Remorse? No, simply a liar desperately trying to save his own skin
THE lip quivered. His eyes looked slightly watery. His voice cracked.
Boris Johnson certainly looked contrite as he offered his apology yesterday.
But this was not a man motivated by genuine remorse.
It was the act of someone who would do anything to save their own skin.
If it required grovelling before MPs with the penitence of a sinner forced to wear sackcloth and ashes, he would suffer that ignominy.
The Prime Minister had no choice to do otherwise.
Not for the first time, his lies had caught up with him. And not for the first time, he played the last remaining card available to him – a lame and hurried apology.
Anyone familiar with Johnson’s past would have recognised this behaviour.
His whole career has been based on breaking the rules, arrogantly expecting to get away with it and, if he is caught, then rattling out a few convenient words of contrition.
This is how he went from being sacked from The Times for inventing a quotation to getting another job at the Daily Telegraph.
We saw it too when The Spectator magazine he edited ran an article claiming drunken fans were partly responsible for the Hillsborough tragedy.
Johnson later said he “bitterly regretted” the comments.
Then there was his “regret” after he was sacked by Michael Howard from the Tory frontbench after lying about his extramarital affair with Petronella Wyatt. No doubt, he made similar and multiple apologies to his former wife Marina Wheeler before she finally grew so tired of his affairs that she ended their 25-year marriage.
Those of a forgiving nature may continue to indulge this repeat offending.
But every time Johnson is forced to make yet another grovelling apology, it devalues its already tainted currency.
If Tory MPs looked glum yesterday and the public looked on with incredulity, it is because they know that saying sorry only works if you sincerely believe it.
The responsibility of high office has not led
Johnson to mend his ways. If anything, the trappings of power have emboldened his cavalier behaviour and disdain for the rules he expects others to abide by.
Just last week, he was forced to make a “humble and sincere” apology for withholding information from the investigation by his ethics adviser into who paid for the refurbishment of his No11 flat.
The Government is not building 40 new hospitals as he has claimed, poverty has not fallen on his watch, the handling of Covid was not a “massive success” and, yes, there was a party in Downing Street. Several, in fact. Johnson was humbled yesterday at Prime Minister’s Questions because he, as Keir Starmer noted, had run out of road.
It was implausible to deny the party had taken place on May 20 but it was impossible for the PM to tell the whole truth without incriminating himself. Watching him was like witnessing the crashing of the Hindenburg Zeppelin – another overinflated monument to hubris that combusted before our eyes.
It was a pitiful sight but you were left with the feeling he was only genuinely remorseful at being rumbled.
The demeanour was sorrowful but his words were calculated.
He apologised for the mistakes that were made but he never once apologised for any error he may have committed.
There was the usual “I take full responsibility” – a line he used when we passed 100,000 Covid deaths – but there was no explanation of what that might involve.
To most people, the idea of taking responsibility requires some form of remedial action. In Johnson’s case, it is a useful formulation of words to buy him some grace. His fate rests on the inquiry by civil servant Sue Gray.
It is her task to determine whether the Prime Minister was correct in believing the party on May 20 was a “work event” that “technically fell within guidance”.
He is gambling that her adjudication will be sufficiently ambiguous for him to once again wriggle out of yet another catastrophe of his own making.
The court of public opinion has already reached its verdict. They will have noted he had previously said there was no party and no rules were broken.
Today, he admitted that there was a party and he was at it. To claim it was technically within the rules is an insult to people’s intelligence.
That’s how sorry he really is.