Scandal-prone Boris Johnson gives evidence at COVID inquiry

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Disgraced former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to appear before the ongoing COVID inquiry on Wednesday and Thursday.

The controversial leader, who resigned his post last June, will be grilled over his personal handling of the pandemic – as well as his government’s response.

The inquiry has so far heard and seen clear evidence of disarray inside Johnson’s cabinet, especially during the early weeks of the outbreak.

There has been public outcry, too, over lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street which Johnson long denied even happened.

Earlier this year, a Parliament committee found he had repeatedly and deliberately lied about breaking COVID lockdown rules.

In a damning 30,000-word paper, the body said his denials were “so disingenuous that they were deliberate attempts to mislead the Committee”, also referring to the “frequency with which he closed his mind to the truth.”

As a result, he stepped down with immediate effect as an MP and Johnson, his wife Carrie and the current Prime Minister – then Chancellor – Rishi Sunak were among more than 100 staff fined by police for breaking lockdown rules.

At the COVID inquiry, Johnson is likely to be asked to explain why he initially tried to play down the threat posed by the deadly virus. He will face questions over whether he failed to chair Cobra meetings coordinating the government’s response early on in the pandemic.

The inquiry has already heard several pieces of damning evidence against the former PM.

One example came from chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance. In a diary entry written on 19 September 2020, he wrote: ”[Johnson] is all over the place and so completely inconsistent. You can see why it was so difficult to get agreement to lock down the first time.”

Speaking in front of the Inquiry panel in November, Vallance also claimed Johnson had been “bamboozled” by the scientific evidence about the pandemic.

Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former chief adviser, had similar criticisms.

In written evidence presented to the inquiry, he claimed that, at the start of 2020, Johnson was distracted by “financial problems”, his divorce and pressure from his then-girlfriend Carrie who wanted to “finalise the announcement of their engagement”.

Early that year, Lee Cain, Johnson’s former director of communications sent a message to Cummings asserting the PM “doesn’t think [Covid] is a big deal and he doesn’t think anything can be done and his focus is elsewhere”.

“He thinks it’ll be like swine flu and he thinks his main danger is taking the economy into a slump,” Cain added.

Rishi Sunak is also expected to give evidence later in December.

The inquiry will not find any individual guilty of a crime. It aims to learn lessons from how the crisis was handled and how the UK could put in place preparation for a similar event in the future.