Paterson affair: Boris Johnson tries variant on his sorry/not sorry routine & says he’s taking it ‘very seriously’
With the Owen Paterson corruption scandal being debated in the Commons, Johnson has of course swerved the House bit told the BBC he is taking matters ‘very seriously’. This appears to be a variant on his usual routine of apologising not for his error and gaffe strewn past but apologising if it has caused offence. Then he goes on saying the same things.
He has not apologised, yet, over Paterson but does anyone think Johnson takes anything seriously aside from how much money he has?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59199634
The history of Johnson failing to do anything about issues he is called out for is worth remembering as he certainly won’t.
Sonia Purnell notes in her biography of the PM Just Boris that 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 was compounded by his disdainful approach to the England football team doing so in the European Championships, until they nearly won it that is.
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.
More recently on 15th July 2021 Johnson made a speech about ‘levelling up’. Afterwards he was asked by the Independent if he would disown earlier comments about Muslim women and 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.
Johnson is not a serious political figure but he does a lot of things that make for serious politics and never says sorry for the issues he creates.
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