Boris Johnson’s old tricks cannot hide his complicity

By Lobby Akinnola

I’ve heard it said that an author cannot help but betray something of themselves whenever they put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard in this day and age. Consciously or otherwise, writers lay bare their emotions, their life experiences, and their beliefs in every word they use to shape a narrative. And every time we pick up a book or an article, we have an opportunity to learn more about the person behind the keyboard. For example, when reading former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s article in response to the Covid Inquiry’s Module 2 report, I see an aging magician clawing at relevance by throwing out old illusions his audience saw through long ago.

Johnson begins his article in shock that Covid is still in the news when, he claims, Covid ended three years ago! He even goes as far as to call people involved or interested in the inquiry insane for not having moved on. I can guess, then, Johnson’s opinions of the Grenfell families, whose inquiry took 7 years and officially concluded in February this year. What of the Hillsborough Families who had to wait almost 25 years for a just inquest into the disaster? How about the millions of people who watched “Mr Bates vs the Post Office”? If even a passing interest in the pursuit of justice is for the insane, as Johnson seems to proclaim, what are we to conclude about his views on right and wrong?  Yes, Prime Minister, 3 years on we are still talking about the mess you made during your leadership. You may have had the privilege of holidays to the Caribbean and swanning off to write a book, but our loved ones are still dead, people are still suffering from long covid, and the nation is still paying the bill for the £14.9bn your cabinet unlawfully passed on to your friends for useless PPE. A sum, incidentally, 74 times larger than the £200million he seems dismayed is being spent on learning from his mistakes. What was the upshot of the billions of pounds of our money his cabinet spent? A new yacht for a baroness?

Throughout the article, Johnson wheels out his tired tricks of misdirection, wilful misinterpretation, and faux humility as he attempts to rewrite history as if we weren’t all there. Yes, the UK had the fastest vaccine rollout and we can be proud of our scientists, doctors, nurses, and everyone who facilitated this life-saving success. But the success of the vaccines came months after his decision to allow the Liverpool v. Athletico Madrid match and the Cheltenham Festival to take place in March 2020, after the country had been through not one but two lockdowns, and after over 70,000 people had already died. The quick vaccine rollout was a saving grace that mitigated the disaster his actions, or lack thereof, had caused. I recall Johnson himself proclaiming the proverb “a stitch in time saves nine” when he was forced to once again bring in restrictions in the Autumn of 2020. Had he heeded this common sense sooner and these events been prohibited, how much more effective at saving lives would the vaccine rollout have been? Perhaps this, Mr Johnson, is one of the tougher measures enacted earlier Lady Hallet was referring to, rather than suggesting people wash their hands?

Speaking of lockdowns, despite Lady Hallet explicitly saying that he and his government didn’t sufficiently consider the impact of lockdowns and criticising them for not acting quick enough to potentially avoid such measures, Johnson concludes that she is, in fact, pro lockdown. I suppose a doctor would be “pro amputation” when she advised a diabetic patient to monitor their sugar intake. The “breathtaking inconsistency”, as he so dramatically puts it, is in him and in the logic of his government. He cites advising the public to avoid pubs and bars yet his government spent £840 million (or four Covid Inquiries) encouraging this very activity through the Eat Out to Help Out scheme. Even in the article, Johnson seems incapable of holding the logic of his argument. In one paragraph, he praises his government for doing “exactly what Lady Hallett says we should have done”, in the next he claims she “believes we should have deployed measures not seen in this country for more than a century”. So which is it Prime Minister, did you already do what Lady Hallett calls for or were the measures too draconician?

There are many more attempts at sleight of hand littered in his article, all aiming to redirect attention from the scathing indictment the report makes of his leadership. It’s the same parlour tricks we’ve come to expect from The Amazing Boris: allusions to conspiracy theories, apples and oranges comparisons (neither SASR, Swine Flu, or Ebola were as transmissible as Covid), appeals to wartime and stoking fear for Russia, and of course an attack on Labour. It’s all

an effort to make us take our eyes off the ball and hide it in another cup. Johnson seeks to distract from the true purpose of the inquiry - to report how the Government of the time let us all down. And I do mean all of us. I lost my father but others lost livelihoods, lost their physical and mental health, lost time. Had we not seen them before, perhaps these tricks of distraction and figure pointing would succeed in dividing the public, but we are all victims of his arrogance and incompetence. We were all betrayed by Partygate, which the report highlights undermined public trust. We all bear the scars of living through the height of Covid with Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. 

Mr Johnson would have us believe that he only wrote this article because of his concern for the future and for once I actually agree with him! Just as a broken clock is right twice a day, I do believe his article is concerned with protecting a future - his. As has always been the case, Boris Johnson - a man whose record is so plagued with scandal,Wikipedia has a category dedicated to his controversies- is once again putting his own earning potential before the wellbeing of the British People. The recommendations of the inquiry are indeed important for the future, and it is vital that the sitting Government enact these recommendations, and others like Hillsborough Law and a National Oversight Mechanism,  so we are not dependent on future leaders having the right “skillset” for any future crisis. It is that future that I and the campaign remain focused on. Despite all his bluster and flourish, we are not distracted and we are not amused. Perhaps, though, for his next trick, Johnson could learn to disappear. Now that would be astounding.