Boris Johnson interview live: Ex-prime minister says he regrets apologising for Partygate in ITV grilling

Boris Johnson has declined to explicitly endorse Tory leadership frontrunner Robert Jenrick.

It was put to him that he supported a referendum on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and so he would likely back Mr Jenrick, the only candidate to advocate for leaving the convention.

Mr Johnson replied: “I think there’s probably some logical fallacy you’ve just committed.”

He also said Donald Trump had not been telling the truth when he claimed to have won the 2020 election.

In a quickfire round of questions during his ITV interview, the former prime minister refused to say who he hoped to win the upcoming vote out of Kamala Harris and the Republican candidate.

Asked whether the former president was telling the truth when he claimed to have won the 2020 election, Mr Johnson said: “No.”

He would not say who he thought had been a better prime minister out of Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss, insisting they “both had good qualities and they both had their share of bad luck”.

Sir Gavin Williamson blocked a £400 million deal to bring Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe home from Iran five years before she was released on the basis the money could be used by Hezbollah, Boris Johnson has said.

The former prime minister claimed that, in 2017, he reached an agreement paving the way for the UK national’s release in return for money owed by Britain to Tehran since the 1970s.

The Treasury and the Foreign Office approved, but Number 10 insisted the decision needed to be signed off by all relevant departments, including the Ministry of Defence.

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Boris Johnson has not ruled out a return to British politics.

At the end of his interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby to promote his new memoir Unleashed, it was put to the former prime minister whether he believed his political career to be over.

The former Tory MP said he is currently living a life of “blameless obscurity, rustic obscurity” but was not drawn on the interviewer’s question, saying: “The answer to your question is to be found in the 738 pages of Unleashed.”

Mr Bradby responded, “I’ll take that as a return is possible,” to which Mr Johnson offered no denial.

Boris Johnson has defended Partygate revellers.

He said he does not think that officials involved in the Westminster partygate scandal "thought they were setting out to break the rules".

The former prime minister told ITV News: "I really, really don't think that those officials thought that they were setting out to break the rules... they were working round the clock and they thought they were within the framework."

Repeatedly pressed on why he regrets apologising for the scandal and whether he understands the scale of public anger, he said: "Of course I understand it and you can't say that I haven't been exposed over the last few years to the full force of people's anger and indignation."

Boris Johnson squirmed as he responded to the claim made by the unofficial biographer of prime ministers that his premiership was the worst of all time.

ITV’s Tom Bradby put to the former Tory MP that author Anthony Seldon “says you’re the worst prime minister in British history” – even worse than Liz Truss’s, whose catastophic tenure ended after just 49 days.

A visibly uncomfortable Mr Johnson responded: “I don’t know this guy very well, but that’s complete nonsense. I think you’ll find a pretty extraordinary story in three years.”

He went on to reel off what he saw as his government’s achievements of Brexit and supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

“Not only did we deliver freedom and independence for our own country,” he said. “We were essential in protecting another European country from having it’s own freedom and independence extinguished.”

Boris Johnson is using the interview to reignite his feud with Sue Gray.

The former top civil servant is the one who presided over the official Partygate report.

Mr Johnson asked ITV’s Tom Bradby “what post does she currently hold?” at least five times during ther chat.

Ms Gray is currently Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

She went to work for the Labour leader after the report – leading to accusations of a stitch up by Mr Johnson’s allies.

Boris Johnson has defended officials who attended parties in Downing Street during lockdown.

Discussing the so-called partygate scandal in a new ITV interview, the former prime minister said: “I really dont think those officials set out to break the rules.”

It comes after it was revealed earlier that the former Tory MP said he regrets apologising for the lockdown-era gatherings, claiming the move had “inadvertently validated the entire corpus” as accusations were also levelled at officials who were “working very hard”.

Boris Johnson is coming under pressure in his first TV interview since leaving office.

ITV’s Tom Bradby is putting the ex-PM under the microscope and is hitting the former Tory leader – famously never a details man- with details.

He has challenged him on a series of statistics over Brexit’s effect on the economy.

And Mr Johnson squirmed and blustered as he was asked if he regretted his Partygate apology to the Queen.

Boris Johnson denies he was too focused on his Shakespeare book as Covid hit.

The ex-PM missed a series of emergency government Cobra meetings as the pandemic took hold.

But he denied to ITV that at that stage he was not focused on his upcoming book about Shakespeare.

“That’s complete nonsense… a total, total myth” he said.