On Thursday, the Prime Minister made his first appearance at the Downing Street daily press briefing, since recovering from his serious COVID-19 illness. Mr Johnson robustly defended his government’s response to the health crisis and sought to highlight the positives. He said that the peak had been reached and that infections were now on a “downward slope”.

He also pointed to the fact that the NHS had not been over-run and that everyone needing an intensive care bed had access to one.

Moreover, the Prime Minister said that the UK had “succeeded to avoid the tragedy that engulfed other parts of the world” and promised that the economy would “bounce back strongly”.

However, Mr Morgan was having none of it, as he dismissed Mr Johnson’s briefing as ”complete and utter b***”.

The former editor of the Daily Mirror highlighted the high death toll as proof of the government’s staggering incompetence and abject failure in dealing with the pandemic.

In his Daily Mail column, he wrote that the UK was “now trending to be the second worst country in the world for coronavirus deaths.

“This follows yesterday’s massive spike in our official death toll following the government’s shamefully belated inclusion of deaths outside hospital in care homes and community.

“The reported number of UK fatalities is now 26,711.”

The TV chat show host pointed to a statistical analysis carried out by the Financial Times, that predicted the total number including all “excess deaths” was likely to be 48,000.

JUST IN: Susanna Reid ‘not surprised’ by Steph McGovern’s big decision

He commented: “Whatever the exact number is, it’s a staggering and horrifying one.

“It means a football stadium full of people has died already in this country, and people are still dying in their hundreds every day.”

Mr Morgan accused the government of being “scandalously slow and complacent” in its response to the outbreak and accused the Prime Minister of refusing to take responsibility.

In a blistering critique of the government’s performance, he said: “We were scandalously slow and complacent in our response to its outbreak.

DON’T MISS
Eddie Hearn blasts Piers Morgan in scathing rant about coronavirus [Latest]
Piers Morgan’s heartwrenching plea for Captain Tom Moore [Update]
Piers Morgan U-turn: How Alastair Campbell offered GMB host kind words [Latest]

“We were scandalously under-prepared for it, particularly when it came to stock-piling Personal Protection Equipment for health workers and securing enough coronavirus tests as soon as the severity of the crisis became clear.

“We were scandalously late to order a lockdown.

“We were scandalously complicit in sending infected elderly hospital patients back to care homes without testing them.

“And we’ve been scandalously inconsistent in performing policy U-turn after policy U-turn.

“As I watched the briefing today, I saw a Prime Minister who knows all this but is desperately trying to avoid any blame or accountability.”

Mr Morgan said that the cold hard truth was that Boris Johnson simply didn’t care about the virus when it mattered and that this was the reason why Britain was one of the worst “coronavirus death traps”.

He concluded: “For him to now claim some kind of success is a woeful delusion.

“The stats don’t lie, especially when the stats are corpses.”

Earlier on Thursday, the GMB TV presenter had questioned the wisdom of Number 10 releasing a picture of a smiling, ebullient Mr Johnson walking up the stairs at Downing Street at a time when so many people were dying.

But this sparked furious reaction from some viewers, as one said: “Well I was right, sadly. Piers Morgan on the attack against Boris Johnson for looking happy FFS he has just welcomed a baby into the world.#PiersMorgan #GMB #piersmoron.”

Source: Read Full Article