Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said the UK must reject a second national lockdown, warning of a “complete and utter catastrophe” if Prime Minister Boris Johnson implements another.
Mr Farage admitted that self-isolation might make some sense for vulnerable people, such as the elderly, chronically ill, or the very obese, but said: “It does not make sense for the whole of the country to isolate and I think we’re at a point now where the cure is becoming worse than the disease itself.”
He warned that should the government introduce a second national lockdown, “the spectre of mass unemployment becomes all too real,” and that it will have a serious impact on the mental health of millions of people.
“I think the time has come for us to say loudly and clearly ‘no’ to a second lockdown,” the arch-Brexiteer said on Sunday.
Mr Farage also decried the imposition of the £10,000 fine for those found to have broken the now mandatory self-isolation regulations. He alleged that the decision was undemocratic, in that it was made by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, alongside a “small group in Number 10”, without any parliamentary consent.
“We are supposed to be living in a democracy; actually, it’s becoming increasingly like an elective dictatorship,” he said.
Mr Farage called on his supporters to lobby their local MPs, and demand that they stand up in parliament to oppose a second national lockdown and to “insist that rule by ministerial decree comes to an end, and we get back to being a functioning democracy”.
“None of these draconian measures… should be done without full open debate in parliament,” he said.
Noting the support from the Labour Party, Farage said that “you’d think the way the government’s behaving, you’d think Jeremy Corbyn had actually won the last election.”
He went on to criticise the apparent double standards that have been in place during the China virus pandemic, where police have allowed Black Lives Matter protests, but have clamped down on anti-lockdown protests.
“If you want to go and desecrate the Cenotaph, or vandalise Churchill’s statue, or topple statues and chuck them in the dock in Bristol, or even wear paramilitary uniforms and march through the streets of Brixton, well that’s fine because you can pretty much guarantee that nothing will happen to you.”
Prime Minister Johnson is expected to give an address to the nation on Tuesday to unveil his government’s plans for the China virus going into the winter months.
He is expected to announce what the government is terming the ‘circuit breaker’ — an on and off two-week national lockdowns until the spring, in order to stem the spread of a so-called second wave.
A senior government source told The Sun: “There’s not much on the cards to look forward to. The next six months’ll be pretty s***.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here: @KurtZindulka
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