Labour got it SO wrong

■ SIR KEIR STARMER On May 27 last year, the Labour leader tweeted: ‘We have the worst death toll in Europe and tens of thousands of people have died unnecessarily. Families who have lost loved ones need answers.’

■ ANGELA RAYNER Last May she said: ‘Boris Johnson was too slow to introduce not one but three lockdowns, which left us with the worst death toll in Europe.’

■ PREET KAUR GILL In January 2021, Labour’s international development spokesman said: ‘We were far too slow to act, we have seen the highest death toll at the end of 2020... we were not looking at the evidence.’ Last night she said her comments had been related to the death toll, rather than excess deaths, and it is now a ‘different picture with most of the population vaccinated’. She added: ‘The UK had one of the worst Covid death rates in the world, and undoubtedly one of the worst combinations of Covid deaths and economic downturns of any major economy.’

■ RICHARD BURGON Last October the Labour MP claimed: ‘The UK has around three times the rate of deaths of France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Yet today Sajid Javid sickeningly labelled the current death rates as “mercifully low”.’

■ ROSENA ALLIN-KHAN The practising A&E doctor and Labour mental health spokesman said in October 2020: ‘It wasn’t inevitable that we would have one of the worst death rates in the world.’