Former British PM Boris Johnson hits back at 'incoherent' Covid-19 inquiry report

LONDON - Britain’s former prime minister Boris Johnson slammed an inquiry report critical of his government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic as “hopelessly incoherent” in a social media post on Nov 22.

“More than three years after the end of the pandemic, they are still wrangling about what went wrong,” Mr Johnson, 61, also wrote in an article for the Daily Mail tabloid, days after the inquiry slammed his government for its “chaotic” response to the global pandemic costing thousands of lives.

The inquiry

, led by retired senior judge Heather Hallett, said Mr Johnson’s government “lacked” urgency in the early days of the health emergency, and that the first national lockdown came “too late”.

The UK, which went into lockdown later than most other European countries, suffered one of the worst Covid-19 death tolls in Europe, recording more than 128,500 fatalities by mid-July 2021.

UK families who lost their loved ones during the pandemic on Nov 21 called for all privileges given to Mr Johnson as a former prime minister to be removed.

Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK accused Mr Johnson of “one of the gravest betrayals of the British public in modern history”.

“I repeat that I remain full of regret for the things the government I led got wrong and full of sympathy for all those who suffered – whether from the disease or from the steps we took to protect the population,” Mr Johnson wrote in the article published late on Nov 21.

“All I can say is that everyone involved was doing our level best, under pretty difficult circumstances, to get it right and to save lives,” added Johnson, who commissioned the independent inquiry in 2021 when he was still leader.

However, he criticised the second report published by the inquiry on Nov 20 as “muddled” and “incoherent”, including for its position on lockdowns as being both devastating and necessary.

He also said it “failed” to answer two questions about the pandemic: “Where did the virus come from – and were the lockdowns worth the terrible price we paid?“

He added that imposing restrictions before the government did at the end of March 2020, “would have been to contradict the scientific advice we were getting.”

“Namely that you had to make sure that you did not go too early because of the risk of exhausting public patience with the restrictions,” the former leader wrote. AFP