What's up with Boris Johnson's WhatsApps?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2023
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Boris Johnson has, finally, and perhaps reluctantly, handed over a ton of WhatsApp messages between him and others while he was PM at the height of the Covid pandemic. But what will the Cabinet Office do with him, and what does this mean for Johnson, Sunak and the Conservative Party?
And, we talk to a spokesperson and member of Just Stop Oil. When do the ends justify the means when it comes to civil disobedience? Are they now crossing a line?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:08.0 | This is a Global Player original podcast. |
| 0:11.9 | Leading Britain's conversation, this is LBC. |
| 0:19.7 | From Global's newsroom at five o'clock. |
| 0:23.2 | Boris Johnson says all material requested by the COVID inquiry, |
| 0:27.5 | including unredacted WhatsApp messages, |
| 0:30.2 | has been handed over to the government in full. |
| 0:32.4 | In a statement, the ex-Prime minister says the Cabinet Office |
| 0:35.8 | has had access to the material for several months. |
| 0:39.1 | He's disclosed to the inquiry urgently. |
| 0:42.0 | Fasten yourself in because the COVID inquiry, something talked about for years, is finally about to begin in just a couple of weeks' time. |
| 0:51.9 | But already, before the work has even officially begun, |
| 0:55.4 | before the first hearing has been held, Boris Johnson, of course, Prime Minister during COVID, |
| 1:01.3 | and a controversy about the documents that he had, his private notebooks, diaries, his WhatsApp |
| 1:08.3 | messages, have already come to cause friction between Johnson, |
| 1:13.0 | the government and the inquiry led by Baroness Halle. |
| 1:16.7 | And we are now in the extraordinary position where the chair of a public inquiry who has |
| 1:22.8 | been appointed by the government is now threatening the government with legal action unless it gets its hands |
| 1:31.1 | on all the papers it wants to see as part of this public inquiry. The fallout from COVID, |
| 1:39.8 | from Partygate, from the way we were governed during that period, continues. |
| 1:45.5 | Welcome to the Newsagents. |
| 1:50.2 | The Newsagents. |
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