Steve Rotheram: No handshake with PM without Hillsborough apology
- Published
Steve Rotheram says he will not shake Boris Johnson's hand until he personally apologises for an article about the Hillsborough disaster published when he was Spectator editor.
Liverpool's City Region mayor said the 2004 piece claiming drunken Liverpool fans shared some blame still hurt now.
But he told the BBC's Political Thinking podcast he had been right to work with the PM over Covid support.
Mr Johnson said in 2012 he "bitterly regretted" the article's claims.
In an interview with the BBC's Nick Robinson, Mr Rotheram said he would never be friendly with Mr Johnson but his co-operation with the government during the pandemic had been "vindicated" by the fall in infections in the region.
The former Labour MP was criticised by some in his party for agreeing to the Merseyside region being placed in the highest tier of Covid restrictions in October, in return for a £44m financial support package.
He told Nick Robinson the fact that the region had dropped down to tier two earlier this week following a sharp fall in cases numbers had proved it was the right decision.
Liverpool's Covid response
"There's lots of criticism from people that I thought would have understood that what we were trying to do was the right thing," he said.
Mass testing was piloted in Liverpool
"It is something that I'll look back on in future years and know that what we did was right at the time for the Liverpool City Region has been vindicated by what's happened recently but also that we saved lives."
At the time, Mr Johnson and other Conservative ministers sought to contrast what they said was Mr Rotheram's constructive approach with those of other regional political leaders, including Greater Manchester's Andy Burnham.
Remarking on the praise he had received from "unusual quarters", Mr Rotheram said he had acted in the interests of the 1.6 million people he represents not because he approved of the PM's handling of the pandemic in any way.
"While he's the prime minister of the country, we have to deal with the government of the day."
Hillsborough 'hurt' at PM
But he said the anger he felt towards Mr Johnson over the 2004 Spectator article, which was not written by Mr Johnson, but was published by him as the magazine's editor, had not gone away.
The piece claimed the city had failed to acknowledge the part "drunken" fans had played in the 1989 tragedy and had tended to "wallow in victim status" since then.
"I can never respect somebody who won't apologise for what he said which hurt so many people so badly all those years ago," Mr Rotheram told Nick Robinson.
"If he was genuine about offering an apology it should be him saying into the camera he was wrong and that he understands the hurt that he caused.
"And he won't do that and until he does that I've refused to shake his hand when it was offered to me last year and I'll continue to do that."
Mr Rotheram said he had personally asked Mr Johnson to "do the right thing" on several occasions, including a confrontation in a Commons corridor, which ended when "his aides dragged him away because this furious Scouser was trying to berate him for what he'd done".
"So for me it was really difficult for me to do business with somebody I had no respect whatsoever for but I had to do the right thing... for the people in the Liverpool City region." he added.
Mr Johnson had said he "bitterly regretted" parts of the 2004 article
Mr Johnson, who was a Tory MP and shadow minister at the time the article was published, was ordered by the party's then leader Michael Howard to go to Liverpool and apologise.
He apologised again in 2012 after an independent report into the disaster, which saw 96 victims crushed to death, found no evidence to support claims of misconduct by fans and revealed the full scale of the police cover-up.
He said he "bitterly regretted" the fact the article had repeated false allegations.
Labour anti-Semitism row
Asked about the ongoing anti-Semitism row within Labour, Mr Rotheram said ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn needed to do "the right thing" so that his suspension from the Parliamentary party could be lifted.
Mr Corbyn has been asked to "unequivocally" apologise for saying the scale of anti-Semitism in the party while he was leader had been "overstated for political reasons".
Mr Rotheram said he did not believe his colleague, who was a close ally of his when he was in Parliament, was in any way anti-Semitic.
But he urged Mr Corbyn to reconsider his response to the equality watchdog's recent report which found the party had breached the law in terms of political interference in anti-Semitism complaints and lacked leadership.
"They're the sort of things I would have been advising him to take very seriously and say 'look we need to act on this report because the alternative is that it may appear you're not supportive of what the recommendations are."
He added: "We need him in the party and he needs to do the right thing to get back into the party because he still represents a whole constituency of views across the Labour movement."