London: Former Chancellor Rishi SunkiA Finalist in the Race to Succeed boris johnson As the leader of the Conservative Party and the British prime minister, he spoke openly on Thursday against the “fear narrative” and partial analysis behind the country’s COVID lockdown.
The 42-year-old former minister, who was then in charge of No. 11 Downing Street, revealed for the first time the scenes going on in the corridors of power in an interview with ‘The Spectator’. While he does not argue that the lockdown was a mistake, Sunak does reveal many of his doubts, the lack of proper factoring in the trade-offs involved in shutting down society altogether and the suppression of dissenting views within the government.
“In every brief, we tried to say: Let’s stop the ‘fear’ narrative. It was always wrong from the start. I constantly said it was wrong,” he told the news magazine’s editor.
Sunak was also critical of public health posters across the country showing Covid patients on ventilators as “it was wrong to scare people like this”.
British Indian Tory MP for Richmond in Yorkshire going face-to-face with the Foreign Secretary liz truss In the contest for the party’s leadership, he reiterated that his intention to speak now was not to point the finger of blame and name any particular one, but to highlight the importance of learning lessons from the decisions made during 2020 and 2021.
As finance minister between February 2020 and July 2022, Sunak was in charge of the economic response and claims ministers were not given enough information to examine the analysis produced by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) – independent experts A group of to advise the government on measures related to COVID.
“We shouldn’t have empowered scientists the way we did. And you have to accept the trade-offs from the beginning. If we had done all that, we could have been in a very different place … Example For, we would probably have made different decisions on things like schools.”
Sunak claims to have been one of the few dissenting voices within Johnson’s cabinet at the time and eventually began to turn to broader analysis, including research data from his alma mater Stanford University and JPMorgan, to inform his own views. .
“I was not allowed to talk about trade-offs,” he revealed, adding that ministers were reportedly briefed by No 10 Downing on how to deal with questions about the ill-effects of the lockdown.
“The script was never going to accept them. The script was: Oh, no compromises, because doing this for our health is good for the economy,” he recalls.
He shares his memories of a special government meeting where he became “very passionate” about education: “Forget about the economy. Surely we can all agree that children are in school.” Not being there is a big nightmare” or something like that. There was a huge silence afterwards. This was the first time anyone had said that. I was so angry.”
When the Omicron version was moving in the UK late last year, he was among senior ministers against a fourth lockdown, it was already known. In this latest interview, he reflects on how he came back early from a trip to California to meet his then-boss, Johnson.
I just told him it’s not right: we shouldn’t be doing this,” he revealed.
Asked whether he threatened to resign if there was another lockdown, he said he used the “closest formulation of words” to indicate that threat. Sunak then lobbied other ministers in the cabinet and built a wider network against another lockdown.
“I remember telling her [Johnson]There is a cabinet meeting. You’ll see. Everyone will be completely behind you… you don’t have to worry. I’ll be standing next to you, as will every other member of the cabinet, probably the bar [ministers] Michael [Gove] and saju [Sajid Javid],” They said.
A public inquiry has been set up into the UK government’s handling of the pandemic, with public hearings set to begin next year. But Sunak believes lessons can be learned right away and it will be up to the new Downing Street leader to take those calls.
“The leader matters. It matters who is the person at the top,” said Sunak, who is scheduled to campaign to win over Conservative Party members’ votes in the online and postal ballots that close on September 2. continues to address the events. The winner will be announced on Sept. 5, when either Sunak or Truss takes over as head of government.
Downing Street said that during the pandemic, public health, education and the economy were “central” to the difficult decisions made on the lockdown to protect the British public from the “unprecedented novel virus”.
“At every point, ministers made collective decisions that considered a wide range of expert advice available at the time to protect public health,” a spokesman said.
The 42-year-old former minister, who was then in charge of No. 11 Downing Street, revealed for the first time the scenes going on in the corridors of power in an interview with ‘The Spectator’. While he does not argue that the lockdown was a mistake, Sunak does reveal many of his doubts, the lack of proper factoring in the trade-offs involved in shutting down society altogether and the suppression of dissenting views within the government.
“In every brief, we tried to say: Let’s stop the ‘fear’ narrative. It was always wrong from the start. I constantly said it was wrong,” he told the news magazine’s editor.
Sunak was also critical of public health posters across the country showing Covid patients on ventilators as “it was wrong to scare people like this”.
British Indian Tory MP for Richmond in Yorkshire going face-to-face with the Foreign Secretary liz truss In the contest for the party’s leadership, he reiterated that his intention to speak now was not to point the finger of blame and name any particular one, but to highlight the importance of learning lessons from the decisions made during 2020 and 2021.
As finance minister between February 2020 and July 2022, Sunak was in charge of the economic response and claims ministers were not given enough information to examine the analysis produced by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) – independent experts A group of to advise the government on measures related to COVID.
“We shouldn’t have empowered scientists the way we did. And you have to accept the trade-offs from the beginning. If we had done all that, we could have been in a very different place … Example For, we would probably have made different decisions on things like schools.”
Sunak claims to have been one of the few dissenting voices within Johnson’s cabinet at the time and eventually began to turn to broader analysis, including research data from his alma mater Stanford University and JPMorgan, to inform his own views. .
“I was not allowed to talk about trade-offs,” he revealed, adding that ministers were reportedly briefed by No 10 Downing on how to deal with questions about the ill-effects of the lockdown.
“The script was never going to accept them. The script was: Oh, no compromises, because doing this for our health is good for the economy,” he recalls.
He shares his memories of a special government meeting where he became “very passionate” about education: “Forget about the economy. Surely we can all agree that children are in school.” Not being there is a big nightmare” or something like that. There was a huge silence afterwards. This was the first time anyone had said that. I was so angry.”
When the Omicron version was moving in the UK late last year, he was among senior ministers against a fourth lockdown, it was already known. In this latest interview, he reflects on how he came back early from a trip to California to meet his then-boss, Johnson.
I just told him it’s not right: we shouldn’t be doing this,” he revealed.
Asked whether he threatened to resign if there was another lockdown, he said he used the “closest formulation of words” to indicate that threat. Sunak then lobbied other ministers in the cabinet and built a wider network against another lockdown.
“I remember telling her [Johnson]There is a cabinet meeting. You’ll see. Everyone will be completely behind you… you don’t have to worry. I’ll be standing next to you, as will every other member of the cabinet, probably the bar [ministers] Michael [Gove] and saju [Sajid Javid],” They said.
A public inquiry has been set up into the UK government’s handling of the pandemic, with public hearings set to begin next year. But Sunak believes lessons can be learned right away and it will be up to the new Downing Street leader to take those calls.
“The leader matters. It matters who is the person at the top,” said Sunak, who is scheduled to campaign to win over Conservative Party members’ votes in the online and postal ballots that close on September 2. continues to address the events. The winner will be announced on Sept. 5, when either Sunak or Truss takes over as head of government.
Downing Street said that during the pandemic, public health, education and the economy were “central” to the difficult decisions made on the lockdown to protect the British public from the “unprecedented novel virus”.
“At every point, ministers made collective decisions that considered a wide range of expert advice available at the time to protect public health,” a spokesman said.