Boris Johnson endured more than three hours of scrutiny from the House of Commons Privileges Committee as it grilled him on allegations he misled parliament over the gatherings in Number 10 when the rest of the country was under Covid restrictions.
The revelations about the alcohol-filled events during Covid were the trigger for a precipitous decline in Mr Johnson’s popularity which contributed to his being ousted from Downing Street by his own MPs. The committee, which has a majority of Tory MPs but is chaired by Labour MP Harriet Harman, has the power to sanction the former PM if he is found to have misled the House.
There were several tense exchanges between Mr Johnson and committee members and many of them reveal a lot about him as a man, but also about the precarious situation he had put himself in and how likely he is to wriggle out.
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“These gatherings were essential for morale”
Perhaps understandably the public was furious when the images of events in Downing Street at the same time we were all locked down emerged. However, Mr Johnson is utterly unrepentant about the events. At one point he said that he needed to attend leaving drinks for staff to keep up morale. “I believed it was essential for work purposes''.
He was asked that if, at the height of Covid, someone had asked him in a press conference if they could “have a large social gathering in the garden” he replied, “ people who say we were partying during lockdown simply don’t know what they were talking about. My purpose was to thank staff and motivate them.”
Time and again the former PM showed how he simply didn’t get it when it came to understanding why the breaking of rules in Downing Street had made them so angry. We were all under strong restrictions, it was unthinkable anyone else would have “leaving drinks” for staff.
However, when he was asked about this he just dodged the question. He said: “If asked at a press conference if it was ok for organisations to hold unsocially distanced farewell gatherings in the workplace would you have said it was OK?”
But he replied: “No I would have said ‘do what the guidance said’
This idea that leaving drinks were essential while health professionals were working flat-out in hospitals was again repeated when he said: “To this day I struggle to see how I could have run Number 10 [and] hundreds of officials that needed to be thanks and appreciated for their work in very trying circumstance without having brief farewell events of a kind that, at least as far as my participation was concerned, did not fall foul of the rules.”
He can’t be serious, even when trying to come across seriously
Flanked by lawyers and advisers, it was clear that Mr Johnson didn't want to put his foot in it. He attempted to be serious at the start of the proceedings but kept slipping into his default settings.
When pointed out that there was clearly no social distancing at the events (that was required by the guidance) he said that because human beings don’t have an “invisible electrified fence around them” and will “drift into each other’s orbit”.
This eclectic fence line was used time and again though he was eventually called out on the clear inconsistencies in his account by Harriet Harman.
When asked what mitigations were put in place when social distancing wasn’t possible (required by the guidance at the time) he said it included: “Not picking up pens, avoid physical pens, and not passing stuff to each other.”
The chair then said: “Presumably people were passing drinks to each other because we have seen the picture” to which he replied: “Of course, of course, this is guidance. I am not going to pretend it was enforced rigidly.”
Apparently it is totally fine for your wife to attend work meetings
Despite the rules clearly stating that only people absolutely necessary for the meeting should be allowed at work events, many of the pictures showed Boris Johnson’s wife in attendance. This should surely disprove Mr Johnson's claim that the rules were followed at all times.
However apparently not. The following exchange is a clear demonstration that Mr Johnson felt the rules were different for him.
He was asked: “Your wife and interior designer were present [at a gathering]. You were issued with a fixed penalty notice for this event. You have confirmed that at least two people attended that were not work colleagues. Why did you think this was reasonably necessary for work purposes as was required by the rules at the time.”
To this, Mr Johnson said: “This was an event that took place on my birthday. I thought this was necessary [event] and seemed to me to be a perfectly proper thing to do. I was about to have another meeting.
“One of the peculiarities of Number 10 is that the PM and his family live in the same building. My understanding of the rules is that the Prime Minister's family are entitled to use every part of that building.”
He will use anyone convenient and then throw them under the bus
In his opening statement Mr Johnson made a great show of expressing concern for officials working in Downing Street at the time. He argued that if the committee was accusing him of knowingly contraving rules because it was obvious these events were not allowed then it risked saying the same about everyone in Downing Street.
He also defended his attendance at gatherings because he needed to thank people leaving for their service. "I will believe till the day I die, that it was my job to thank staff for what they had done," he said.
His concern for officials also didn’t extend to keep their names out of the public eye. He kept mentioning the names of people who he was supposed to keep anonymous. At one point he actually apologised for doing this but defended his actions because he had also said the people he named were “talented””
He continues to gaslight people on how he approached the Covid pandemic
"When I point out that this disease almost killed me, it's only to stress how seriously I took the measures to stop it spreading."
This was part of the opening statement to the committee from Mr Johnson. Reading that you would assume that he was a man who took the arrival of the virus seriously and was diligent in his action against it.
However in March 2020 (just before he caught Covid” he was in a press conference proudly declaring that he was in a hospital where he "shook hands with everybody including Covid patients”.
This is not to mention his failure to attend COBRA meetings in the run up to the first lockdown.
He doesn’t like being challenged while using bluster and convoluted answers to eat up time
Mr Johnson has a track record of attempting to use his quite blustering persona to avoid challenge. At one point he was eating so much of the time saying the same things over and over that one committee member said: “I am sorry, You are giving very long answers and it is taking longer than we need and you are repeating yourself quite a lot, can we just get on with the questions?”
Towards the end of the session he became viably irate with some of the challenges. Mr Johnson said it would have been “utterly insane” for him to have misled Parliament and it would be unfair and wrong for MPs to conclude he had.
The former prime minister said: “I think if this committee were to find me in contempt of Parliament – having come and done something so utterly insane and contrary to my beliefs and my principles as to come here, to come to Parliament and wittingly lie – I think that would be not only unfair, I think it would be wrong.”
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