Boris Johnson had a very difficult backdrop to today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, having marked 100,000 deaths in the coronavirus pandemic last night. But, strangely, he didn’t have a particularly difficult session in the Commons.
Sir Keir Starmer did, as you might expect, lead on the death toll, asking the Prime Minister repeatedly why he thought the UK had such a high death rate, and why he wouldn’t learn the lessons from the pandemic now so that the government didn’t repeat its mistakes. Johnson was able to deal with this reasonably easily, arguing that while he did think there would be a time to learn the lessons of what happened, that time wasn’t now. The public, he said, want politicians to come together and focus on rolling out the vaccine and protecting the health service. Of course, this is merely a holding line — and the Prime Minister is notably reluctant to say when he thinks the right time for proper reflection and a public inquiry will be.
Isabel Hardman
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