Tory MP says Boris Johnson will 'never defeat the virus'

Iain Duncan Smith. Picture: Nigel Sutton. - Credit: Nigel Sutton

Tory backbencher and former party leader Iain Duncan Smith has questioned Boris Johnson’s claims that he and the public can “defeat the virus”.

The Brexiteer said that he did not believe the prime minister could ever manage to do it, instead arguing that he must help Britons to live with the disease.

Speaking to the Telegraph‘s Chopper Politics podcast, he said: “‘I’ve never been to a time like this where we have almost suspended all judgement on everything else as secondary to Covid.

“And the truth is that if we go on just trying to push these spikes down the whole time … then we could be in this for years because there are very few vaccines that have been completely effective against viruses.”

He said that the problem was “we’ve lost the balance of risks. We now have only one risk. And if you think of only one risk, then you can damage everything around you”.

He added the right approach was “managing it but not expecting that, as people say, we can defeat this, because I honestly don’t think we will actually.”