[Source: Reuters]

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Britain’s COVID inquiry on Thursday that any suggestion he wanted to allow the virus to “let rip” was “rubbish” and “completely wrong”.

Johnson, prime minister between 2019 and 2022, faced a second day of questioning which examined the weeks before the country’s second national lockdown in November 2020.

Asked whether he had wanted to allow the virus to “let rip”, and about suggestions that he believed older people had reached their time, Johnson said: “No, no, no, this is all rubbish”.

The inquiry has heard evidence from former advisers that Johnson, fearing the impact on the economy, had once replied “let the bodies pile high” as he wanted to let the virus spread rather than order another lockdown.

He dismissed that evidence as “accounts…culled from people’s jottings” and said Britain went into a second lockdown as soon as the disease picked up again.

“The implication that you’re trying to draw from those conversations is completely wrong,” he said. “My position was that we had to save human life at all ages and that was the objective of the strategy, and by the way, that is what we did.”

Coronavirus killed more than 230,000 people in Britain and infected many millions more.

Johnson resigned in disgrace after a series of scandals including reports that he, and other officials, engaged in alcohol-fuelled gatherings in Downing Street in 2020 and 2021, when most Britons had to stay at home.

Asked about what has become known as the “partygate” scandal, he said there had been some mischaracterisation of events at No.10, but added that he was sorry.