As he started to testify at a public inquiry into his government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Boris Johnson today said sorry for “the pain and the loss and the suffering” that the pandemic had caused. The former prime minister, who had been criticised by former aides for alleged lack of decisiveness and scientific knowledge during the pandemic, will spend two days in the witness stand. Johnson, who lost his office last year over parties in Downing Street that broke lockdown rules during the pandemic, admitted that there had “unquestionably” been “mistakes”.

Johnson said he felt the pain and the loss and the suffering of the victims and their families and that he was deeply sorry for them. A protester who refused to sit down during the apology briefly disrupted Johnson, 59, as he was ordered out of the inquiry room. Johnson went on to say that they inevitably made some mistakes, but they did their very best and that he personally took responsibility for the decisions made.

The former prime minister showed up three hours before the proceedings started, which some said was because he wanted to dodge the Covid victims’ relatives who came outside later that morning. By mid-July 2021, Covid had killed nearly 130,000 people in the UK, which was one of the worst death rates per person among Western countries. The Times newspaper reported that Johnson will claim that his decisions eventually saved hundreds of thousands of lives, based on a long written statement that will be released later today.