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In a grilling by ITV News’ Tom Bradby, the former prime minister has claimed he regrets apologising for the Partygate scandal which resulted in his resignation.
Despite being asked three times, Johnson also declined to express any regret for apologising to the late Queen over the parties held on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral, adding “I don’t discuss my conversations with the Queen.”
His new memoir, Unleashed, reveals he thought he made a “mistake” in issuing “pathetic” and “grovelling” apologies over the Partygate scandal during the height of the pandemic. He claimed apologising for breaking lockdown rules “made it look as though we were far more culpable than we were.”
After further questioning, he said: “What I was trying to say there was, I think that the blanket apology – the sort of apology I issued right at the beginning – I think the trouble with it was that afterwards, all the accusations that then rained down on officials who’d been working very hard in Number 10 and elsewhere were thought to be true.
“And by apologising, I had sort of inadvertently validated the entire corpus and it wasn’t fair on those people.”
Boris Johnson faced intense public backlash in 2021 after it emerged that he and several staff members had violated the government’s lockdown rules by holding gatherings in Downing Street.
Following a police investigation, Johnson received a £50 fine for breaking lockdown restrictions, along with other senior politicians.
Despite claiming he did not violate Parliament’s rules, a later report by the privileges committee found that Johnson had deliberately misled the House of Commons about the gatherings. The findings in Sue Gray’s report ultimately led to his resignation.
Related: Johnson backs calls for a referendum on the UK’s membership of the ECHR
