Johnson kicked off the two-day hearing by saying sorryUK Covid-19 Inquiry/AFP via Getty Images

Boris Johnson’s COVID inquiry grilling: All the bombshell moments

From the speed of lockdowns to a macho culture in Downing Street, Britain’s former prime minister faced a two-day grilling.

06 Dec 2023, 13:11 by Hans von der Burchard · POLITICO

Updated December 7.

LONDON — Boris Johnson’s been in the dock.

The former prime minister, who led Britain through the coronavirus pandemic before his administration spectacularly collapsed in 2022, faced a two-day grilling at the country’s official inquiry into the pandemic.

On oath to tell the truth, he was being pressed to give his account of what worked and, crucially, what didn’t, as the British state struggled to respond to the deadly virus.

POLITICO was in the room and keeping track of all the key moments across both days.

The interrupted apology

Johnson kicked off the two-day hearing by saying sorry — but there was plenty of drama as he did so.

Moments after the former prime minister was sworn in at the Paddington inquiry center, he started to apologize for the “pain, loss and suffering” that occurred during the coronavirus pandemic.

But he was quickly interrupted by the inquiry’s chair Heather Hallett, who ordered protesters in the public gallery to sit down. After they refused to do so, four protesters — who were quiet, but holding signs aimed at Johnson — were removed.

Swearwords? We all use ’em

The COVID inquiry has so far cast an unfavorable light on the culture in the No.10 Downing Street Johnson ran — and Wednesday offered his first real chance to respond to a host of lurid headlines.

WhatsApp messages already provided to the inquiry have shown that senior figures — particularly Johnson’s then-top adviser Dominic Cummings — used a host of curse words to describe colleagues they thought were useless.

But, pressed on the “fruity” exchanges, the former prime minister said “a lot of the language of the style that you refer to is completely unknown to me.”

He said he had apologized in detail “to one particular person who suffered abuse” in WhatsApp exchanges, but stressed that “government has a lot of challenging, competing characters whose views about each other might not be fit to print, but do get an awful lot done.”

March 2020 WhatsApp messages between Cummings and top minister Michael Gove were revealed at the U.K.’s COVID-19 inquiryLeon Neal/Getty Images,

Top officials’ Johnson therapy group

Wednesday’s grilling teased out some of the frustrations of top officials in Johnson’s government. That includes extraordinary exchanges between two of the country’s most senior civil servants about what it was like working in his No. 10.

In jaw-dropping July 2020 messages flashed up on the inquiry screen, just-departed Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill and his newly-minted successor Simon Case lamented their lot in life.

In one exchange, Case fumed about a “fucking extraordinary” turn of events and said he had “exploded” at Johnson’s top aide Cummings for chatting to the press. “I will not work in an environment where Dom is constantly briefing out his plans and screwing up the rest of us in the process,” Case said.

Sedwill sarcastically quipped back: “But Dom never talks to the press. He told me!”

“This place is just insane,” Case vented. “Zero discipline.” And he said: “At this rate, I will struggle to last six months.”

It’s a far cry from the buttoned-up British civil service of legend.

Johnson defends not chairing crisis committee

The slow dawning realization of COVID’s severity was a key feature of Wednesday’s grilling.

Johnson stood by his decision not to chair meetings of the government’s COBRA crisis committee at the start of the pandemic, having taken lots of flak for passing the baton to then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

The former PM said he had been unaware of the looming seriousness of the virus, and that, from January to February 2020, “COVID was like a cloud on the horizon no bigger than a man’s hand, and you didn’t know if it was going to turn into a typhoon or not.”

“I look at how oblivious we were with horror now,” Johnson later admitted as he was pressed on his early response. “We should collectively have twigged much sooner, I should have twigged.”

Key figures feared public wouldn’t buy early lockdown

Central to Johnson’s defense is his claim he was warned by top medical advisers against starting a lockdown “too early in order to ensure maximum effectiveness,” and to avoid “behavioral fatigue” among the British public.

When pushed by Keith, Johnson said he did not, however, press for an earlier lockdown. “Candidly, I don’t remember saying to myself: ‘This is so bad. They must be wrong’ … and perhaps with hindsight, I should have done,” Johnson said.

He admitted that at the start of the pandemic, there had been “a certain amount of incoherence in our thinking,” with some parts of government presenting stark data while others took a more cautious approach.

Johnson pressed on claim he said public would ‘die anyway’

Johnson faced a tough time Wednesday afternoon when pressed on contemporaneous notes from his former private secretary Imran Shafi, who has already been quizzed by the inquiry.

Shafi recorded a meeting with Johnson, and noted down Johnson’s view as: “We’re killing the patient to tackle the tumour … why are we destroying economy for people who will die anyway soon.” Johnson was also recorded as describing vulnerable people as “bed blockers.”

The former top Tory did not deny either claim, but said such words were “an indication of the cruelty of the choice that we faced, and the appalling balancing act that I had to do throughout the pandemic.”

WhatsApp boomer moment

Johnson got into hot water on the first day of the hearing for failing to hand in all of his WhatsApps — and had an … interesting excuse.

Around 5,000 of the ex-prime minister’s WhatsApp messages from January to June 2020 were not provided to the inquiry, stuck on an apparently inaccessible old phone.

Pressed on this, Mr Johnson said: “I don’t know the exact reason, but it looks as though it’s something to do with the app going down and then coming up again, but somehow automatically erasing all the things between that date when it went down and the moment when it was last backed up.” That clears that up.

‘Go a bit harder’ with autumn 2020 lockdown

As the virus once again raged in fall 2020, Johnson was strongly advised to implement a two-week “circuit breaker” lockdown — but did not do so for fear he’d have to do so again and again.

Messages from chief scientific advisor Patrick Vallance show Johnson was advised to “go harder” and “wider with geography.” This advice was supported by then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who warned. “If we want to avoid a national lockdown we need to act fast, we’re going in the wrong direction,” Hancock said.

Instead Johnson’s government launched a “tier” system which saw different areas subject to varying restrictions depending on how severely they were hit by the virus. Sure enough, this ended up being scrapped in favor of a full national lockdown that effectively iced Christmas 2021 for Brits.

“I’m not going to pretend that this was an easy decision, and it certainly wasn’t, and it was one I agonized over, but I thought that a regional approach could still save us,” Johnson told the inquiry.

Partygate problems

Some of the most uncomfortable evidence on Thursday came as Johnson was pressed on the scandal that helped bring down his premiership.

“Partygate” saw a host of lockdown-rule breaching social gatherings take place in government buildings. It’s a move that, to many Brits, smacked of hypocrisy at a time of great national sacrifice. In some cases, the parties led to police fines for top figures — including Johnson himself.

But Johnson said the stories of parties were “a million miles from the reality of what actually happened in Number 10,” and insisted he could “speak on behalf of hundreds and hundreds of hard-working civil servants who thought that they were following the rules.” He hit out at “dramatic representations” of the bashes.

Evidence released to the inquiry meanwhile shed light on the mood in government as the row erupted. In texts sent by Johnson to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, the prime minister said: “In retrospect we all should have told people – above all [Downing Street comms director] Lee Cain – to think about their behaviour in Number 10 and how it would look. But now we must smash on.”

The text exchanges also show Johnson telling Case he was “really sorry” for the “grief” of the partygate scandal, to which Case said “Thanks PM, it is a bit grim, but hopefully it will pass.”

Johnson swears at his future bosses

Since leaving government, Johnson has landed a lucrative gig as a columnist for the Daily Mail newspaper.

So that made it slightly awkward when Johnson was pressed on a four-letter tirade against the … Daily Mail.

Diary extracts from Britain’s then-Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance, dated September 2020, describe Johnson raging about the way his coronavirus “rule of six” restrictions landed with the paper.

Sir Patrick quotes Johnson as lamenting: “everyone says rule of 6 so unfair, punishing the young, but FUCK YOU Daily Mail – look this is all about stopping deaths. We need to tell them.”

Pressed on the remarks Thursday, Johnson said: “I am sorry to have said this about the Daily Mail… I don’t think that was meant to be a general criticism of that great organization [they must have] said something that had wound me up about the rule of six or whatever.”

… and tells the inquiry how to do an inquiry

At the end two full days of questioning, Johnson said he’s “rather sad it’s over” — and offered a few words of wisdom for the inquiry’s chair Heather Hallett on how the probe could focus on the U.K.’s health and care system.

“I know it’s outside your scope — but I do think that the British public and future governments will need to be elucidated about how exactly this thing originated,” he said of the virus.

“Mr Johnson, you set my terms of reference,” Hallett told the former PM curtly.