Sunak accused of ‘rewriting history’ over claims about Covid lockdown

Rishi Sunak has been accused of trying to “re writ e history” after he claimed the harms of lockdown were ignored, meaning curbs on people’s freedoms may have gone on too long and been overly strict.

- Aubrey Allegretti, Nicola Davis, Caroline Davies

The Conservative leadership candidate was criticised for his account of the discussions at the heart of the government when he was chancellor amid frantic attempts to curb the spread of the virus and avoid the NHS be coming overwhelmed.

Sunak said he had in effect been blocked from raising concerns about the negative “trade offs” of lockdown, such as the surgery backlog and most children being home -schooled – and too much effort had been put into peddling a “fear narrative”.

Minutes of meetings held by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) often did not reflect the criticisms made of certain policies, Sunak added.

His comments were disputed by senior figures who were in Downing Street during the Covid crisis and said that the downsides were considered but lockdown had been the “best option available”.

Dominic Cummings, the former No 10 chief of staffwho turned against his former boss to help bring Boris Johnson down, said Sunak “seems to be suffering … from rewrite-history syndrome”.

He called Sunak’s comments, made in an interview with the Spectator magazine , “dangerous rubbish”, saying the article “reads like a man whose epicly [sic] bad campaign has melted his brain and he’s about to quit politics”.