The Labour leader labelled Boris Johnson's failure to cancel the planned Christmas relaxation of Covid restrictions before Saturday 19 December an 'act of gross negligence by a prime minister who is once again behind the curve.' Johnson announced swaths of the south-east of England would be placed in the new tier 4 - effectively a return to lockdown - to contain a new highly transmissible strain of the virus just days after insisting Christmas plans could go ahead. 'We have a prime minister who is so scared of being unpopular that he is incapable of making tough decisions until it is too late,' Starmer said.