Labour opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer has demanded Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologise for his "11th-hour" order of a COVID-19 lockdown for London and neighbouring areas.
The Labour leader accused Johnson of "gross negligence", claiming the "alarm bells had been ringing for weeks" on the need for harsher measures.
Johnson announced the new restrictions, including an effective lockdown under a new Tier 4 alert level for London, Essex, Kent, Portsmouth, and other areas, at a press conference on Saturday.
"I think the prime minister should apologise", Starmer told reporters at a virtual press conference. "This is not just one mistake when he has otherwise got things right. It is the same mistake over and over again".
"At the heart of the problem here is a prime minister who simply doesn't want to be unpopular and therefore won't take the tough decisions that are necessary, until he is forced into them at the 11th hour", Starmer said. "We can't go on like that. I think that it is very important that the prime minister does apologise to people for his handling of this episode of the pandemic".
Meanwhile, Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy pitched her party against the powerful National Education Union (NEU), whose General Secretary Kevin Courtney called for delaying the opening of secondary schools until 18 January to slow down the spread of the virus.
"We want schools to reopen and children to be back in the classroom," Nandy told the BBC's Andrew Marr on Sunday. And when asked by Sky News' Sophy Ridge whether schools in Tier 4 areas should close, she replied: "I think schools should be the last thing to close and the first thing to open".
Johnson insisted on Saturday that the new measures were in response to a newly-identified coronavirus strain that Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said could spread much faster than the existing form.
A YouGov poll conducted after Johnson's Saturday evening announcement found three-quarters of Britons supported the new measures, while only one in six opposed them. Support was higher among Tory voters, at 79 percent, than among Labour supporters at 72 percent. In London, the hardest-hit area, two-thirds were in favour of the new rules and a quarter against.
But on Saturday, the PM said that the five-day relaxation of rules to let people from up to three homes celebrate Christmas together would be cancelled for Tier 4 areas, and reduced to just Christmas Day elsewhere.
