Tory claims Boris Johnson is more concerned about Brexit than how many people die from coronavirus

Prime minister Boris Johnson. Photgraph: Ben Birchall/PA. - Credit: PA

A man who described himself as a ‘staunch Tory’ has claimed those at the top of the party would consider extending the Brexit transition period worse than thousands more deaths from coronavirus.


Have your say
Send your letters for publication to The New European by emailing letters@theneweuropean.co.uk and pick up an edition each Thursday for more comment and analysis. Find your nearest stockist here or subscribe to a print or digital edition for just £13. You can also join our readers' Facebook group to keep the discussion and debate going with thousands of fellow pro-Europeans.

Speaking to James O’Brien on LBC Radio, caller Nick from Harrow said he was not sending his children back to school as they reopen because he does not trust the government.

Referencing Dominic Cummings, the lifelong Tory voter said: ‘He’s the reason I don’t trust the government, and it answers your second question, what are they up to? It’s the B-word, it’s the bloody B-word’.

Explaining why he thinks he has stayed in post, he added: ‘July is a very important point in terms of transition decisions, they need him to spin things, they need him to pitch the argument, and that is all it is.’

Asked by O’Brien what the prize is for Johnson and the Tories, the listener explained: ‘They have an 80-seat majority, the election is four years away, they probably are saying ‘this will all be a horrible distant nightmare for many people’, and therefore if they can get Brexit done as such, they will therefore say ‘we delivered on our promises in the election, we got us through the pandemic’ (no matter how many lives its cost us).

‘That’s how they will paint it, they are thinking ‘we want to make sure at the next election we maintain that majority’, we keep the northern constituencies that voted for us placated in thinking we delivered, that’s what they’re thinking about. It’s all about the next four years after this. It’s all about delivering the B-word.

‘If they don’t deliver the B-word it’s worse than another 50,000 people dying in their view.’

Thinking about it for a second, O’Brien acknowledged: ‘I think you’re probably right, you know.

‘Even though the Daily Mail called me on Friday a ‘die hard Remainer’ or something like that, even we recognise it’s over and in order to minimise the damage you extend the transition period, but that involves admitting there’s going to be damage and they can’t even do that.’

He added: ‘If you’re right about the election – ‘we kept our promise in the 2019 election (just whatever you do don’t mention the all the promises we made in the 2016 referendum). But the light at the end of the tunnel goes out the longer you look at it.

‘And you a life-long Tory losing faith in this government, and both of us wondering whether those so-called borrowed seats in the North – those staunch Labour strongholds that fell like dominoes in December – will he be able to hang on to those? I honestly don’t know’.