JUST three weeks before Boris Johnson attended a birthday party in Downing Street, Alan Wightman was saying goodbye to mum. 

Helen, who was 88, had cancer and dementia. She was, the family say, before the pandemic hit, the “incredible shrinking woman.” They knew that their time with her was limited.

And then Covid arrived in Scotland and managed to get into Helen’s Fife care home. She died in May.

“We obeyed the rules,” Mr Wightman tells the Herald. “We didn't go and see mum. We made the sacrifices. We followed the rules, we didn't go in and we paid the price.”

Mr Wightman, who now acts as the chair for the Scottish branch of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, is furious with Boris Johnson. 

“I really that think time's up. This guy is a serial liar. He lied to the monarch, he illegally prorogued parliament. 

“How much rope do we give him? Surely must be the end of it now. It's time he went.”

“Our members were given a set of rules to follow to keep themselves and their family members and everyone in the community safe. They followed those rules and still lost people. And yet the man who made the rules and his closest supporters thought it was fine to just break them. Sorry, not good enough. He has to go.” 

Mr Wightman says he’s “pessimistic” about the state of British democracy.

“I do not buy into this argument that it's the wrong time to get rid of it because there's a war in Ukraine. Are we seriously trying to say that what we really need is a Prime Minister, when we're at war, who is a serial liar and a man who cannot handle detail? I don't believe so. He should go.” 

Hazel Harrison, from Bishop’s Itchington in Warwickshire, lost her son to a brain haemorrhage last year. Restrictions had meant she had been unable to do the things she would have liked with Michael. 

She told the PA that, in light of the Prime Minister’s fine, she felt as though she should have “disregarded the rules” instead.

“I cannot believe that he’s still in his position as Prime Minister,” Ms Harrison told the PA news agency on Tuesday.

“I just think how can he possibly stay where he is when he’s broken the law?

“We gave up so much, and Michael missed out on so much in those last few months of his life.

“I just find it absolutely despicable. Words just can’t even do it justice, really.”

Michael was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2018 and was undergoing chemotherapy when Covid-19 emerged in 2020.

His clinically vulnerable status meant he needed to be protected by his family, while he had to attend scans and appointments alone.

“We weren’t able to have the support that we perhaps might have had from friends and family, because lockdown was happening,” Ms Harrison said.

“So, we just felt like we were really on our own with it. And we wanted to do the right thing – we wanted to follow the rules like everybody else.

“I guess looking back on it now, we missed out on doing all the things with him that you would have done knowing that your child is not going to be with you for much longer.

“I didn’t really appreciate that at the time. But looking back on it now, it’s really kind of hit me with all the things that we missed out on.

“It makes me feel like… we should have disregarded the rules ourselves. Because if (Boris Johnson) can, then why should we have sacrificed all those things?”