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Coronavirus

03rd Jan 2021

Labour leader Keir Starmer calls for national lockdown within 24 hours

Labour leader Keir Starmer has called for a full national lockdown to be implemented within the next 24 hours, as coronavirus has spiralled 'out of control'

Alex Roberts

He said the coronavirus is “clearly out of control”

Labour leader Keir Starmer has called for a full national lockdown to be implemented within the next 24 hours.

Earlier today, Prime Minister Boris Johnson hinted at a potential tightening of lockdown measures, but Starmer has since taken issue with Johnson’s perceived lack of decisiveness.

He said: “It’s no good with the Prime Minister hinting that further restrictions will come into place in a week or two or three, that delay has been the source of so many problems so I say bring in those restrictions now, national restrictions within the next 24 hours.

“That has to be the first step to controlling the virus.”

A guest on The Andrew Marr Show earlier today, Boris Johnson said lockdown measures were ‘probably going to get tougher’, but he would not speculate on when that would be.

The government has faced renewed calls to abandon plans to reopen schools amid cases of coronavirus skyrocketing.

Yesterday, there were 57,725 new cases of Covid-19 – the highest daily total since the pandemic first swept across the UK.

The government had originally planned to shun scientific advice and go ahead with plans to reopen schools, but now Prime Minister Boris Johnson has admitted that restrictions are probably going to be tightened.

“It may be that we need to do things in the next few weeks that will be tougher in many parts of the country.

“I’m fully reconciled to that. My bet [is that] the people of this country are reconciled to that.”

When asked by Marr to outline when new restrictions would come into force, the Prime Minister did not specify. He also failed to elaborate on what new measures would look like.

He said: “I’m not going to speculate now on what they might be, but I’m sure all our viewers, or listeners, will understand

“Clearly, school closures, which we had to do in March, is one of those things. It’s not something we necessarily want to do.”