Boris Johnson says the public's view of Partygate is 'million miles' from truth
Boris Johnson boasted on WhatsApp that he would "get through" Partygate and "come out on top", it has been revealed.
The former PM insisted the public’s impression of what happened in Downing Street was a “million miles” from the truth. As he appeared at the Covid Inquiry, 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 after they were first reported by The Mirror.
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.
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“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."
Mr Johnson admitted the row over Dominic Cummings breaking lockdown by visiting Barnard Castle was a “bad moment”. But he insisted it did not lead to the public at large no longer being willing to follow the rules. The Mirror broke the story that the PM’s top aide had driven 264 miles from London to his parents’ property in Durham in March 2020 despite having coronavirus symptoms.
Mr Johnson said: “It was a bad moment, I won’t pretend otherwise. But actually, I think that what happened thereafter was fascinating in that whatever the rights and wrongs of that position I took on that episode, people continued to want us to get on with the job of fixing the pandemic.”
The former PM was grilled over claims during the pandemic he said he was willing to "let it rip" as those who would die had had "a good innings". Mr Johnson said it was not true that he was “remotely reconciled to fatalities across the country or that I believed that it was acceptable to let it rip”.
He added: "What I was asking and I had to do this. I had to challenge the consensus in the meeting. You have got to understand these meetings comprised an overwhelming number of very, very talented, brilliant public health officials, civil servants and so on, scientists. And I was representing the only layperson in the meeting."
In a desperate bid to create a distraction, Mr Johnson suggested the Covid Inquiry should look into whether the virus originated from a lab in China. But chair Baroness Hallett pointed out that it was he as PM who decided what she should focus on. “Mr Johnson, you set my terms of reference,” she said firmly.
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