The disgraced former PM refused to say whether he wished he hadn’t apologised to the Queen over celebrations held on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral
Boris Johnson tonight said he regrets saying sorry over the lockdown parties in Downing Street.
But the disgraced former PM refused to say whether he regretted apologising to the Queen about illegal gatherings the night before Prince Philip’s funeral.
One of a number of scandals that contributed to his downfall was Partygate, which was made public by the Mirror. According to his memoir Unleashed, it was a mistake that “made us look far more culpable than we were” by issuing “pathetic” and “grovelling” apologies.
Johnson was also asked in an interview with ITV whether he regretted his apology to the Queen. After it was discovered that two parties took place at No. 10 on April 16, 2021, he was forced to issue a humiliating apology.
The following day, heartbreaking photos showed the Queen attending Philip’s funeral apart from her family due to strict lockdown regulations.
Johnson stated to Tom Bradby of ITV tonight: My conversations with the Queen are kept private.
After that, he confused the audience by mumbling, What I was attempting to convey was that, I believe, the issue with the general apology I issued at the outset was that, afterward, all of the accusations leveled against officials who had worked extremely hard in No. 10 and elsewhere were assumed to be true.
“And by apologizing, I had inadvertently validated the entire corpus, which was unfair to those people,” the apology stated.
He responded, “I understand the scale of public anger,” when repeatedly asked why he regretted apologizing for the scandal. You can’t say that I haven’t been exposed to the full force of people’s anger over the past few years. Of course, I understand it.
Additionally, he mocked David Cameron and Theresa May and attributed the chaos that followed Brexit to them.
Johnson claims that he could have brought British national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe home from Iran five years earlier in the most recent excerpt from Unleashed. She was held on false accusations of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government.
Johnson says that Gavin Williamson, the Defense Secretary at the time, stopped a deal worth £400 million with the Islamic Republic because he thought Hezbollah could use the money. Johnson asserts that while serving as Foreign Secretary in 2017, he reached a deal that made it possible for Nazanin to be released in exchange for money that Britain owed to Tehran since the 1970s.
The Treasury and Foreign Office gave their approval, but No. 10 insisted that all relevant departments, including the Ministry of Defense, needed to sign off on the decision. Johnson claims that Sir Gavin refused, saying that some of the money could end up with Hezbollah and be used to buy weapons and “kill our boys.”
He claims that during a trip to Iran, he suggested to the former president Rouhani that the issue of Britain’s £400 million debt “might be resolved.” “Maybe the consular cases could be resolved,” the president said. Sir Gavin refused to support him when he returned.
In March of 2022, Nazanin was released. For clarification, we have contacted Sir Gavin.