Just days before this year's round of local government elections, the PM faced a grilling at Downing Street from Good Morning Britain presenter Susanna Reid, who asked him directly: "Are you honest?"
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has insisted he is "honest" and did not wilfully mislead Parliament over the 'Partygate' scandal.
"I think, yes, and I think that the best way to judge that is to look at what this Government says it's going to do and what it does. And that's what matters," Johnson said. "I do my best to represent faithfully and accurately what I believe, and sometimes it's controversial and sometimes it offends people, but that's what I do."
In a clear reference to his insistence that he was not aware of any breaches of COVID-19 restrictions at 10 Downing Street during the first two lockdowns, Reid pressed: "Sometimes people say you lie, prime minister."
"If you are talking about the statements I've made in the House of Commons, I was inadvertently... I was wrong and I've apologised for that," he replied.
Reid said Johnson "broke the law", pointing to the fine of £50 he recently had to pay over a surprise birthday party in the Cabinet Room in 2020. "Why did people who made the laws that the rest of us stuck to scrupulously not keep to them?" she asked.
"I've apologised for the things that we got wrong during the pandemic, and I repeat those apologies," Johnsons said. "But with great respects I'm going to have to ask you to wait until the conclusion of the investigations" — those he is facing from civil servant Sue Gray and Parliament's Privilege Committee.
Reid pointed out that former health minister Matt Hancock had resigned for breaking lockdown rules along with Johnson's spokeswoman Allegra Stratton after joking privately about parties at Downing Street, while and junior justice minister Lord David Wolfson quit in protest after Johnson was fined.
"How are you still in position?" she asked.
"Because I'm getting on with the job that I was elected to do, discharging the mandate I was given, and I'm proud of what we're doing," Johnson insisted. "Look at the record: We said we'd get Brexit done, and we did. We said we'd put 20,000 more police officers on the street, we've got about 30,500 now."
Reid pointed out that the biggest issue for British people was not the conflict in Ukraine, but soaring household bills, filling station and food prices — challenging the PM to slap a windfall tax on energy firms.
The presenter read from a message from a 77-year-old viewer called Elsie, who said she was reduced to eating only one daily meal and using her free public transport pass to ride on buses all day to keep warm.
"The 24-hour freedom bus pass was something I introduced" as mayor of London, Johnson replied, claiming the government's emergency council tax rebate and other schemes would keep the elderly out of fuel poverty.
Johnson's Conservative Party is predicted to lose seats in Thursday's elections, which include all seats in the 32 London borough councils and all the local authorities in Scotland and Wales. Those areas are strongholds for Labour and other opposition parties, who are seeking to making the vote about issues way outside the power of town halls.
Polling analysts Electoral Calculus told for the Daily Telegraph that the Tories could lose 550 seats — down from earlier forecasts of around 800.
But with Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party at a low ebb, having lost more than 400 council seats at the last two local elections in 2019 and 2021, a bounce would be expected. The Tories currently hold over 1,700 more local seats than Labour, and almost as many as Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined.
Starmer and his deputy Angela Rayner may prove a liability for their party's fortunes over their own alleged lockdown rule-breaking in Durham during the 2021 local elections. The party was recently forced to admit — after months of denials — that Rayner was present at an event where staff and volunteers ate takeaway curry and drank alcohol.