Did Rishi Sunak really fly home to stop Britain from ‘sleepwalking into a lockdown’?

The Mail on Sunday said the “drama” started on 15 December, when Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, used a press conference to explain that the new Omicron variant posed a “really serious” threat and advised that people limited their social interactions in the run-up to Christmas.

At the time, Sunak “was 5,000 miles away in California, having flown out the previous day for his first holiday in two years”, said Owen. He “rang Mr Johnson to urge restraint… then made immediate arrangements to fly back to London”. 

According to Owen, Sunak “went straight” to No. 10 to see the PM when he arrived back in the UK. On 19 December, he allegedly spoke to his boss again, “to warn him that he didn’t have ‘the political capital’ to push through any such measures”.

In the end no lockdown was announced in England “meaning families could see each other over Christmas”, said the BBC. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, on the other hand, introduced tighter rules.

‘Far from a lone voice’

Although Sunak did indeed “come back from overseas early”, he failed to mention in his LBC interview that he “was on the receiving end of quite a bit of criticism at that point for being in California when the Omicron variant was surging”, said the BBC’s political correspondent David Wallace Lockhart.

Several government sources also told the BBC that the former chancellor was “far from a lone voice around the cabinet table” when it came to opposing an Omicron lockdown.

It is “not unusual” for accounts of the inner workings of government to vary, said Andrew Sparrow on The Guardian’s live blog. But, he explained, “this story is damaging because the YouGov polling out yesterday suggested that 40% of Tory members do not view Sunak as honest, and that this is one reason why they like Liz Truss more”.

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/politics/957443/did-rishi-sunak-stop-omicron-lockdown