He was winging it. Definitely. The PM almost certainly spent half the night watching the electoral quagmire in America. And at today’s PMQs he seemed flaccid and repetitive, full of diverting orotundities. Usually, he readies himself with facts and figures to spew out. But he’d done no homework, and he committed an unforced blunder from the off.
Sir Keir Starmer blamed him for not imposing a national lockdown earlier. The circuit-breaker had first been proposed on 21 September when just 11 Covid deaths were reported in a single day. The latest total, from Monday, was 397. Sir Keir called this ‘a staggering 35-fold increase.’
Boris defended himself: ‘The regional approach was actually showing signs of working,’ he said. ‘It did get the R down lower than it otherwise would have been.’
Sir Keir, the courtroom genius, failed to spot a contradiction from the witness-stand
What? The flexible lockdown had proved its worth. So why put the nation under house-arrest from midnight tonight? Sir Keir, the courtroom genius, failed to spot this contradiction from the witness-stand.
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