Emily Maitlis went toe to toe with Guto Harri on Boris Johnson’s tendency to relentlessly fib.
The former prime minister is currently being investigated by the Privileges Committee over whether he misled parliament over alleged breaches of lockdown rules in Downing Street.
He told the House of Commons that all guidance was followed completely by Number 10, but countless numbers of fines have been issued by the Met Police over gatherings since.
Johnson has been in the news again this week, despite being ousted from office last July, over new claims he broke Covid lockdown rules at Chequers.
While he has dismissed them as “bizarre and unacceptable” allegations, the official Covid inquiry has threatened the government with legal action if it does not provide the ex-PM’s WhatsApps from around that time.
Addressing the issue on The News Agents podcast, Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel brought up Johnson’s reputation of having a loose relationship with the truth.
As the former head of comms for Downing Street, Harri, blamed Johnson’s support for Brexit, claiming: “Brexit was massively divisive and Brexit was the start of this allegation that he was a liar.”
He said that “no one” thought Johnson was a liar before the EU referendum.
However, Jon Sopel cut across Harri and said: “Hang on hang on, he got fired by Michael Howard for lying.”
Howard was the Tory leader who sacked Johnson in 2004 over supposedly not revealing an extramarital affair he was having with a Spectator columnist at the time.
Maitlis added: “He got fired by the newspaper as well.”
Johnson was sacked in 1988 by The Times for allegedly fabricating quotes from his godfather, a historian, which were then printed on the front page.
But Harri was dismissive of these incidents, saying: “Yeah, for spilling about an affair and he made up quotes, I’m sure he’s not the only person to have done that.”
Maitlis then tore into Harri with a superb analogy.
Watch the clip in full below:
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