown-busting gatherings had been “absolutely absurd”.
At one point he appeared close to tears as he insisted it wasn’t true that he didn’t care about the serial rule-breaking. The inquiry was shown WhatsApp messages in which Mr Johnson boasted that he would ride out the row over No10 parties.
The former PM exchanged messages with Cabinet Secretary Simon Case after the top civil servant was forced to step down from his role investigating the lockdown-busting parties after claims emerged there had been a gathering in his own office. On December 17, 2021 Mr Johnson wrote: “Cab sec I am really sorry this thing is now causing you any kind of grief at all. The whole business is insane. We will get through it and come out on top.”
In another he wrote: “In retrospect we all should have told people… to think about their behaviour in number ten and how it would look. But now we must smash on.” When it was put to him that he didn’t care about the flouting of rules, Mr Johnson said: “When I went into intensive care, I saw around me a lot of people who were not actually elderly. In fact, they were middle-aged men and they were quite like me – and some of us were going to make it and some of us weren’t… To say that I didn’t care about the suffering that was being inflicted on the country is simply not right.”
