Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer accused PM Boris Johnson of populism by resisting calls to lock down the country over Christmas to slow the spread of coronavirus until his U-turn this weekend. Meanwhile, a poll showed three-quarters of Britons supported the new harsher measures announced on Saturday.
Labour opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer has demanded Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologise for his “11th-hour” order of a COVID-19 lockdown for London and neighbouring areas.
The Labour leader accused Johnson of “gross negligence”, claiming the “alarm bells had been ringing for weeks” on the need for harsher measures.
Johnson announced the new restrictions, including an effective lockdown under a new Tier 4 alert level for London, Essex, Kent, Portsmouth, and other areas, at a press conference on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy pitched her party against the powerful National Education Union (NEU), whose General Secretary Kevin Courtney called for delaying the opening of secondary schools until 18 January to slow down the spread of the virus.
Johnson insisted on Saturday that the new measures were in response to a newly-identified coronavirus strain that Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said could spread much faster than the existing form.
A YouGov poll conducted after Johnson’s Saturday evening announcement found three-quarters of Britons supported the new measures, while only one in six opposed them. Support was higher among Tory voters, at 79 percent, than among Labour supporters at 72 percent. In London, the hardest-hit area, two-thirds were in favour of the new rules and a quarter against.
At the Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Johnson accused Starmer of seeking to “cancel Christmas” with calls for stricter measures, and insisted there was “unanimous agreement” across government departments, devolved regional governments, and even political parties for keeping the existing rules in place.
But on Saturday, the PM said that the five-day relaxation of rules to let people from up to three homes celebrate Christmas together would be cancelled for Tier 4 areas, and reduced to just Christmas Day elsewhere.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
0.00 (0%) 0 votes
