PM: You all got too complacent

BORIS Johnson last night claimed coronavirus infections had started to rise again because people had become too ‘blasé’ about the rules.

The Prime Minister suggested the recent spike in cases was a result of the ‘fraying of people’s discipline’ and said some had been ‘kind of complacent’.

Asked about Nationalist MP Margaret Ferrier, who went on an 800-mile round trip by train to the Commons despite having coronavirus, Mr Johnson replied that in March and April the country had come together and ‘got the virus down’. But he added: ‘What happened since then is that everyone got a bit complacent and a bit blasé about transmission and the rules on social distancing weren’t perhaps obeyed in the way they could have been or enforced in the way they could have been.

‘We’ve got to keep a very careful eye on it, because we’re also trying to perform this careful balancing act of keeping education going and keeping as much of the economy going as we can, so it relies very much on people collectively doing the right thing.’

When asked whether testing failings were to blame for the second wave, Mr Johnson said: ‘ That’s not the reality... what happened over the summer was a sort of fraying of people’s discipline and attention to those rules.’

UK figures yesterday showed there had been a further 6,968 cases and 66 deaths.

Mr Johnson told ITV: ‘We’re doing everything we can to make sure Christmas for everybody is as normal as possible.’

Asked about the photograph of his father Stanley in a shop without a mask, he said: ‘The same advice as I would give anybody in my family, anybody in this country: follow the guidance – hands, space, face.’