UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come under increasing pressure after attending a social party and is now seeking to release the mounting scrutiny by lifting all of the UK’s covid restrictions amidst calls for his resignation.
Johnson has claimed that he attended what he thought was a ‘necessary work function’ in May of 2020, where attendees also included Johnson’s wife, along with social drinks in the Prime Minister’s office garden on Downing Street.
In a desperate effort to retain power, The New York Times reports that Johnson is proposing lifting all Covid restrictions to win back nearly 100 conservative lawmakers who rebelled against him after he imposed more restrictive measures in December.
When Johnson took the stand, he noted that he had apologised to Queen Elizabeth II for attending the party on the eve of Prince Phillips Funeral, with opposition leader Keir Starmer asking if ‘isn’t he ashamed he didn’t hand in his resignation at the same time?’
In justifying the lifting of restrictions, Johnson commented that ‘We will trust the judgement of the English people’ to restore the country’s ‘ancient liberties,’ a reference to the country’s deep-rooted tradition of individual freedoms.
This rhetoric is reminiscent of Margeret Thatcher and her libertarian comments of ‘there is no such thing as society – only individuals,’ who was also the last English Prime Minister to have a vote of a no-confidence motion against her in 1990.
Mr Johnson, in preaching individual freedoms, would no longer impose the mandatory wearing of masks on public transport and schools, on top of encouraging workers to return to their offices, saying that ‘we will trust the Judgement of the English people’
Picture: Wikimedia Commons/ U.K. Prime Minister
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