Story at a glance
- U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing intense scrutiny over alleged remarks he made after issuing a second wave of lockdowns in 2020.
- Johnson and senior officials have denied that the Conservative Party leader said “no more f-ing lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands,” after approving the restrictions.
- The alleged comments came in a meeting with officials after he felt pressured into shutting down.
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing intense backlash over alleged remarks he made after issuing a second wave of lockdowns in 2020.
Johnson and senior officials have denied that the Conservative Party leader said “no more f-ing lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands,” after approving the restrictions, The Daily Mail first reported. The alleged comments came in a meeting with former chief aide Dominic Cummings after Johnson felt pressured into shutting down.
Michael Gove, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who said he was in the meeting, defended Johnson in the House of Commons on Monday, The Guardian reported. Gove denied he heard the prime minister make the alleged remark.
“This is a prime minister who’s been in a hospital himself in intensive care,” he said. “The idea that he would say any such thing I find incredible. I was in that room, I never heard language of that kind.”
Johnson spent three nights in an intensive care unit due to his own bout with the virus in April 2020.
The prime minister has denied the allegations as “total rubbish” and praised the country’s lockdown measures, The Guardian reported.
“What I certainly think is that this country has done an amazing job with the lockdowns. And they’ve been very difficult. And they’ve been very tough for people. And there’s no question about that,” Johnson said.
“Nobody wants to go into a lockdown, but they’ve helped us. The discipline the public has shown has helped us to get the numbers of cases down very considerably,” Johnson added.
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Yet leaders and advocates are calling for an end amid the mounting death toll.
“[Johnson has] degraded the office he holds with rampant and overwhelming sleaze,” said Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, according to the Guardian.
“But making light of the more than 127,000 deaths that happened on his watch and then trying to cover it up is a new low. This must now end,” Rayner added.
Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice told the Guardian that Johnson’s alleged comments were callous, adding that an investigation into government handling of the pandemic is vital.
“These ‘bodies’ were our loved ones,” the group told the outlet. “Mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, grandparents, husbands and wives. Those who have lost loved ones already have to cope with the lack of dignity many of their loved ones faced as they passed.”
“Is it too much to ask that the prime minister would be sympathetic and respectful to our loss,” the group said. “This demonstrates exactly why an urgent inquiry is so vital, to understand the decisions and considerations in protecting our loved ones that the government chose.”
The U.K. has reported more than 4 million COVID-19 cases and 127,428 deaths, World Health Organization data shows.
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