Prime Minister Boris Johnson has revealed a private memo, allegedly from his political secretary Ben Gascoigne, discussing an upcoming meeting with the Chair of the 1922 Committee Sir Graham Brady on coronavirus response, where Johnson’s aide advised him to avoid seeing the Tory backbencher alone.
Neither Gascoigne nor Johnson meant the message to be seen by the public, but the prime minister was photographed outside Downing Street as he was carrying the document, the text of which was then easily deciphered by the Times and other British media.
In the document titled “Meeting with Sir Graham Brady – Wednesday 13th May 2020”, Gascoigne said that Sir Graham will seek a private “catch-up” with the prime minister and other “regular meetings”, during which he “will almost certainly raise the Covid response”.
“It is important that at least the chief (whip) stays in the room - he will, as he has previously, seek to ensure that it is just the two of you”, the memo reads as quoted by the Times.
Gascoigne then advised Johnson to avoid any future meetings with the chairman, who is a vocal advocate of the early lifting of coronavirus restrictions. The memo added that Sir Graham will also “say that colleagues support him” in the view that the lockdown should be eased as soon as possible.
The officials who come to the Downing Street 10 are warned that all the documents they bring should be covered up, but apparently the PM had forgotten this.
Not all of the social media users believed that the exposure of the paper was a genuine accident.
Boris Johnson has been strongly pressured by some of his senior officials to lift lockdown restrictions and let Britons return to work in order to avoid a worse recession as some economists now fear that the UK is facing “the worst recession” in the last couple hundreds of years. In March, GDP had already fallen by a record 5.8% in comparison to previous month, while the British economy shrunk by 2% overall in the first quarter of 2020, which is considered to be the biggest slump since the financial crisis.
So far, the prime minister has taken slow steps in easing quarantine measures, by relaxing limits on outdoor exercises and allowing workers in some industries to return to work, while still strongly adhering to self-isolation practices.