PM branded a "habitual liar" in Mumsnet Q&A as he makes stumbling excuses for breaking laws

The Prime Minister was branded a “habitual liar” as he stuck to the excuse that he thought he was working when attending Downing Street parties.

Boris Johnson has admitted the Party Gate scandal was a “totally miserable experience” as he was branded a “habitual liar” by users of the influential Mumsnet site.

The Prime Minister said he was “very, very surprised and taken aback” to be fined by the Metropolitan Police for attending a birthday party in his honour in June 2020.

Johnson “apologised very much” for his behaviour but insisted he would not resign.

He said: “I have thought about all these questions a lot. Given everything going on, I can’t see how it would be responsible right now for abandoning the project I embarked on.”

The Prime Minister was grilled over the scandal by Mumsnet users on Wednesday, with one member sending a question asking him how the public could trust him as a “habitual liar.”

Johnson countered the claim but confessed: “I can see how infuriating it is that people like me were not fulfilling the letter of the rules ourselves. I understand that.”

Asked about the political pressure he is now under, Johnson acknowledged: “I’m not going to deny the whole thing hasn’t been a miserable experience for people in government.”

The Prime Minister used the interview to rehearse his excuses for attending other lockdown events in Downing Street, in which he was not fined but will be questioned by a Commons committee investigating if he misled MPs.

He said: “I genuinely believed that what I was doing was saying goodbye to the diligent staff doing their best to help people during the pandemic.

“I thought what I was doing was right for a leader in any circumstances, to thank people for their service. This was when we had to keep morale high, and the whole place was under tremendous pressure.

“I explain these points but not to minimise peoples’ sense that we got it wrong and should have done better.”

Johnson also protested that he did not eat any birthday cake at the June 2020 event, which saw him receive a fixed penalty notice for violating his COVID-19 laws.

“If you’re talking about that miserable event that appeared on the front page of newspapers, no cake was consumed by me – I can tell you that much,” he spat.