UK ex-PM Boris Johnson hits back at ‘incoherent’ Covid inquiry report
Boris Johnson defends his Covid-19 pandemic response, saying he regrets errors but insists his government acted to save lives
Britain’s former prime minister Boris Johnson slammed an inquiry report critical of his government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic as “hopelessly incoherent” in a social media post on Saturday.
“More than three years after the end of the pandemic, they are still wrangling about what went wrong,” Johnson, 61, also wrote in an article for the Daily Mail tabloid, days after the inquiry slammed his government for its “chaotic” response to the global pandemic costing thousands of lives.
The inquiry led by retired senior judge Heather Hallett said Johnson’s government “lacked” urgency in the early days of the health emergency, and that the first national lockdown came “too late”.
The UK, which went into lockdown later than most other European countries, suffered one of the worst Covid-19 death tolls on the continent, recording more than 128,500 fatalities by mid-July 2021.
UK families who lost their loved ones during the pandemic on Friday called for all privileges given to Johnson as a former prime minister to be removed.