Boris Johnson has attempted to quell Conservative and business anger over his handling of the Covid-19 crisis by insisting that a new national lockdown in England would not herald a winter of open-ended closures and claiming the virus could be beaten “by the spring”.
With Tory MPs threatening to vote against his “authoritarian and coercive” lockdown and retailers warning of a “nightmare before Christmas”, Mr Johnson battled to reassure his critics that the new measures were necessary and “time-limited”.
The prime minister insisted Britain would return to a regional system of restrictions at the end of the four-week lockdown on December 2 and that a combination of a vaccine and cheap, rapid tests would “enable us to defeat this virus by the spring”.