The British government refuses to pass uncensored WhatsApp messages from Johnson to a committee of inquiry. Now the ex-prime minister wants to hand them over himself – and is thus on a confrontational course with the government.
A dispute between the government and the parliamentary committee on corona investigations has been escalating for days in Great Britain: The latter is to investigate the actions of the government at the time in the pandemic and is demanding the uncensored WhatsApp history of ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson with government representatives from this period . The committee would also like to inspect calendar entries and notebooks. However, the government agency Cabinet Office has so far refused to hand over the required documents without censorship.
Now Johnson went on a confrontational course with the government – and announced that he would pass the news directly to the committee himself. This is reported by the British news agency PA, citing a letter from the conservative politician to the committee. This is the end of the day-long tug-of-war over the chat history.
Government wanted to go to court
With his move, Johnson bypasses the current government of his party colleague Rishi Sunak. She justifies her previous refusal by saying that the content of the WhatsApp messages is largely irrelevant to the committee. Despite the threat of criminal consequences, she let a deadline pass on Thursday and announced that she would go to court.
According to the media, the government may fear that issuing the required news will also bring Sunak’s role in the pandemic under renewed scrutiny. The current head of government was finance minister at the time. Messages from other ministers could also be found in the process that could damage their public image.
Johnson, on the other hand, has little to lose. He had to resign as prime minister last summer due to ongoing scandals. However, he is said to have ambitions to return to the top of the government.
Johnson had already exposed the government on Wednesday evening when he said he had handed over his messages and notebooks to the Cabinet Office and demanded that they be forwarded to the committee. Until then, the authority had stated that it was not in possession of the messages. In his letter to the committee, the ex-prime minister also announced that he would deliver more WhatsApp messages if the government granted him access to an old cell phone.
227,000 confirmed deaths
The Corona Committee of Inquiry is to work through the hesitant and sometimes chaotic handling of the British government in the pandemic. According to death certificates, around 227,000 people died of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom – significantly more than in Germany.
It is an open secret that in London even important agreements within the government are settled via WhatsApp. Content from more than 100,000 Whatsapp messages from former Health Minister Matt Hancock only became public in March and left the ex-minister in need of explanation. A journalist who worked as a ghost writer for Hancock had forwarded the news to The Daily Telegraph newspaper.