Scottish people 'only too happy' to avoid work during lockdown, Boris Johnson says

SCOTTISH people were “only too happy” to see Covid lockdowns extended so they did not have to go to work, Boris Johnson has claimed.

In his new book “Unleashed”, the disgraced former prime minister also took aim at Nicola Sturgeon over her handling of the pandemic, claiming she only sought to enact different policies to him for political ends.

He wrote: “The sainted leader of the Scottish National Party had adopted a highly successful strategy for most of the pandemic of always appearing to be slightly more risk-averse than the government in London.

“Since a majority of the British public tended to be on the cautious side, this generally went down well. So Nicola would use her devolved freedoms to keep schools closed, to keep masks on and to keep people locked down for that little bit longer than in England and Wales.”

(Image: PA) Johnson, who resigned his seat as an MP in June 2023 rather than face the consequences of having lied to parliament, then went on to suggest that Scottish people were content with longer lockdowns as they were too lazy to want to return to their jobs.

He wrote: “If we decided, after agonising debate, that it was time for people to go back to work, [Sturgeon] would immediately appear on the TV, lips pursed, brow furrowed, to say that Scotland wasn't ready for this yet; and some Scottish people seemed only too happy to spend a little longer at home at the general expense.”

The former Tory leader further claimed that Sturgeon had “a strategy of gratuitous differentiation”.

He added: “It was deeply frustrating partly because it was confusing for the public, partly because it made me look like a brutal English Tory while she was an unco guid Princess Twinkletoes.”

Johnson went on to claim: “As things turned out, her Scotland-only measures were probably useless. There is no perceptible difference, at the end of the pandemic, in the overall mortality rate between England and Scotland.

“If she hoped the pandemic would in any way promote the notion of breaking up the UK, well, those hopes were crushed.”

In her review of Johnson’s book for the New Statesman, Sturgeon called out the former Tory leader for critiquing women’s appearance.

She said: “It is often the lot of women in politics to have our physical appearance uncharitably critiqued by men who want to bring us down to size, and Johnson is a master of the ‘art’. When he has a go at me over Covid, it is my supposedly pursed lips and furrowed brow that get the treatment.

“Perhaps he thinks I should have created more of a party atmosphere."