Boris’s booze-up proves that he knew lockdown was bonkers

ON TuESDAY April 7, 2020, Boris Johnson was moved into intensive care at St Thomas’ Hospital, just across the Thames from the Commons. He had been admitted two days earlier, suffering from Covid-19, and his condition was going downhill rapidly. He was being given oxygen and there were genuine fears that he may have to be put on a ventilator.

Rumours began to circulate that the PM was at death’s door. Fleet Street hastily updated obituaries. TV newsreaders were issued with black ties, just in case he popped his clogs overnight.

His pregnant fiancee Carrie, selfisolating in Downing Street, was said to be worried sick, crying down the phone to friends. Fortunately, Boris began to pull through and after seven days he was discharged from hospital.

The Prime Minister’s brush with mortality helped convince an already frightened nation that an unprecedented lockdown was the only way to mitigate the threat from this new killer virus. Restrictions on civil liberties were enforced with draconian zeal. You don’t need me to revisit the absurd rules and outrageous, heavy-handed abuses of police power.

We were assured all this was for our own protection, whether we liked it or not. At 5pm every night, millions tuned in to the daily press conference to hear the latest death toll. Next slide please.

The Government’s uncompromising message, hammered home by the Two Ronnies of Doom, was stark: Do as you’re told, or you’re all going to DIE!

Yet six short weeks later, Boris and Carrie — who had just given birth — attended a Bring Your Own Booze party in the back garden at Downing Street, with dozens of close aides and civil servants. Forget the intelligenceinsulting sophistry now being employed by the PM as he wriggles on a very large hook of his own making. Let’s cut to the chase.

Johnson constantly led us to believe coronavirus was the

deadliest danger to life since the Great Plague swept London in 1665. It could only be held at bay by putting the entire country under house arrest. Mixing with others was tantamount to a death sentence.

So why did Boris think it was safe to ignore his own lockdown rules? Surely having suffered a neardeath experience of his own, he’d have been super cautious.

Why expose his postpartum wife to the risk of contracting Covid? Wasn’t he worried that he might inadvertently transmit the virus to his baby son, asleep in his cot upstairs? Apparently not.

Remember, this was at a time when little was known about Covid, there were no vaccines, no mass testing, no mandatory face masks and the Army was frantically building emergency Nightingale Hospitals to treat hundreds of thousands of coronavirus patients expected to overwhelm the NHS.

Why would he behave so recklessly? The only explanation can be that he knew the Covid threat was overblown and the lockdown regulations were nonsense.

Ministers and civil servants simply didn’t believe in the ridiculous restrictions they were imposing on the rest of the population.

Or, at the very least, they didn’t think those very same rules applied to them.

PERHAPS they had a secret store of kryptonite vests tucked away in the Cabinet War Rooms. Or they thought there was a Star Wars-style force field which protected No 10 from Covid rays.

What’s Boris’s excuse? He doesn’t have one. The King is in the altogether. In the past, I’ve remarked on his ability to paint himself in a corner and walk out over the paint. Not this time.

He’s got away with lying to his wives, to his lovers, to his closest associates. He may even get away with lying to Parliament.

But lying to the British people is unforgivable. So is treating us as fools. We gave him the benefit of the doubt and he betrayed us.

Right now Boris’s political career is on a ventilator. If the plug gets pulled, he’ll only have himself to blame.

THE Yorkshire Ripper was restrained for eight hours before he died from Covid and heart disease, the prison ombudsman has reported. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.