Boris Johnson's evidence to the parliamentary Privileges Committee may have left onlookers baffled, but it has enraged many who lost loved ones during the Covid pandemic.
Here, two women recall the agony of being unable to comfort their dying relative because of Johnson's lockdown rules... and tell of their anger at his attempts to wriggle off the hook over Partygate.
Tiffany Jones’ world fell apart when her dad Colin died from Covid at 11.25pm on December 18 2020.
At that very moment, while the rest of the country was obeying lockdown restrictions, a Christmas party was in full swing at No 10 Downing Street, with cheese, wine and secret Santa presents.
Yesterday, an angry, sickened and exasperated Tiffany watched Boris Johnson’s appearance before the Common’s Privileges Committee, as he yet again trotted out feeble excuses for the rule-breaking, and yet again refused to take responsibility for the hurt he has caused so many in this country.
Appalled at the former PM’s “faffing and blustering”, Tiffany, 42, said: “He genuinely thought he could just bluster through it and it would all be fine. All he could say was, I did nothing wrong, you’re all mistaken, and if I did do anything wrong it wasn’t my fault.
“I feel exasperated because he’s once again denied us the apology we deserve. He lied, my father died, and all he has to say is that if he did something wrong it wasn’t his fault.
“He partied while families lost members they couldn’t be with, who should not have died. He broke the rules he placed upon the rest of us, our loved ones died and he did what he liked, regardless of the consequences.
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“And even now he’s foisting the blame on everyone else, when the whole blames lies solely at his feet.
“He’s a liar and an all-out cheat. There’s no excuse for drinking the night away in a room full of people, while telling everyone else they couldn’t even meet in their gardens. But once again he thought that if he blustered enough it would get him through.”
Tiffany’s 61 year-old dad Colin was one of 500 people who died of Covid on the night of the Downing Street Christmas party.
After the Mirror broke the story in December 2021, Tiffany wrote an open letter to the then Prime Minister, telling him that the news was “a crushing blow for our family, and for so many others who lost their loved ones to Covid”.
She told how retired draughtsman Colin met his wife Helen, 60 when the two worked together in a meat packing factory. How they were married for 42 years and had three children and five grandchildren.
Tiffany said: “He was the funniest, most loving, most caring human being you could ever meet. He and mum were soulmates. They were always together and did everything for each other. Seeing my mum without him is so weird, because she was always with dad.”
Colin, who had two kidney transplants and lived with a form of pneumonia, spent a week in the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth after catching Covid, but his condition then deteriorated and his family called to his bedside.
“While your staff were partying at Downing Street, we were holding his hand as he slipped away,” Tiffany said. “All the time he was talking to us, telling my mum that he loved her. He kept squeezing our hands and saying, ‘I love you, I love you’.”
Although Johnson later insisted no rules had been broken, a video emerged showing his spokesperson Allegra Stratton joking that the party “was not socially distanced” and suggesting passing it off as a ‘business meeting’. London was in Tier 3 restrictions at the time which banned social gatherings.
Several times in yesterday’s Privileges Committee grilling Johnson tried to justify the Partygate events by claiming he and his staff were going through “difficult” times.
He said of the ‘Bring your own booze’ party at No 10 on May 20, 2020, that he wanted to motivate staff “in what had been a difficult time, on what was also a very difficult day”.
And explaining a leaving-do for a senior aide on November 13, 2020, when he was pictured raising a glass while surrounded by colleagues and bottles of wine, Johnson said it was because “senior advisors in government had left their jobs in very, very difficult and challenging circumstances and it was necessary to steady the ship.”
Tiffany said: “It was sickening to hear that. How dare he compare his difficult day to what hundreds of thousands of people were going through, losing their parents, husbands, wives or children without being able to say goodbye.
“My best friend Beverley’s husband, who had dementia, died of Covid in a care home and she couldn’t even go to see him. She tried to say goodbye over the phone while he was gasping for breath, and didn’t know who was speaking to him.
“We all have difficult days, but the rest of us can’t use that excuse for breaking the law. What saddens and sickens me the most is that he doesn’t have any compassion for what families have gone through. There’s no remorse there at all, all he does is insist he was right.”
Tiffany, who is part of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group, says she and other grieving families hope the committee will hold Johnson accountable.
She said: “I want him to lose his opportunities in Parliament, any chance he might have of becoming Prime Minister again. I want justice.”
'It’s all smoke and mirrors... it’s just slippery rhetoric'
A daughter who had to comfort her dying mum through a dirty care home window broke down in tears as she heard Boris Johnson make his “slippery”excuses.
Even hearing his voice was enough to bring the horror of what her family went through back.
Wiping away tears she slammed the former PM for the “inhumane cruelty” her mum Diane suffered in lockdown - separated from her family in the last months of her life.
Ruth Coward, 56, from Loughborough in Leicestershire, whose mum died on October 8th 2021, told The Mirror: “Even his voice brings back all the hurt.
“While they were having parties I was standing outside my mum’s care home in any weather.
“The window was filthy, the windowsill was filthy and I had the tiniest gap to try and talk to my mother through, who couldn’t talk back to me. Honestly I’m still fuming.”
Listening to his evidence with her head in her hands on Wednesday, she said: “It’s all smoke and mirrors. He admits he made the rules himself - it’s just slippery rhetoric.
“He talks about keeping the morale up for his staff but why is that more important than us trying to keep our loved ones alive? My mum gave up on life after being separated from us for months. “
Ruth, who was a celebrant at the time of the pandemic, said: “Surely funerals are more important than a staff leaving ‘event’.
She said there were “terrible” stories of families not even able to comfort each other or the main mourner, if they didn't live together.
“What he’s talking about is hurting people and not just those with relatives in care homes but the general public who followed his rules.
“What Boris is basically saying is ‘we matter more than you’. He’s arrogant and has shown us no compassion.”
Ruth works for Age UK helping people with dementia and is a member of Rights for Residents, a campaign group set up by desperate relatives who are fighting for Gloria’s Law to make sure everyone has the right to get support from a loved one in the future.
Ruth’s mum had a neurological condition which left her in a wheelchair.
In March 2020, Ruth was stopped from visiting her mum who she would see several times a week.
“At the very beginning I didn’t see her for ten days and when I went to take some things for my mum they pushed her into the porch and as soon as she saw me she sobbed uncontrollably. She declined incredibly quickly.”
She said her Christmas-loving mum was left traumatised after spending the festive period and her 80th birthday on January 8th, 2021, apart from them.
All she was allocated for the massive milestone was 45 minutes in a pod separated by glass from her family, her daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren.
Ruth said her husband, Alyn, broke down in tears at the sight of his wife trying to talk to her mum through a window.
Her mum died after the home went into another lockdown.
“It’s horrific, when we think about what we all went through We were all in a state of shock. I’m beyond angry,’ she said..
“Even now when I think about it makes me want to be physically sick.
“It is just terrible to think that some people in care homes are still going through this today.”
Helen Wildbore from Rights for Residents said Boris ‘bending the guidance to justify his actions is a kick in the teeth for the thousands of families who stuck to the rules.
“Our helpline heard the devastating impact of isolation on people living in care - thinking their families had abandoned them, losing the will to live and the inconsolable loss of not having chance to say goodbye.
“Yet families continued to follow the rules the Prime Minister laid down.…”
