Defending his "codswallop" remark, Johnson said: "I thought at the time that really what was happening was that Labour was ramping up the pressure on Andy Coulson at No 10, on Rupert Murdoch … basically because they were now out of power, they'd lost the support of the Sun, and they were bitter and vengeful and all the rest of it."
He pointed out that he'd added the "very important caveat" to his "admittedly colourful language" that he was prepared to change his mind if new facts came into the public domain. However, he declined to apologise for having made them.
This is the thing about Boris, he actually gives one more to go on.
... they'd lost the support of the Sun, and they were bitter and vengeful and all the rest of it.
He was faced with a very difficult situation to see through and Mayors, police chiefs and Prime Ministers are not trained to understand the possibilities of collusion, not least because Mayors and Prime Ministers depend on a network of mutual conviction and police chiefs depend on a command hierarchy. Neither allows the other person their own motives, and without allowing the other person their motives you can not discover what they are nor question them.
In short they are crude and naive operators.
That is a considerable charge to level at Johnson given the evident complexity of the man.
In fact he was able to question the motives of Labour and ascribe to them a very likely motive. A motive they very well may have.
Now he has to ask himself - this is the difficult the question, the question to which collusion pertains - is it now, only with hindsight, that he sees the seriousness of these allegations. In other words wasn't he hoping, just as Yates of the Yard the man sitting opposite him, was hoping that all of this was nothing of great account.
Now Yates thinks he is being briefed against.
The inevitable result of misunderstanding collusive impulses is paranoia.