Liz Truss has joined her Conservative leadership rival Rishi Sunak in distancing herself from the government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis, saying that as prime minister she would never impose a pandemic lockdown.
Truss, the foreign secretary, told a leadership hustings in East Anglia — the penultimate debate of the summer contest — that she thought her own government had handled the Covid crisis in a “draconian” way.
Boris Johnson, who quit just weeks ago as prime minister, imposed three separate lockdowns — each with different curbs on the general public — to try to minimise the loss of life from the spread of the virus.
Earlier on Friday Sunak issued a scathing critique of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, arguing that scientific advisers were given too much authority in decision making.
Sunak, who served as chancellor from February 2020 to July 2022, told the Spectator magazine that during the pandemic there was little discussion at the top of government surrounding the potential negative impact of successive lockdowns.
“The script was: oh, there’s no trade-off, because doing this for our health is good for the economy,” he said, adding that he at times had become “emotional” when discussing the effect of restrictions on the education system. “We didn’t talk at all about missed [doctor’s] appointments or the backlog building in the NHS in a massive way,” Sunak added.
Likewise, Truss said that in retrospect the government had taken a “draconian” approach to the pandemic. Schoolchildren had ended up suffering educationally with mental health problems, she said.
“When Covid happened we were all hugely shocked: there was a big discussion about what the response should be and clearly in retrospect we did too much,” she said during the hustings in Norwich. “I don’t think we should have closed schools.”
The intervention was a clear attempt to appeal to the Conservative membership, which will select the next prime minister in the coming days.
Members have until September 2 to cast their ballot, with the new prime minister announced on September 5.
“I can assure you and this group here today that I would never impose a lockdown if I am selected as prime minister,” the foreign secretary told the audience.
Truss has been consistently leading in opinion polls throughout the campaign. The latest survey from the Conservative Home website showed that 60 per cent of Tory members were planning to back Truss, compared with 28 per cent in favour of Sunak.
In another bid to woo the Tory membership, which is largely Eurosceptic, Truss expressed doubts over whether Emmanuel Macron, the French president, is a “friend or foe” of the UK.
Asked to make that judgment on Macron by a member of the audience, she replied: “The jury is out. But if I become PM, I’ll hold him to deeds not words.”
The comments are likely to inflame tensions between Britain and France, which have suffered a tense political relationship since the 2016 Brexit vote despite their close military and economic ties.
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