UK (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Former PM Boris Johnson faces backlash from bereaved families for rejecting the Covid Inquiry’s findings and refusing to apologise for 23,000 pandemic deaths.
As reported by The Independent, families of Covid victims slammed Boris Johnson as “beyond contempt” after he mocked those still debating pandemic deaths.
The ex-prime minister refused to apologise for 23,000 Covid deaths tied to his delayed actions, criticising the pandemic inquiry instead.
How did Boris Johnson attack the Covid inquiry while families seek justice?
According to a report chaired by Appeal Court judge Baroness Heather Hallett, Boris Johnson and senior Tory ministers were condemned in the Covid Inquiry for fostering a “toxic and chaotic” culture during the pandemic.
The inquiry revealed that delays in imposing lockdowns caused 23,000 extra deaths, with families considering legal action against the former PM.
After initially staying silent, the former prime minister attacked Baroness Hallett and the inquiry in a Daily Mail column footnote.
He wrote,
“Have these people lost their minds?”
and accused the former judge of “breath taking inconsistency” and being “hopelessly incoherent.”
Mr Johnson added,
“More than three years after the end of the pandemic, they are still wrangling about what went wrong.”
His comment sparked outrage among groups seeking accountability for unnecessary Covid deaths.
A spokesman for the Covid Bereaved Families group stated,
“It is beyond contempt that Boris Johnson has chosen to respond to the Covid Inquiry by attacking the Covid Bereaved for “wrangling on” about the deaths of our loved one.”
He said,
“Instead of showing regret, contrition or even apologising, Johnson is using a newspaper column to do what he couldn’t do under oath at the Covid Inquiry – twist the truth, promote debunked myths and ignore the facts.”
The group added,
“But the truth, which Mr Johnson has never had a close relationship with, is now clear. He was responsible for thousands of avoidable deaths. The one promise he delivered on was to ‘let the bodies pile high’. He has no place in public life and we are calling again for Boris Johnson to lose all of his ex-PM privileges following the inquiry report.”
How did Boris Johnson criticise the Covid inquiry and Baroness Hallett’s report?
Boris Johnson said,
“Some judge has just spent the thick end of £200 million on an inquiry, and what is the upshot?”
He stated,
“She seems, if anything, to want more lockdowns. She seems to have laid into the previous Tory government for not locking down hard enough or fast enough – just when the rest of the world has been thinking that lockdowns were probably wildly overdone.”
The former prime minister added,
“Bozhe moi, you say, wiping away tears of laughter. My goodness, these Britskis!”
Mr Johnson admitted his main regret was enacting the country’s lockdown.
He said,
“An idea occurs to you, fleetingly, that in future you could easily plunge the whole of the UK into state-enforced paralysis just by convincing them that they had to take precautions against a new Russian-originated virus.”
The ex-PM added,
“That is the logic of the report by Baroness Hallett, and I am afraid it’s not just in Moscow that people are tapping their heads, but around the world. To the best of my knowledge all other countries have long since concluded their official investigations into Covid.”
Mr Johnson said,
“There are and remain only two big questions that need a proper answer if we are to prevent a disaster like Covid from happening again, and they are: how did it really emerge?”
He stated,
“And to what extent did the non-pharmaceutical interventions – the lockdowns, social distancing etc – make enough of a difference to the epicurve to justify the huge social, economic, educational and psychological damage that these measures inflicted?”
The former prime minister said,
“On the first question, the origins, of Covid, the report is silent. On the second great question – which is of real strategic importance for this country – Lady Hallett is hopelessly incoherent.”
He labelled the 23,000 extra deaths as “speculative and unsubstantiated,” calling the estimate “hysterical” and largely discredited at the time.
Mr Johnson argued the charge of causing extra deaths was “completely in error,” noting that lockdown measures began on 12 March, before the full 23 March restrictions.
The ex-PM suggested,
“I think it’s pretty obvious. Lady Hallett has been unable or unwilling to address the really important questions. So, faced with the agony of the Covid victims and their families – and their entirely understandable desire for catharsis of some kind – she has decided that the neatest thing is to administer a judicious kicking to the Tory administration, who no one much has an interest in defending except me, and to move on.”
What did Michael Gove say about government mistakes during Covid?
The former cabinet minister Michael Gove apologised for pandemic errors but defended Boris Johnson over Downing Street chaos claims.
He added,
“Can I just take an opportunity to apologise to all those who lost loved ones during the pandemic and many others who made huge sacrifices, who will feel, I’m sure, a sense of, not just grief, but understandable anger as they read some of the conclusions in this report.”
How many people died in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Over 230,000 people died from COVID-19 in the UK since the start of the pandemic, a death toll comparable to the United States and Italy but higher than several other Western European nations.
A national inquiry found that a week’s delay in implementing lockdowns in England contributed to nearly 23,000 additional deaths during the pandemic.