Boris Johnson & racism, ‘wishes to apologise for any offence’
As Sonia Purnell notes in her biography of the current PM Just Boris he has become an almost habitual apologiser for ‘any offence’ that his earlier words, often racist, have caused.
His complete refusal to recognise taking the knee against racism as something legitimate that people concerned about injustice might do has been compounded by his disdainful approach to the England football team doing so in the European Championships.
It is a reminder that Johnson has a long standing history of racist comments and of dismissing reports that highlight the role racism had and has in British society, to go along with his history of apologising for these when called to account.
One example is the 1999 Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence that found institutionalise racism in the Met Police. Johnson dismissed the findings as ‘Orwellian’ ‘weird’ and ‘crazy’.
Purnell points out that following discussions with his then wife, prominent lawyer Marina Wheeler, by 2001 he was prepared to concede that Macpherson may have had a point. Not of course that when he later became Mayor of London he did anything about this.
Update: Oops he did it again
Johnson made a speech about ‘levelling up’ on 15th July. Afterwards he was asked by the Independent if he would disown earlier comments about Muslim women he said:
The best thing I can say is that I’ve obviously apologised in the past for the things that Ive said that have caused offence and continue to apologise for them.
So carry on apologising and carry on making the remarks too
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