Keir Starmer: Boris Johnson’s chaos could hit June plan to lift lockdown

Labour leader slams Tory civil war' and says prime minister is unfit for office after errors'

• Opinion: Thousands of second-wave Covid deaths were avoidable and unforgivable | Keir Starmer

Labour leader Keir Starmer today warns that plans to lift almost all Covid-19 restrictions on 21 June are at risk because of serial incompetence and civil war" inside Boris Johnson's government.

In his strongest attack for months on the prime minister's handling of the pandemic, Starmer says that the huge death toll in the second wave of cases from last autumn, in which more than 80,000 lives were lost, was avoidable and unforgivable" and the result of a failure to learn lessons from the early stages of the crisis.