A DEFIANT Boris Johnson today defended carving up Britain into tiered lockdowns and insisted the Eat Out to Help Out scheme "was not a gamble".
On his second day at the Covid Inquiry in West London, Mr Johnson admitted the tier system "did not work" and "I'm very sad about that".
But he wanted to "keep going with a regional approach" instead of a national "circuit breaker" lockdown.
The ex-PM said one circuit breaker may not have been enough and Britain could've found itself in an endless "yo-yo" lockdown loop.
Boris told the Inquiry: "What's happening is that the disease is very diversely spread over over the country.
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"And there are parts of the UK where it's barely present.
"So the question would have been, do we continue with national measures the whole time... that would just write off 2020.
"Or do you try what we tried, which is to respect and reflect the geography of the outbreak."
Boris insisted tiers were working before the alpha variant upended the system.
When Inquiry lawyer Hugo Keith KC put to the ex-PM that tiers didn't work, he replied: "They didn't and I'm very sad about that.
"But I think that they were logically, rationally as we came out of the restrictions in the summer (2020), they were worth a try."
The ex-PM also launched a staunch defence of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme.
He said it wasn't "gamble" at the time and he was "perplexed" at the idea Britain's chief scientist Sir Patrick Vallance and Sir Chris Whitty weren't aware of the scheme.
He added that to this day he doesn't believe it triggered a spike in infections.
"I don't think that I thought that scheme in itself was a particular gamble at the time and it certainly wasn't presented to me as such," Boris said.
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"I must emphasise, it was not at the time presented to me as something that would add to the budget of risk."
"I remember being surprised, later, I think it was in September, when Chris says 'this is eat out to help the virus'.
"And I thought, 'well, that's funny', because I didn't remember any previous controversy about it."
The ex-PM hit back at suggestions he wanted to "let it (Covid) rip" through the population.
A diary extract from Sir Patrick in May 2021, Sir Patrick read: "PM meeting - Cx (then-chancellor Rishi Sunak) suddenly pipes up on incentives already in place. Argues that we should let it rip a bit."
But Boris told the Inquiry: "No, the implication that you're you're trying to draw from those conversations is completely wrong.
"My position was that we had to save human life at all ages."
The ex-PM also slammed suggestions that he "didn't care" about the "suffering that was being inflicted on the country" during lockdowns.
He choked up and became emotional as he told the Inquiry: "I did care and I continue to get passionately about it."
Speaking candidly about his time in the intensive care unit, Boris added: "I saw around me a lot of people who were not actually elderly. In fact, they were middle-aged men and they were quite like me - and some of us were going to make it and some of us weren't.
"What I'm trying to tell you in a nutshell - and the NHS, thank god, did an amazing job and helped me survive - but I knew from that experience what appalling a disease this is.
"I had absolutely no personal doubt about that, from March onwards."
On partygate, the ex-PM described characterisations of the scandal as a "travesty of truth".
"The dramatic representations that we're now having of this are absolutely absurd," he said.
"I really want to emphasise, and you talk about the impression, the version of events that has entered the popular consciousness about what is supposed to have happened in Downing Street is a million miles from the reality of what actually happened in Number 10."