PM JOHNSON yesterday apologised for attending an illegal drinks party in the Downing Street garden while millions of people were under lockdown, and making huge sacrifices in the struggle against the Covid virus, with over 150,000 UK deaths now currently recorded.
He told the House of Commons: ‘Mr Speaker, I want to apologise. I know that millions of people across this country have made extraordinary sacrifices over the last 18 months.
‘I know the anguish that they have been through – unable to mourn their relatives, unable to live their lives as they want or do the things they love.
‘And I know the rage they feel with me and with the government I lead, when they think that in Downing Street itself the rules are not being properly followed by the people who make the rules.’
He continued to try and claim that he was just stupid.
‘But, Mr Speaker, with hindsight I should have sent everyone back inside, I should have found some other way to thank them and I should have recognised that even if it could be said technically to fall within the guidance, there would be millions and millions of people who simply would not see it that way. People who suffered terribly – people who were forbidden from meeting loved ones at all, inside or outside. And to them and to this House I offer my heartfelt apologies.
‘And all I ask is that Sue Gray be allowed to complete her inquiry into that day and several others so that the full facts can be established.’
Labour MP Chris Bryant asked the PM how stupid he thinks the British public are to believe that he did not spot that he was at a social event.
Bryant said: ‘Would it not be absolutely despicable if, in the search for a scapegoat, some junior member of staff ends up losing their job but he kept his?’
The PM replied that he does not agree.
‘I’ve come to this House to make amends, to explain what happened on 20 May and to apologise,’ he said.
He urged Bryant to wait for the result of the inquiry.
‘After months of deceit and deception the pathetic spectacle of a man who has run out of road,’ Labour Party leader Keir Starmer told Parliament at PMQs yesterday, calling for Johnson to quit.
He added: ‘His defence that he didn’t realise he was at a party, is so ridiculous that it is actually offensive to the British public.
‘He has finally been forced to admit what everyone knew, that when the whole country was locked down he was hosting boozy parties in Downing Street. Is he now going to do the decent thing and resign?’
Johnson replied: ‘But as for his political point I do not think that he should pre-empt the outcome of the inquiry.’
Starmer said: ‘Well that apology was pretty worthless wasn’t it? When the Prime Minister’s former health secretary broke the rules he resigned. And the Prime Minister said that he was right to do so.
‘When the Prime Minister’s spokesperson laughed while she talked about the rules being broken, she resigned.
‘Why does the Prime Minister still think that the rules do not apply to him? It started with reports of boozy parties in Downing Street during lockdown. The Prime Minister pretended that he had been assured that there had been no parties.
‘Then the video emerged, blowing the Prime Minister’s first defence out of the water. Then he pretended that he was sickened, furious about parties.
‘Now it turns out that he was at the parties all along.
‘Can’t the Prime Minister see why the British public think that he has lied through his teeth.’
The crisis of British capitalism could not be greater.
They are now trying to buy time with a fake inquiry, while they assemble the political leaders from the Labour and Liberal parties to form a National Government prepared to impose the full weight of the developing crisis of capitalism onto the working class.
The trade unions must now take action. They must not be taken in by the play-acting of Johnson and others.
The ruling class must not be given the time that it needs to reorganise and form a national government.
The TUC must meet and must call a general strike to bring down the rotten Johnson government and to bring in a workers government that will nationalise the banks and the major industries without a penny of compensation, to bring in a socialist planned economy. This is the way forward.
Don’t be taken in by Johnson playing the clown while the ruling class desperately reorganises.
The TUC must call the general strike now, to go forward to a workers government and socialism!
