Boris Johnson has said he regrets saying sorry over the Partygate scandal. The disgraced former Prime Minister touched on the bashes in his memoir.
He said he “made us look far more culpable than we were” after pathetic” and “grovelling” apologies was a mistake. And in an ITV interview tonight, he was pressed over whether he regrets saying sorry to the Queen.
He refused to say whether he regretted apologising to the Queen about illegal gatherings at Downing Street the night before Prince Philip’s funeral. Partygate, which was exposed by the Mirror, was one of a string of scandals that helped bring him down.
The Mirror reports he was forced to issue a grovelling apology after it emerged two parties took place at No 10 on April 16, 2021, and the following day, heartbreaking images showed the Queen sitting alone.
She mourned without loved ones next to her at Philip’s funeral, because of the strict lockdown rules which were in place at the time to stop the spread of Covid-19.
Tonight, Johnson told ITV’s Tom Bradby: “I don’t discuss my conversations with the Queen.” Then he baffled viewers by waffling: “What I was trying to say there was, I think that the blanket apology – the sort of apology I issued right at the beginning.
“I think the trouble with it was that afterwards, all the accusations that then rained down on officials who had been working very hard in No 10 and elsewhere were thought to be true.
“And by apologising I had sort of inadvertently validated the entire corpus and it wasn’t fair on those people.” He was repeatedly pressed on why he regrets apologising for the scandal and whether he understands the scale of public anger.
He said: “Of course I understand it and you can’t say that I haven’t been exposed over the last few years to the full force of people’s anger.”
He also had a dig at David Cameron and Theresa May, blaming them for post-Brexit chaos. In the latest extract from his memoir, Unleashed, Johnson claims he could have brought Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe home from Iran five years earlier.
The British national was detained on trumped up charges of plotting to topple the Iranian government. Johnson blames then-Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson for blocking a £400m deal with the Islamic Republic.
He claimed Williamson believed the basis the money could be used by Hezbollah. Johnson claims that as Foreign Secretary in 2017 he reached an agreement paving the way for Nazanin’s release in return for money owed by Britain to Tehran since the 1970s.
The Treasury and Foreign Office approved but No 10 insisted the decision needed signing off by all relevant departments, including the MoD.
Sir Gavin refused, suggesting some of the money could end up with Hezbollah and be used to buy weapons and “kill our boys”, Johnson alleges.
He says that on a visit to Iran he had suggested to ex-president Rouhani the issue of the £400m Britain owed “might be resolved”. The president indicated “perhaps the consular cases could be resolved”.
When he returned, Sir Gavin refused to give his backing. Nazanin was freed in March 2022. Sir Gavin has been contacted for comment.
Don’t miss the latest news from around Scotland and beyond. Sign up to our daily newsletter.