Boris Johnson has denied that he would rather “let the bodies pile in their thousands” than order the third lockdown, as was claimed he had said, amid a briefing war between Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings, and possibly other actors unknown in the heart of government.
Prime Minister Johnson is said to have issued the outburst as he was strong-armed into ordering his second lockdown by fellow Cabinet ministers. He allegedly said: “No more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands!”, according to sources quoted by the Daily Mail.
In the end, a third England-wide lockdown was ordered, of course, with regional lockdowns following the end of the second making it a matter of debate whether it was ever really lifted at all for many people.
According to what the Mail describes as a “well-placed source”, Prime Minister Johnson “hates the idea of lockdowns. He kept saying ‘there’s no evidence they even work’ and that ‘it goes against everything I’ve stood for’. But he was outnumbered – and ended up sitting in sullen silence as the others told him he had no choice.”
Downing Street and the Prime Minister himself have denied the “let the bodies pile” remark was ever uttered, but multiple so-called “ear-witnesses” have claimed to have heard it to journalists including ITV’s Robert Peston since the Mail broke the story. The BBC is said to have confirmed it with their sources, too.
It is said that the Prime Minister ultimately bent to the will of his ally-turned-rival-turned-ally — and possibly to turn rival again — Michael Gove, on ordering a second lockdown at a high-level meeting between the pair and senior government ministers.
“Michael said that if he didn’t impose a second lockdown there would be a catastrophe,” said “a source close to Mr Gove”.
“Hospitals would be over-run, people would be turned away from A&E [Accident and Emergency Departments] and people would be dying in hospital corridors and hospital car parks,” he is said to have argued.
The Prime Minister was allegedly told if he didn’t impose a lockdown he would have to deploy the army to hospitals to control the crowds and that this would be seen around the world as an indictment of his “post-Brexit Britain”.
In terms of whether Mr Gove, perhaps angling for the premiership himself, could have something to do with the leak, Ben Harris-Quinney of the Bow Group, Britain’s oldest conservative think tank, told Breitbart London: “Westminster is the spiritual home of skullduggery, and it is perfectly possible aspects of this are being orchestrated, not by ex-staffers or concerned investigators, but by those with an eye on the top job for themselves.”
He added, however, that it is his belief that “if Boris falls his replacement will not be an obvious candidate but a seachange, and if it is a Michael Gove or a Grant Shapps manoeuvrer, [the premiership] will prove even more of a poisoned chalice for them than it has been for Boris and Carrie.”
Downing Street’s initial answer to the allegations, beyond dismissing them as “just another lie”, was a spokesman’s perfunctory reply that “The Government is totally focused on delivering the people’s priorities as we continue our vaccination programme and recover from coronavirus, creating new jobs and building back better”.
The statement followed a standard form and was very similar to its response to Dominic Cummings’s claims that the Prime Minister suggested squashing a leak inquiry to protect his fiancée’s friends in government.
Indeed, this latest wave of allegations comes as Mr Cummings is at war with Johnson, his former Vote Leave campaign confederate — a war said to have been precipitated by the ongoing clash between Cummings, his allies, and the Prime Minister’s woke fiancée Carrie Symonds, who is accused of leading her own powerful faction within Downing Street.
Cummings has been accused — falsely, he insists — of having been the source of so-called “chatty rat” leaks concerning the second lockdown, controversial efforts to secure donor funding for the renovation of Johnson and Symonds’s accommodation, and so on.
Cummings says that, on the contrary, he was cleared of being the source of the lockdown leaks at the time, and that the Cabinet Secretary suggested the evidence pointed towards Symonds’s “best friend” Henry Newman as the culprit — and that Johnson suggested trying to get the leak inquiry dropped so he would not have to fire him.
Cummings is now expected to give evidence to a House of Commons select committee next month slamming Johnson’s handling of the pandemic, for example by denying Home Secretary Priti Patel’s request to end travel from coronavirus hotspots such as China and Italy, which continued with no checks or quarantine requirements for months into the pandemic.
Harris-Quinney also stressed the point of border restrictions to Breitbart London, noting that the Bow Group called for such controls in January 2020, and that if Johnson had heeded such calls internal lockdowns could have been largely avoided, as in countries like New Zealand.
“The Government’s inexplicable errors almost certainly killed tens of thousands, with an immeasurable cost to livelihood also,” he accused.
“Anyone responsible for this should be humble, contrite, and apologetic before the public, and ready to consider their position. Saying ‘let the bodies pile up in their thousands’ in an official government meeting, even as a joke, reflects a mindset that is callous to the immense public loss, and their role in it,” he added.
Of Symonds, he was even more scathing than Mr Cummings, characterising her as someone who had “spent her time in politics pushing the idea she is the darling of the press and Westminster. My estimation is that she is roundly loathed, by the press, by MPs, and crucially by the public… [I]f her and her team are not severed from any contact with government they will bring it down.”
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