Sajid Javid follows the Johnsonian model of apologies: for the words not the sentiment
Sajid Javid has apologised for his choice of words in a tweet he made on Saturday which suggested people should not cower from Covid. He has subsequently pointed out that people should get vaccinated. I entirely agree. But there was another meaning to his tweet which is that people need no longer take care out there. In my view they definitely should.
The Javid apology follows the Johnsonian model in the sense that he has apologised for his words but not the sentiment behind them.
As Sonia Purnell noted 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.
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.
As recently as 15th July 20201 in a speech about ‘levelling up’ Johnson rolled out the non-apology again. 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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