Johnson’s Unhappy Tories Fight Each Other Over U.K. Virus Plans
- Northern Tory MPs complain to prime minister over lockdowns
- Ruling Conservative Party is becoming fractured in pandemic
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Boris Johnson’s Cabinet meetings have become frosty affairs. To comply with U.K. pandemic rules, his senior ministers now gather in cavernous rooms in the Foreign Office, where they have to sit two meters apart with the windows wide open for ventilation, even as the weather turns colder.
It is not a happy scene, and Johnson himself is not enjoying the task that fate has dealt him as coronavirus takes hold across the country again, according to those who work closely with the British premier. To make matters worse, senior ministers have started to squabble, while restive members of Parliament in his own Conservative Party are forming pressure groups to lobby him publicly for their chosen goals.