Rishi Sunak was last night accused of desperately rewriting history by claiming it had been a mistake to ’empower’ scientists who ‘screwed’ Britain during Covid — despite originally backing ‘bold’ measures.
Last night, Boris Johnson was infuriated that he had made such a big deal of his support for SAGE, Government’s influential scientific advisory committee.
The Tory leader hopeful claimed that No10 had failed to recognize economic trade-offs from the beginning’ in the same intense interview with the Spectator magazine.
Rishi Sunak was last night accused of desperately rewriting history by claiming it had been a mistake to ’empower’ scientists who ‘screwed’ Britain during Covid — despite originally backing ‘bold’ measures
The Government’s 2-year-old cycle of curbs discouraged growth and caused massive NHS backlogs. The draconian policies of the Government eventually became a failure and ministers resorted to vaccines and immunity in order to stop Covid from spreading.
Mr Sunak, who describes himself as an ‘underdog’ in the race to become the next Prime Minister, complained he ‘wasn’t allowed to talk about the trade-off’ between the virus-controlling effects of lockdowns and the impact on the health service, economy and education — in a piece that heavily suggested he was opposed to lockdowns.
But SAGE scientists today accused him of passing the buck, arguing that ministers are the ones who make decisions and it is ‘not the fault’ of experts that ministers failed to source wider advice.
Others experts pointed out the fact that SAGE was trying to push for the Government to take action sooner than they did.
MailOnline was informed by Professor John Edmunds (an epidemiologist): “It is an old saying that advisers advise, and ministers decide.” It is exactly how it should be. This was how it was before the pandemic.
And critics today accused him of political game-playing, questioning why he didn’t publicly speak out at the time if he was so against the measures. Commentators on social media called his silence “weak” and “pathetic”.
Lee Cain (the former Head of Communications for Mr Johnson) dismissed Sunak’s version of events today as “simply wrong”, while Dominic Cummings, Dominic’s former adviser, called the comments “dangerous rubbish”.
Mr Sunak already appeared to be back-tracking by midday, saying he was not arguing that the first lockdowns were a mistake — despite heavily suggesting last night that it would not have gone ahead without SAGE’s gloomy exaggerated modelling.
When the virus struck, Britain was a tough country and the PM candidate supported it. He even took to Downing Street to encourage people to remain at home in April 2020’s briefing. It was weeks before that he stated it was “a time to show courage, and be bold.”
Economic measures brought in to contain the pandemic, when Mr Sunak was Chancellor, cost up to £400billion but huge amounts were wasted on unusable PPE, while the furlough scheme was abused.
A number of people are expected to die from early death due to the effects of the virus control policies.
However, Mr Sunak claimed last month that he had personally prevented another lockdown in the Omicron winter wave.