LONDON: Boris Johnson apologised on Wednesday for “the pain and the loss and the suffering” caused by the Covid-19 pandemic but defended his government at a public inquiry into its handling of the crisis.

The former British prime minister, who has faced a barrage of criticism from former aides for alleged indecisiveness and a lack of scientific understanding during the pandemic, began two gruelling days in the witness box.

Johnson — forced from office last year over lockdown-breaching parties held in Downing Street during the pandemic — accepted “mistakes” had “unquestionably” been made but repeatedly insisted he and officials did their “level best”.

“I understand the feeling of the victims and their families and I’m deeply sorry for the pain and the loss and the suffering to those victims and their families,” Johnson said.

“Inevitably we got some things wrong,” he added, noting he took personal responsibility for all the decisions made. “At the time I felt… we were doing our best in very difficult circumstances.”

The former premier arrived around three hours early for the proceedings, with some suggesting he was eager to avoid relatives of the Covid bereaved, who gathered outside later in the morning. As he started giving evidence, four women were evicted from the inquiry room after holding up signs stating “the dead can’t hear your apologies”.

Nearly 130,000 people died with Covid in the UK by mid-July 2021, one of the worst official per capita tolls among Western nations. Critics have blamed Johnson’s government for a slow, erratic and dysfunctional response.

Johnson insisted the “overwhelming priority” of his government had been protecting the state-run National Health Service (NHS) and saving lives.

Rejecting statistics that Britain fared worse than European neighbours, he argued “every country struggled with a new pandemic” while noting the UK had an “extremely elderly population” and is one of the continent’s most densely populated countries.

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His grilling began with questions about a failure to provide about 5,000 WhatsApp messages on his phone from late January 2020 to June 2020.

“I don’t know the exact reason,” he claimed, adding the app had “somehow” automatically erased its chat history from that period. Asked if he had initiated a so-called factory reset Johnson said: “I don’t remember any such thing”.

Inquiry counsel Hugo Keith questioned Johnson about Downing Street chaos during the pandemic, and claims of general incompetence. Johnson’s former top aide Dominic Cummings and communications chief Lee Cain both criticised their ex-boss when they gave evidence at the inquiry.

“What all those comments reflect is the deep anxiety of a group of people doing their level best who cannot see an easy solution and are naturally self-critical and critical of others,” Johnson insisted.

Keith also quizzed Johnson about everything from shaking hospital patients’ hands in early March 2020 to delaying the country’s first lockdown for weeks. “I shouldn’t have done that, in retrospect, and I should have been more precautionary,” the ex-leader conceded of the hand-shakes, adding he should also have stopped sports events sooner.

He added the eventual March 23, 2020, lockdown stemmed from “the sudden appreciation” that the virus was more rampant in Britain than previously thought.

Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2023