Tag: Boris Johnson

UK COVID inquiry: Boris Johnson says he underestimated threat from virus

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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British former prime minister Boris Johnson gave his most explicit apology for his handling of the coronavirus crisis on Wednesday, saying his government had been too complacent and initially underestimated the risks posed by the virus.

In an appearance before an official inquiry into the UK’s handling of the pandemic, Johnson said he took responsibility for all decisions made and he understood the public’s anger after the inquiry heard of government incompetence, backstabbing and misogyny as it battled the biggest health crisis in decades.

Johnson said COVID-19 had first appeared as a “cloud on the horizon” and not the “typhoon” that went on to kill more than 230,000 people in Britain and infect many millions more.

Initially, Johnson said he did not believe the forecasts of fatalities and only read the minutes of the government’s key scientific advisory group on a couple of occasions despite their conclusions leading to the biggest crackdown on civil liberties since World War Two.

“Can I say that I understand the feelings of the victims and their families, and I am deeply sorry for the pain and the loss and the suffering,” he said at the start of a two-day hearing.

Johnson, prime minister for three years between 2019 and 2022, resigned in disgrace after a series of scandals including reports that he, and other officials, had been present at alcohol-fuelled gatherings in Downing Street during 2020 and 2021 when most people in Britain were forced to stay at home.

The inquiry has already heard damaging testimony about his reluctance to lock down, and how he was confused by the science.

Johnson was said to have asked at one point if blowing a hair-dryer up his nose could kill the virus and suggested he should be injected with COVID-19 on live TV to calm public fears.

‘DEADLY CULTURE’

The former prime minister faced repeated questions about whether he waited too long to impose a lockdown at the start of 2020 and if that resulted in Britain ending up with one of the world’s highest death tolls from the pandemic.

Johnson said there were constant, conflicting arguments between ministers and officials about how to respond and his cabinet of senior ministers were more reluctant than he was to impose restrictions on the public’s movements.

He arrived at the inquiry in the dark, more than three hours before the hearing began, avoiding the families of some of those who died from COVID-19, and who had wanted to confront Johnson over claims that he told colleagues he would prefer to see people die in large numbers than order a second lockdown.

The start of the session was disrupted by protesters, who were warned, and in some cases ordered to leave, by the inquiry’s chairwoman.

Aamer Anwar, the solicitor representing some bereaved COVID families, said Johnson oversaw “a deadly culture of impunity, incompetence” and treating people like “toxic waste”.

The inquiry has seen evidence from the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, who wrote in his diary in Oct. 2020 that Johnson wanted to let the virus spread rather than order another lockdown.

Other senior advisers including Dominic Cummings and Eddie Lister claim Johnson also said “let the bodies pile high”.

Johnson said abusive messages sent between officials shown to the inquiry did not mean his leadership was dysfunctional. But he admitted that during the pandemic his team would have worked better if it had more women in it.

In one messages shown to the inquiry, Cummings, who was then Johnson’s most senior official, complained in a profanity-laden message that he was “dodging stilettos” from a female colleague and wanted to “handcuff her and escort her” from Downing Street.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

UK MPs vote 354 to 7, overwhelmingly endorse report against Boris Johnson over ‘partygate’

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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British MPs have voted 354 to seven to approve a House of Commons committee report that found former prime minister Boris Johnson deliberately misled Parliament about COVID lockdown law-breaching parties at Downing Street.

The 59-year-old, whose exit from 10 Downing Street last year had been hastened by the ’partygate’ scandal, had repeatedly denied that lockdown rules were broken within government quarters when asked in the Commons.

Johnson has already resigned as Member of Parliament (MP) from West London after the findings of the Privileges Committee report were known to him. He will now lose the privilege of special access to Parliament accorded to former MPs.

Many of his colleagues and Opposition members gathered in the Commons on Monday to debate the report’s findings and a majority condemned the former prime minister’s actions.

ALSO READ | Former British PM Boris Johnson hands COVID-era WhatsApps to UK govt amid inquiry row

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, along with several other Tory MPs, chose not to attend the debate or comment on the report’s findings, something several Opposition Labour Party MPs called out during the session that ran into hours.

”It’s a crying shame that the prime minister of this country cannot even express how he would vote if he were to turn up today. In my view, that is a dereliction of duty,” Labour Party’s Jess Phillips said.

Johnson’s staunch allies lined up to defend the former Conservative Party leader and attacked the cross-party Privileges Committee.

”For some reason, the Privileges Committee thinks it is in Communist China and we must kowtow,” Tory MP and former minister in the Johnson Cabinet, Jacob Rees-Mogg, said.

He insisted that it is ”absolutely legitimate” to criticise the conduct and make-up of the Privileges Committee, which wrote the report, because ”our politics is adversarial”.

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”Outside this chamber, freedom of speech is paramount, we are allowed to say what we like,” Rees-Mogg, who was given a knighthood in Johnson’s controversial resignation honours list, said.

However, several Tory members, including former prime minister Theresa May, were scathing in their criticism of Johnson. They said MPs must be seen to hold their own to account, to show the public there is ”not one rule for them and another for us”.

Earlier, Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt, speaking on behalf of the government, told the House that the government respects the important constitutional principles of the committee.

”The Privileges Committee exists to defend our rights and privileges in this place,” Mordaunt had said, confirming that she would be voting in favour of its report.

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Johnson had hit out at the committee as a ”kangaroo court” which was on a witch-hunt against him as he resigned earlier this month.

The report highlighted specific instances over the course of 2020 and 2021, during successive COVID lockdowns in the UK when the House of Commons could have been misled by Johnson’s claims that ”no rules or guidance had been broken”.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Ex-UK PM Boris Johnson deliberately misled Parliament over Covid lockdown breaches, inquiry finds

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Former British prime minister Boris Johnson deliberately and repeatedly misled Parliament when he denied knowledge of Covid-19 law-breaching parties in Downing Street, a cross-party parliamentary panel said on Thursday in its damning report into the Partygate scandal.

The Commons Privileges Committee released its final report into the Partygate scandal days after Johnson, 58, resigned from Parliament as a MP, accusing the members of the committee of a “witch hunt” against him.

Finding him in breach of the Commons rules, the committee was also highly critical of his attacks on its integrity and recommended a suspension of 90 days from Parliament had he not resigned.

“We have concluded above that in deliberately misleading the House Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt. The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the Prime Minister, the most senior member of the government,” the Privileges Committee report said, in a historic admonishment of a former premier.

“Although Mr Johnson’s resignation as an MP renders it impossible for a sanction of suspension to be imposed, we draw attention to the fact that before the events of Friday 9 June we had provisionally agreed to recommend a suspension long enough to engage the provisions of the Recall of MPs Act,” it says, with reference to Johnson’s resignation.

The committee notes that there is no precedent for a British Prime Minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House of Commons and also that Johnson misled it on an issue of the “greatest importance to the House and to the public, and did so repeatedly”.

They accuse Johnson of committing further contempt in his attacks on the due parliamentary process with deprecated terms such as “witch hunt” and “kangaroo court”.

“We put on record that if he had not resigned his seat, we would have recommended that he be suspended from the service of the House for 90 days for repeated contempts and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process, by – Deliberately misleading the House; Deliberately misleading the Committee; Breaching confidence; Impugning the Committee and thereby undermining the democratic process of the House; Being complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the Committee,” the report concludes.

In light of Johnson’s resignation as an MP, the committee has recommended that he should not be granted a former member’s pass – which would have allowed him limited access to Parliament, including for lunches and to see former colleagues.

The sanctions recommended in the report will have to be voted on by MPs.

British lawmakers will debate the Privileges Committee report into Johnson’s conduct on Monday, Commons leader Penny Mordaunt has said.

The motion will be “voteable, it will be amendable and it is House business and so I am expecting a free vote”, Mordaunt said.

“These are difficult matters for the House, we have to look at the evidence, we have to look at the report,” she added.

Meanwhile, Johnson issued another strongly-worded statement in response, saying it was a “dreadful day” for democracy. He also dismissed the report as a “political assassination”.

“This is a dreadful day for MPs and for democracy. This decision means that no MP is free from vendetta, or expulsion on trumped-up charges by a tiny minority who want to see him or her gone from the Commons.

“I do not have the slightest contempt for Parliament, or for the important work that should be done by the Privileges Committee,” he said.

The former prime minister, whose exit from 10 Downing Street last year had been hastened by the Partygate scandal, repeatedly denied Covid-19 lockdown rules were broken within government quarters when asked in the Commons.

In March, the House of Commons Privileges Committee published a summary of its findings and called in Johnson to give oral evidence before decisively concluding whether he knowingly misled Parliament and submitting its complete findings to Parliament.

Last week, Johnson resigned as Conservative Party MP after receiving the draft findings of the final report, a move which will trigger a by-election in his London constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

Johnson was prime minister from July 2019 until September 2022 and has been an MP since 2001 – although not continuously. He has also served as the Mayor of London between 2008 and 2016.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Former British PM Boris Johnson hands COVID-era WhatsApps to UK govt amid inquiry row

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has given his pandemic-era notebooks and messages to the government and urged officials to pass them on to an independent COVID-19 inquiry, his spokesman said on Wednesday.

The Cabinet Office, which is responsible for overseeing the operation of government, is in a standoff with the inquiry over whether it should hand over material it deems to be irrelevant to the investigation.

“All Boris Johnson’s material – including WhatsApps and notebooks – requested by the COVID inquiry has been handed to the Cabinet Office in full and in unredacted form,” the spokesman’s statement said.

Also read:  UK ex-PM Boris Johnson faces new COVID law breach claims

“Mr Johnson urges the Cabinet Office to urgently disclose it to the inquiry.”

After Britain recorded one of the world’s highest number of COVID deaths, Johnson’s government in 2021 ordered an inquiry into the country’s preparedness as well as its public health and economic response.

With a national election expected next year, the detailed examination of decision making could be politically uncomfortable for both Johnson and current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was finance minister during the pandemic.

The inquiry will cover the government’s management of the pandemic, particularly at the beginning when Britain was slower than many European countries to respond.

Chaired by former judge Heather Hallett, the inquiry had given the government until Thursday afternoon to hand over Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and diaries.

The Cabinet Office did not immediately respond for a request for comment. In a statement issued on Tuesday, it said:

“We are firmly of the view that the inquiry does not have the power to request unambiguously irrelevant information that is beyond the scope of this investigation.”

“This includes the WhatsApp messages of government employees which are not about work but instead are entirely personal and relate to their private lives.”

Johnson, whose personal conduct during the COVID-19 pandemic has been heavily criticised and who incurred a police fine for breaking lockdown regulations, said he would cooperate with the inquiry in full.

“While Mr Johnson understands the government’s position, and does not seek to contradict it, he is perfectly happy for the inquiry to have access to this material in whatever form it requires,” the spokesman said.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

UK ex-PM Boris Johnson faces new COVID law breach claims

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Boris Johnson, who was forced to resign as British prime minister last year in the wake of controversies including the partygate scandal of COVID law-breaking parties at Downing Street, has been referred to police over new claims that he may have breached pandemic lockdown rules.

While Johnson has dismissed the allegations as bizarre and unacceptable, the UK Cabinet Office is said to have forwarded his ministerial diary entries from the time over concerns about certain visits to his prime ministerial country residence during the lockdown.

The Times newspaper, which first reported the development on Tuesday, said Johnson, 58, has been referred to Thames Valley Police because his ministerial diary revealed visits by family and friends to Chequers at a time when there were strict restrictions on inter-household mixing to contain the spread of coronavirus.

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“In line with obligations in the Civil Service Code, this material has been passed to the relevant authorities, and it is now a matter for them,” the Cabinet Office said. It said the information came to light during the process of preparing evidence for submission to the COVID inquiry, an independent review of the UK’s handling of the pandemic and its impact.

Johnson, however, complained of a “politically motivated stitch-up” and insisted that all events in question were within the rules either because they were held outdoors or came within another lawful exception.

“The assertion by the Cabinet Office that there have been further COVID rule breaches is totally untrue,” Johnson’s spokesperson said. Lawyers have examined the events in question and advised that they were lawful. No contact was made with Mr Johnson before these incorrect allegations were made both to the police and to the [Parliament] privileges committee.

This is both bizarre and unacceptable, the spokesperson said.

It was claimed that the latest move was an attempt to prolong an ongoing parliamentary probe into Johnson’s conduct by the House of Commons Privileges Committee.

The cross-party panel is investigating whether Johnson knowingly misled Parliament over what he knew about law-breaking parties and gatherings at Downing Street during the lockdown. Johnson’s lawyers have since written to the police “to explain in detail why the Cabinet Office is entirely wrong in its assertions”.

The police have said they are currently “assessing” concerns, and no formal investigation has been launched.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Ex-UK PM Boris Johnson fights for career in testimony on lockdown parties

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Britain’s former Prime Minister Boris Johnson will face hours of hostile questioning on Wednesday about whether he misled parliament over rule-breaking COVID-19 lockdown parties at a hearing where he will be fighting for his political career.

Parliament’s Committee of Privileges is investigating whether Johnson, who was ousted from Downing Street in September, intentionally or recklessly misled parliament in a series of statements about the rule-breaking parties.

The former leader, who considered an audacious bid for a second stint as prime minister last year, is due to give evidence to the committee over several hours in a televised session.

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If the committee finds Johnson intentionally misled parliament then he could be suspended from the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament. Any suspension longer than 10 days could prompt a by-election in his constituency.

The so-called “partygate” scandal ultimately contributed to the downfall of Johnson, after months of reports that he, alongside other senior government figures, had been present at alcohol-fueled gatherings in Downing Street during 2020 and 2021 when most of the rest of Britain was forced to stay at home.

The outcry and repeated allegations of lying eventually prompted the resignations of much of his top team of government ministers, including the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

ALSO READ | UK PM Boris Johnson to face parliamentary probe on partygate

In an interim report published this month, lawmakers on the committee – made up of seven lawmakers with a majority of members from the governing Conservative Party – said Johnson may have misled parliament on four occasions and said the rule-breaking should have been ”obvious”.

On Tuesday, Johnson said in written evidence to the committee he had misled parliament but insisted he ”would never have dreamed” of doing so intentionally.

Johnson described some of the allegations he faced from the committee as illogical and absurd, accusing it of being highly partisan.

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In passages that are likely to form part of his defence on Wednesday, Johnson said there was no evidence that indicated he intentionally misled parliament and he was not warned that the events broke any rules.

The committee said Johnson had submitted his evidence late, that it had contained errors and no ”new documentary evidence”.

If the committee recommends any sanctions against Johnson they would have to be approved by parliament.

Sunak suggested this week that any vote on any sanctions against Johnson would be based on lawmakers’ own beliefs rather than along party lines.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

London Eye | The knives are coming out for Rishi Sunak

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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This would be hardly unexpected, but the knives are beginning to come out for Rishi Sunak, just days into his job as Prime Minister. Not fully yet, a glimpse here, a glint there. But the sightings are clear. This would hardly be unexpected in Westminster politics, even in these early days. And it would not be unexpected at all that the one to watch out for is former prime minister Boris Johnson. Except that Boris Johnson is less a knife than perhaps a sword hanging over Rishi Sunak’s head.

Boris Johnson, none other, has made that clear. He did that straight after he failed to get enough support from MPs to take on Rishi Sunak in the race for prime minister, even though he insisted publicly that he had opted out. His exit lines sounded an intended comeback: “I believe I have much to offer but I am afraid this is simply not the right time…I believe I am well placed to deliver a Conservative victory in 2024.” He has launched himself now on the comeback trail in line with a plan he no doubt sees as promising and that Rishi Sunak doubtless should see as worrying.

That new Johnson line is to launch himself into the public eye in the image of a global statesman. And so he will now be going to COP27 in Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt. As is Prime Minister Rishi Sunak finally – and awkwardly. It had been announced earlier that Rishi Sunak would go, then he announced he will not because he would be too tied up with working out a financial policy, and then again that he would go. This final call after it became known that Boris Johnson was going to the COP summit.

It would have been very awkward for Rishi Sunak to be missing at the summit and for Boris Johnson to be there. And now it will be awkward in a different way for both of them to be there. They will follow of course different protocols, but may not fall into very differing profiles. Boris Johnson is certain to get a fair degree of attention at the summit.

Johnson has been careful to stay vague why he is going to the COP summit, and what he would do there. “I was invited by the Egyptians,” he told Sky News in an interview. And he said no more. That too he said only reluctantly. That interview, by previous agreement no doubt, was all about Ukraine, that high platform for Boris Johnson earlier on the world stage.

Ukraine

The interview was itself offered to the British public as an assertion that Johnson remains a world statesman and that a transfer from such a position to that of the Prime Minister of Britain should follow at some stage. He was asked if he would accept a formal role in Ukraine, perhaps as envoy. A thought Boris Johnson dismissed. Irrespective of not being the PM, he said “there are ways I can be useful”.

He referred to a conversation “with a friend in Kyiv” and many will recall how often Boris Johnson has spoken of President Zelensky as a friend. He promised that he would “inevitably” go back to Kyiv. These are not the moves of a man in a hurry to go down in history as an ex-prime minister.

All this is seriously awkward for Rishi Sunak, for the former prime minister to push himself into a role where the present prime minister is seeking to play his appointed role on some of the biggest international issues of the day – Ukraine and the climate change summit. And Boris Johnson has carefully used the two together to play to his domestic audience in Britain.

The Ukraine war had brought higher energy bills. But this, he said, would be a time for the British people to “get off our dependence on Russian hydrocarbons and build for ourselves a more secure future.” The way forward would be to “rely more on our own domestic production of renewable energy or indeed nuclear energy and have a totally different future”.

Johnson offered a reminder of the role he played as prime minister at the COP26 summit in Glasgow. “It’s become unfashionable to talk about it (but) it was a fantastic global success, we did a huge amount of good for the planet.” And so in Egypt he said he will “talk a little about how I see things and how we see things in the UK.”

That would be for a prime minister to do. As the Prime Minister no doubt will. As will another who sees himself as prime minister in waiting.

— London Eye is a weekly column by CNBC-TV18’s Sanjay Suri, which gives a peek at business-as-unusual from London and around.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow