The Premier replied...

“I’M not going to pretend that everything went in the way I would want here or across government and nor am I going to pretend that it was brilliantly handled by us when all that stuff started to come out. The trouble was, it came out in endless dribs and drabs and lots of stuff that I was completely unaware of kept emerging. It was a difficult one to handle.

All I can say is, we’ve got to let the current inquiries continue, reach their conclusion. I don’t think there’s anything more I can say on that... that will really help, except to get on with delivering what the people want us to do.

I think what will help is a sense that no matter what brickbats and protests are hurled at the Government, it just does get on with the people’s priorities.

So in that difficult time we did get on with delivering the fastest booster rollout in Europe throughout those weeks. That was driven by No 10 completely. We doubled the speed of it.And that did have a considerable benefit to our ability to fight the pandemic.

For all the things people may worry about, the thing they don’t like most is a sense that the Government is not focusing on what matters.

The golden rule of politics is, people don’t like it when politicians seem to be focused on themselves or their issues, rather than on the issues of the electorate.

What matters to us, to me really, is the cost of living for the people of this country. What are we doing to fix our long-term energy needs? Do we have a plan for that given what’s happening in Ukraine, given the post-Covid inflationary spikes?

Delivering

Do we have a plan to help people with the cost of living by having a long-term plan for energy spikes? Well, we do and... I think that by showing people we’re delivering on that, delivering on helping to deal with the problems in world politics, trying to bring the world together to cope with Putin, I think that is what people are going to want us to focus on.

What I would say [to voters] is... look at what they are actually delivering.They delivered the fastest booster rollout and the fastest vaccine rollout virtually anywhere in the world.That was thanks to

Brexit, and to

Daily Express readers.”