Boris Johnson has denied being properly warned about the potential seriousness of COVID in early 2020, dismissing abusive messages sent between his staff as the inevitable passion of people who were “doing their best.” During his testimony before the COVID inquiry in London, Johnson apologised for mistakes made but argued that these were not necessarily errors that could have been avoided. He portrayed himself as at the mercy of a government-wide mindset of understandable complacency, given that earlier viruses such as Sars and Mers had not led to this.
Johnson continued to argue this despite being shown evidence of greater alarm by some in government at the time, including a WhatsApp message from Dominic Cummings on 6, in which his chief adviser told a group including the prime minister that he had been briefed that the virus was “probably out of control now and will sweep the world.” He claimed that at the time, “not something that had really broken upon the political world,” and that no one had brought it up during the prime minister’s questions.
He added, “I think it would certainly be fair to say of me, the entire Whitehall establishment, the scientific community included, our advisers included, that we underestimated the scale and the pace of the challenge.”
He added, “We should collectively have twigged much sooner. I should have twigged.”
However, by March 23, when the lockdown was imposed, Johnson said there was no other option. “We’d run out of wiggle room,” he said. “I no longer had the luxury of waiting. It was over.”
However, by March 23, when the lockdown was imposed, Johnson said there was no other option. He declined to say that his apology meant avoidable errors had occurred. Additionally, the investigation inquiry learned that Johnson’s old phone had undergone a factory reset, which may have prevented the retrieval of about 5,000 WhatsApp messages from the crucial period from January to June 2020.
Johnson pushed back at the idea that such conflict could be “a good and healthy thing” and would have happened in other governments, such as those of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.
