A former senior staffer for Boris Johnson says the UK ex-PM "never quite owns" his mistakes.
It comes as Johnson testified this week at Britain's Covid-19 public inquiry. He has acknowledged that his government was too slow to grasp the extent of the Covid-19 crisis – but skirted questions about whether his indecisiveness had cost thousands of lives.
Overnight, he rejected suggestions that he wanted to let Covid "rip" through the population as he defended his handling of the pandemic.
Johnson's former communications director Will Walden told Breakfast this morning: "You have to understand what an apology in Boris Johnson's terms means.
"Essentially what he's saying is, 'We did our best, I take responsibility but the failings were collective, they weren't mine alone'."
Walden said it was "classic Boris".
"He never quite owns it," he added. "I've known him for many, many years. That is the Boris that I know.
"It is only so far, he doesn't want to bring himself to think that he's done wrong or he's failed, so he has to in his own mind characterise it as, 'We did our very best'.
"If there's been criticism – which there has been, and a lot of the evidence has pointed from former advisers to his behaviour and his competence – he's basically dismissed it in this inquiry."
But the damage to Johnson's public image was done well before the testimony began, Walden said, pointing to Johnson's ousting as prime minister after the "Partygate" ethics scandal broke.
"The anger is definitely there among people who've suffered," he said. "Who've lost loved ones, who abided by the rules where Number 10 [Downing St, the UK PM's official residence] didn't.
"When he left Parliament, there was a parliamentary inquiry and he took on that inquiry. Those MPs questioned him and he was really aggressive with them, he was typical Boris, lots of fiery rhetoric.
"All that's been gone from these two days of the hearing and he's cut a very quiet figure, in fact almost a diminished figure in some ways.
"He's behaved very, very differently – but in truth it's still the same Boris, not quite taking full responsibility."
Key points from Johnson's second day of testimony
Johnson overnight rejected suggestions that he wanted to let Covid-19 "rip" through the population as he defended his handling of the pandemic during a second day of testimony at the public inquiry into the crisis.
Johnson shook his head and responded "No, no, no" as he was confronted with a series of diary entries by his chief scientific adviser that indicated he had argued in favour of letting the virus spread rapidly to increase Covid immunity rather than imposing further restrictions on the people of Britain.
The former prime minister testified under oath that he was simply pushing scientists to explain why such a strategy wouldn't work as the government debated whether to impose a second national lockdown in the autumn of 2020 when infection rates were rising and vaccines weren't yet available.
Johnson said critics should look at his public statements and actions, rather than "people's jottings from meetings that I have been in" when assessing the government's response to the pandemic.
"I think, frankly, it does not do justice to what we did — our thoughts, our feelings, my thoughts, my feelings — to say that we were remotely reconciled to fatalities across the country, or that I believed that it was acceptable to let it rip," a frustrated Johnson said under questioning from the inquiry's chief legal counsel, Hugo Keith.
Johnson rejected the notion that he was untroubled by the "suffering that was being inflicted on the country" and became visibly emotional as he shared his experience of being hospitalised with Covid-19, where he was cared for by Kiwi "Nurse Jenny" McGee.
"When I went into intensive care, I saw around me a lot of people who were not actually elderly. In fact, they were middle-aged men and they were quite like me – and some of us were going to make it and some of us weren't," he said.
"What I'm trying to tell you in a nutshell – and the NHS, thank God, did an amazing job and helped me survive – but I knew from that experience what appalling a disease this is. I had absolutely no personal doubt about that, from March onwards."
Johnson defended his efforts to balance the health and economic impacts of Covid-19.
Johnson was celebrated for delivering a landslide victory for his Conservative Party in 2019 but was forced to resign as prime minister last year following a series of scandals, including revelations about boozy parties at his Downing Street offices while the country was locked down during the pandemic.
The public outrage over the parties has hung over the proceedings and the inquiry chair has warned observers at the session to remain silent.
– Additional reporting from Associated Press.
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