Covid-19: Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s apology to the families of the victims

He admitted that he was “wrong on some issues.” Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologized this Wednesday to the families of Covid victims during a hearing at the public inquiry into the pandemic. “I am deeply sorry for the pain, loss and suffering” of these victims and their families, Boris Johnson said in his introduction to the long-awaited hearing. However, this apology was interrupted by four demonstrators who declared: “We don’t need his apology!” ” before he was kicked out of the room. More than 232,000 people have died from Covid in the UK.

“Inevitably we were wrong on some issues,” the former Conservative government chief continued, saying he took “personal responsibility” for decisions made at the time. “I think we did our best (…) in very difficult circumstances. (…) Are there things we should do differently? Without a doubt.

Difficult questions

Boris Johnson will face tough questions during a two-day hearing following harsh criticism from former staffers. Since the hearings began in June, several advisers and academics have described a stunned, indecisive prime minister with little concern for victims when the pandemic struck in early 2020, and a divided and chaotic government.

Did Boris Johnson take too long to introduce the first lockdown at the end of March 2020? Has he summed up the pandemic? Did he understand science? Was he indifferent to the victims and especially to the elderly? “This was the wrong kind of crisis for the Prime Minister’s skills,” Lee Cain, a former Downing Street communications director, told the commission in late October, recalling how Boris Johnson delayed decisions and constantly changed his mind based on the last person who talked to him.

A brilliant speaker, Boris Johnson, 59, who is quicker to hit the mark with humor than to give a precise answer, has much to do to convince that at the start of 2020 he was the right man for the job. His apology has already been rejected by Amer Anwar, a lawyer for the Scottish Covid victims’ association, Scottish Covid Bereaved. “Instead of addressing the crisis,” Boris Johnson “led an absolutely disgusting orgy of narcissism,” he told reporters outside the hearing. “He allowed bodies to pile up and treat elderly people like toxic waste,” he added.

According to several media reports, the former prime minister carefully prepared his defense, reading 6,000 pages of documents and spending hours locked in with his lawyers. He arrived at the building at 7am (local time) on Wednesday morning, three hours before the hearing began. “This is the first time Boris has done anything in advance,” Police Minister Chris Philp joked on Sky News.

I myself suffered from Covid.

Following his apology, he should confirm that the government has helped save tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives, and insist once again that the vaccination program will be rolled out early in 2021, faster than in many countries. Boris Johnson himself almost died from Covid in April 2020.

On March 23, 2020, the British were subjected to the first detention, and then two more. Illegal parties in Downing Street during this period caused a scandal and contributed to the downfall of Boris Johnson, who was forced to resign in July 2022. “He is incapable of leading,” Downing Street general secretary Simon Case lamented in WhatsApp messages in the fall of 2020. , the country’s most senior civil servant. “It changes strategic direction every day,” he said despairingly.

Martin Reynolds, Boris Johnson’s former private secretary, also described the government as having a dysfunctional and macho culture. Others condemned the “toxic” culture. Boris Johnson should also categorically deny accusations from his former chief of staff and now bitter enemy Dominic Cummings, who described his conspicuous absence in the early days of the pandemic as he worked on a book about Shakespeare.

The main points of his testimony were leaked to the British press before the hearing, a fact regretted by former judge Heather Hallett, who was in charge of the public inquiry.