Boris Johnson urged to have a press conference with chief economist and top experts to rival doomsday scientists

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BORIS Johnson has been urged to have a press conference with the Government’s chief economist and top financial experts to rival the briefings from the doomsday scientists.

Ministers have urged the PM and Chancellor Rishi Sunak to do similar Downing Street briefings on economic impact of further lockdowns on the country.

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak urged to have briefing with chief economists

The top scientists have given doomsday predictions there would be 50,000 cases a day by this week

A push back is brewing among ministers against the TV appearances from chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, according to Politico.

One minister said a press conference with economic experts would “rival to the Whitty-Vallance show” and “show the devastating consequences of the Starmer approach.”

Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick started to lose the trust of Brits and local leaders after they claimed there would be 50,000 cases of coronavirus by this week.

There was a shocking 19,724 new cases yesterday, but still far off the doomsday prediction.

Sir Keir Starmer has pledged his allegiance to the word of the Government’s top scientists, Sage, and called for a circuit breaker lockdown for two to three weeks where all pubs, restaurants and non-essential businesses would have to close.

The Labour leader quoted the minutes of the scientists’ meeting in September yesterday in the House of Commons, trying to force the PM’s hand and call a circuit breaker lockdown.

Mr Johnson refused to cave to the pressure and accused Sir Keir of seeing the pandemic as a “good crisis to exploit”.

And Mr Sunak denounced this approach yesterday as one which would unnecessarily punish people in areas with low infection rates.

He slammed Labour for not considering the real, crushing impact a national circuit breaker lockdown would have on people’s livelihoods.

He said: “We must acknowledge the stark reality of the economic and social impacts of another national lockdown.

“The cost of doing so are not abstract, they are real.

“They can be counted in jobs lost, businesses closed and children’s education harmed. They can be measured in the permanent damage done to the economy, which would undermine our ability to fund our NHS and our public services.

“The entire country would suffer rather than targeting that support, preventing a lockdown in parts of the country where the virus rates are low”

Mr Sunak told MPs that Labour should “have the integrity to acknowledge that what they’re proposing will create significant damage to people’s lives and livelihoods”.

The Chancellor rejected arguments the lockdown decision came down to “health or wealth”.

He said the Government as looking at the whole context of the coronavirus crisis “through a holistic lens”.