Boris Johnson finds himself publicly at odds with the heavyweights of British journalism this morning. The Prime Minister has denied, on the record and on camera, saying that he would rather “let the bodies pile high in their thousands” than impose a third lockdown, after the allegation was reported by the Daily Mail yesterday. But the BBC and ITV’s political editors, along with the Guardian and Politico, have corroborated the allegations, with the BBC confident enough to report it as fact.
It throws into stark relief something that has been plain the entire time: that Johnson took a cavalier attitude towards the second wave of Covid-19, fearing the economic consequences of another lockdown. You don’t need a leaked quote to tell you that, or a public inquiry; you only need to look at how the government’s policy played out last year, at everything the Prime Minister said publicly on the matter, and at what the consequences were. That is the substance of a report in the Times this morning, which alleges Johnson said last September that he would rather let coronavirus “rip” than lock down again. These shocking, memorable quotes give a shape and face to a vague concern many had over the Prime Minister’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis, and will resonate whether or not they prove to be true.
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