Johnson had wanted to use the conference this week to turn the page on more than 18 months of COVID-19 and to refocus on his 2019 election pledges to tackle regional inequality, crime and social care. "We didn't go through COVID to go back to how things were before -- to the status quo ante. Build Back Better means we want things to change and improve as we recover," he said. "That means taking the big, bold decisions on the priorities people care about – like on social care, on supporting jobs, on climate change, tackling crime and levelling up." But for many critics, this often repeated statement underscores a refusal to acknowledge missteps in the early days of the pandemic when the government seemed reluctant to lockdown the economy to stop the spread of the virus.

Source: bd News24 October 02, 2021 21:33 UTC