Does anyone doubt Boris’s leaked ‘bodies’ comment?

Of course Boris Johnson raged, King Lear-like, that he was prepared to ‘let the bodies pile high in their thousands’ if the alternative was subjecting the country to a third lockdown more dispiriting than either of its dreary, even grim, predecessors. I say ‘of course he said it’ not just because at least three different sources have confirmed to at least three different reporters that the Prime Minister did say it but also, and significantly, because it would be so wholly in character for the Prime Minister to have said it. If it sounds like the sort of thing he would say, that is largely because it is the sort of thing he would say.

Nor have his denials been convincing. His quick ‘no’ before pivoting to more important things (which no-one currently thinks more important) had more than a tinge of a child caught red-handed who knows he must put up a show of innocence while understanding this is all it is: a required show that persuades nobody.