Rishi Sunak says he ‘challenged the system’ and stopped December Covid lockdown

The Omicron variant of Covid-19 was running rampant last December.
Tory leadership candidate Rishi Sunak arrives for a hustings event with the Conservative Councillors’ Association in Westminster, central London (Dominic Lipinski/PA)
PA Wire
Catherine Wylie21 July 2022

Rishi Sunak has said the country was “hours away” from another national coronavirus lockdown in December but he stepped in and stopped it.

The former chancellor, who is battling against Liz Truss to become the next Conservative Party leader and prime minister, said it shows that he is “prepared to fight” for what he believes in.

Last December the Omicron variant of Covid-19 ran rampant and Boris Johnson urged the nation to get booster jabs.

Rishi Sunak during a press conference in 10 Downing Street (Tolga Akmen/PA)
PA Archive

Speaking on Tonight With Andrew Marr on LBC, Mr Sunak said: “What I did in December was fly back from a Government trip I was on overseas and I flew back to this country to stop us sleepwalking into a national lockdown, because we were hours away from a press conference that was going to lock this country down again because of Omicron.

“And I came back and fought very hard against the system because I believed that would be the wrong thing for this country, with all the damage it would have done to businesses, to children’s education, to people’s lives.”

Mr Sunak said he “challenged the system” and was glad he “won” the argument, adding that it should give people confidence that he is “prepared to push hard and fight for the things that I believe in even when that’s difficult”.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in