Former Tory leader Duncan Smith attacks Johnson over second lockdown
Boris Johnson’s decision yesterday (October 31) to impose a second coronavirus lockdown has irked influential factions of the ruling Tory party.
Former Conservative Party leader, Iain Duncan Smith, has accused the PM of “giving in” to the government’s “scientific advisers” and “marching England back into another lockdown”.
Talking to Sky News (November 01), Duncan Smith, who was Tory leader from 2001 to 2003, claimed a second national lockdown is tantamount to a “body blow to the British people”.
Duncan Smith’s onslaught follows Johnson’s announcement at a news conference (October 31) of a second month-long lockdown set to being on Thursday (November 05).
According to Duncan Smith, the second lockdown comes “just as the economy was picking up, even giving cause for optimism”.
He claimed the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has “pressurized” the government into following this course of action.
"Normally, advisers advise & ministers decide. Yet that system has broken down, with SAGE believing its advice to be more like commandments written on stone and its members publicly lecturing the government over the airways when it disagrees”, Duncan Smith added.
Furthermore, the former Tory leader claimed that “many” of SAGE’s “recommendations” have been “hotly disputed” by other “reputable scientists”.
MPs are set to vote on Johnson’s plan for a second lockdown on Wednesday (November 04).
The government is expected to comfortably win the vote at the House of Commons as Labor leader, Keir Starmer, has already indicated his party will vote in favor of the lockdown.
However, apart from Duncan Smith, other influential Tory MPs have voiced opposition to the PM’s plan.
Senior Tory David Davis, who was Brexit Secretary under former PM Theresa May, has even suggested that an unknown number of his colleagues could vote against the proposed lockdown.
Speaking to Times Radio (October 31), Davis said MPs have "got to see the data" behind the proposed shutdown in order to be “convinced”.
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