Former prime minister Boris Johnson says his apology over the Partygate scandal legitamised other accusations of Covid rule-breaking against other officials.
When pressed by Tom Bradby, he refused to answer whether he regretted apologising to Queen Elizabeth over breaching lockdown restrictions.
The full interview will be aired on ITV1's 'Boris Johnson: The Interview', at 7pm on Friday 4th October. Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
When pressed by Tom Bradby, he refused to answer whether he regretted apologising to Queen Elizabeth over breaching lockdown restrictions.
The full interview will be aired on ITV1's 'Boris Johnson: The Interview', at 7pm on Friday 4th October. Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00We need to obviously talk about Partygate.
00:03I got to those sections of the book,
00:05and it seemed to me, well, in terms,
00:07you basically say it wasn't a big deal.
00:10I regret apologizing.
00:12Is that really your position?
00:13You regret apologizing?
00:14No, no, no.
00:15That is what you say in the book.
00:17Let me explain what I said,
00:19because if you look at Unleashed,
00:21as I say, there's plenty of-
00:23I've read it.
00:24I'm paraphrasing, but that's what it says,
00:26that it was basically a load of nonsense
00:28and you regret apologizing.
00:29Do you regret apologizing to the Queen?
00:31Let me give you my own-
00:32Answer that.
00:33Do you regret apologizing to the Queen?
00:34Let me give you my own view of that.
00:36Well, if you answer my question,
00:38I'll, let's then perhaps go on to have your view.
00:41Do you regret apologizing to the Queen?
00:43Look, I don't discuss my conversations with the Queen.
00:45That wasn't my question.
00:46My question was, do you regret apologizing to the Queen?
00:48Let me explain what I meant by that observation.
00:53What I was trying to say there
00:55was I think that the blanket apology,
00:57the sort of apology I issued right at the beginning,
01:00I think the trouble with it was that afterwards,
01:04all the accusations that then rained down
01:07on officials who'd been working very hard
01:10in Number 10 and elsewhere were thought to be true.
01:14And by apologizing,
01:16I had sort of inadvertently validated the entire corpus.
01:20I get that.
01:20And it wasn't fair on those people.