Argumentative, angry and arm-waving: The old Boris Johnson was back

After choking back the tears and a fleeting show of emotion, the ex-PM snorted and snarled but landed no knockout punches on the second day of the Covid inquiry, writes Joe Murphy

Bereaved relatives were even more restless than on Wednesday, wondering why the former PM wasn’t being given a harder time (AFP)

Boris Johnson spent much of Thursday apologising again, but the one time he actually looked embarrassed was when it was revealed he told a meeting: “F*** YOU Daily Mail”. Never mind 220,000 excess deaths, what would he tell the editor of his tabloid employer?

“I am sorry to have said this about the Daily Mail,” croaked the overpaid columnist when his words appeared on the big screen. It was his umpteenth saying of sorry, but this time, as the movies say, he meant it.

You knew this was going to be a tough day for Johnson because he started being nice to “hard worker” Matt Hancock. If a drowning man clutches at Hancock, he must be desperate. The former health secretary is more of a dead weight than a lifebelt these days but, crucially for Johnson’s legal case, he had backed the PM on rejecting a circuit breaker lockdown in October 2020, perhaps one of the worst blunders of the pandemic.