Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 lockdown approved, despite opposition from 55 Conservative MPs
Boris Johnson wins vote forcing England into second COVID-19 lockdown despite 55 Conservative rebel MPs refusing to support him.
Boris Johnson won a Westminster vote forcing England into an immediate second lockdown on Wednesday, but his political authority has suffered a bruising setback with 55 Conservative rebel MPs refusing to support him.
After a lengthy debate about the lockdown, which bans any socialising, restricts care home visits, closes all retail and bans outward travel for the next four weeks, Mr Johnson’s plans were passed 516 to 38.
Mr Johnson had warned that the real risk of mortality on a grievous scale would stem from doing nothing.
But there were 21 abstentions including by the former Prime Minister Theresa May who gave a rousing anti-lockdown speech about the impact on the nation’s health, with Mr Johnson walking out just as she got to her feet.
Ms May mirrored the scepticism across the country, saying the justification for the lockdown with extravagant predictions of 4000 deaths a day “was wrong before it was even used”.
“We need these proper analyses. We need to know the details behind these models. We need to be able to assess the validity of those models,” she said.
“Jobs lost, livelihoods shattered, businesses failing, whole sectors damaged. What sort of airline industry are we going to have coming out of this? What sort of hospitality sector? What sort of small independent shops will be left?”
The trust in the government’s projections has waned, especially when manipulated graphs and outdated predictions have been used to frighten the country. One graph used to justify the lockdown showed hospitals that had exceeded COVID-19 cases from the first wave, but didn’t show the many that had no COVID-19 cases at all. Others used projected figures from Oxford University that the university said were four weeks out of date and irrelevant.
We now have a system of mass testing - starting in the great city of Liverpool - which I believe will help this country defeat this virus. pic.twitter.com/4ZqKy0UQdK
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 3, 2020
On Wednesday, there were more than 25,000 new coronavirus infections across the UK and 492 deaths. While 10,000 people died each week in the UK in normal times, the weekly numbers of deaths have started to edge above the five-year average, the Office of National Statistics showed.
Central to the debate was whether lockdowns achieved anything other than economic harm and deprivation of liberties.
The leader of the Conservative backbenchers, Sir Graham Brady, said the government was “reaching too far into the private and family lives” amid “an arrogance, perhaps unintended’’ in telling people whether they could visit elderly parents, children, or grandchildren, consenting adults being told who they could sleep with and banning worship, golf and tennis.
He said he has had constituents in floods of tears about the new measures.
From 5 November until 2 December you must not leave your home except for specific reasons.
— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) November 4, 2020
These measures will apply in England for four weeks. After this, we will look to return to a local approach, based on the latest data.
https://t.co/shgzOurdZC pic.twitter.com/49SOOnJnB3
Conservative former minister Tim Loughton said the regional lockdown measures had not been given enough time to have an impact and warned that the science for a national lockdown was questionable, while the business case against it was overwhelming.
Another Conservative MP, Sir Charles Walker, said parliament was using the rule of law to undermine the rule of law and warned: “We have criminalised freedom of association, freedom to do business, freedom to travel and freedom to demonstrate – this is the oxygen of democracy.
“I want people to live a long life, a full life, a happy life, including me. But my death, and our mortality, is in the end our contract with our maker, while our basic rights are our contract with the government.’’
The vote was so bruising, Mr Johnson’s lockdown bill only passed with the support of Labour.
The North West and the whole country need certainty.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) November 4, 2020
Instead of the Chancellor's last-minute approach, we need a proper, strategic plan for the next six months. https://t.co/Cs0SllrxSu
While Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer supported the lockdown, he acknowledged it was “very hard for the public because they know it isn’t going to keep them safe … and they know it means Christmas isn’t going to be what it should be.”
He said the government had lost control and agreed lockdown restrictions weren’t working, citing Leicester, which had been in lockdown since June.
“For heaven’s sake, we have got to use the next four weeks to come up with something better than that (lockdown) … otherwise we will do the usual thing which is to pretend something is going to happen on December 2 and then when we get there find out that what was said would happen won’t happen.
“I can predict what is going to happen because it has happened so many times over the last seven months … and it’s not fair on the British public.”
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